As long as you are opening up your forum to tales of the sea, perhaps the appellation "Empress of Ireland" rings familiar. The world's three worst sea disasters prior to W.W. II were spaced apart in two year intervals in the 1910's: April, 1912 (Titanic); May, 1914 (Empress of Ireland); May, 1916 (Lusitania).
The Empress was rammed in the fog by a Norwegian freighter, suffering a loss of 840 lives. While the Titanic took two hours to sink, the Lusitania sank in 20 minutes, the Empress of Ireland in only 14. 168 members of the Salvation Army were among the passengers. As the ship went down, some of them stood on the deck, singing "God Be With You Till We Meet Again," having already given away the life jackets distributed to them. I once read that a coal shoveler who had survived the Titanic, went on to survive the Empress of Ireland and the Lusitania disasters as well. |
