Empress of Ireland was a large passenger liner of 14,191 tons built for the Canadian Pacific Railway Company's Quebec to Liverpool service in 1906. Outward bound in the St. Lawrence River during the night of 29/30 May 1914, she ran into fog and, despite all the usual precautions, was in collission with a Norwegian collier the Storstadt. The fully laden collier hit Empress of Ireland amidships and, such was the force of the impact, that the liner sank within fifteen minutes with the loss of just over 1000 lives.