A liner sank in 14 minutes and became Canada's deadliest peacetime disaster

Before dawn on 29 May 1914 the liner Empress of Ireland collided with a Norwegian coal ship in thick fog on the St Lawrence River. She rolled onto her side and sank in about 14 minutes, far faster than the Titanic took to go down two years earlier. Of 1,477 people aboard, 1,012 died, making it the deadliest peacetime maritime disaster in Canadian history, though it was soon overshadowed by the outbreak of World War One weeks later.

— David Zeni, Forgotten Empress: The Empress of Ireland Story — 1998
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