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The Disaster

back to ''Empress of Ireland' - The Salvation Army Connection'

Perhaps the greatest tragedy in the whole history of The Salvation Army took place on 29 May 1914 - " Black Friday" - when the Canadian Pacific liner Empress of Ireland, taking 200 Salvationists to the International Congress in London was rammed by the Norwegian collier Storstad in a fog and sank in the Gulf of St Lawrence within a few hours of leaving Quebec the previous evening. Although fog signals were exchanged, these were misunderstood, and at about 2 a.m. the hull of the Storstad suddenly loomed out of the darkness and crashed into the side of the Empress, which went down within a quarter of an hour with more than a thousand of its passengers.

Among the 167 Salvationists lost were the Territorial Commander, Commissioner David M. Rees, and his wife and daughter, the Chief Secretary and Mrs Colonel Sydney Maidment, many other headquarters officers, soldiers and friends, and the Territorial Staff Band, whose Bandmaster was Adjutant Flanangan. Commissioner Thomas McKie was sent from London by General Bramwell Booth to take command of the Territory pro tem. The funeral service of sixteen of those who perished was conducted by the Commissioner in the Toronto Arena, where, it is estimated, some 1,000 persons were assembled. Commissioner Rees was not buried until several weeks later. The Territorial Staff Band had been formed by Commissioner Coombs in the spring of 1907.

The Congress of Nations had been planned to open and conclude in the Royal Albert Hall, but six days earlier an unscheduled meeting took place there - a memorial service for the Salvationists belonging to the Canadian delegation who lost their lives in the Empress of Ireland disaster. In the space of fourteen minutes the Army in Canada was stripped of its current leaders and of much of its future leadership material as well. In the Royal Albert Hall 133 vacant chairs, each bearing a white sash embroidered with a crimson cross and crown, testified mutely to this sad fact. There were but twenty-seven survivors from the Army contingent on board. The Territorial Commander and Mrs. Commissioner Rees, with the Chief Secretary and Mrs. Colonel Maidment, were not divided in death from their comrades.

"Six brass bands from the U.S.A. and Canada," the advance Congress publicity had announced. Only five arrived. A fortnight before the Congress opened theWar Crycarried a photograph of the Canadian Staff Band in their scarlet tunics with white shoulder straps and faced with black braid. But only ten survived the disaster and the Canadian Staff Band was not re-started for more than fifty years.

Worse was to follow. The Congress rose above this tragic loss and demonstrated beyond question that The Salvation Army was now an established fact and would go on from strength to strength. Yet two days after the conclusion of the London gatherings, the assassination of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand at Sarajevo set in motion the train of events which led to the outbreak of the First World War and the Army's internationalism, its crown of glory in peacetime, was cruelly transformed into a crown of thorns.

• collection of commemorative brochures, programmes and examples of passenger lists (not 1914)
• original deck plan for the Empress of Ireland
• many newspaper articles and cuttings (SA and non SA)
• an original letter which was recovered from the wreck
• many photographs of passengers etc (some originals taken at the departure from Quebec - 28 May 1914)

contacts:

The Empress of Ireland Historical Society 2809 Beaucours Terrace, Longueuil, Quebec J4K 1H5

websites:

http://members.rogers.com/seaviewimaging/index.html

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