Product Description

"Dark Descent makes the reader a vicarious participant in what is a very extreme sport."—Philadelphia Inquirer

On May 29, 1914, the passenger liner Empress of Ireland was struck by the freighter Storstad and sank in fifteen minutes, taking more than 1,000 victims with her. It remains one of the largest losses of life ever in a maritime accident.

At more than a hundred feet deep in the frigid Gulf of St. Lawrence, diving the Empress is like trying to navigate an unfamiliar sixty-story building lying on its side at a forty-five-degree angle, in pitch blackness with only a flashlight. In Dark Descent, Kevin McMurray takes us deep into the bowels of the lost ship, first to relive her tragic death and then to join the divers who have probed the wreck's secrets. It's an adventure from which some divers don't return.

"Impressively researched. . . . For those who love the lure of the deep water and the mysteries of shipwrecks, this specialized history will be a pleasure."—Publishers Weekly

"Kevin has a remarkable knack of adding life and realism. A great job."—R. W. Hamilton, Chairman of the Board, Divers Alert Network

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #178945 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Synopsis
'"Dark Descent" makes the reader a vicarious participant in what is a very extreme sport' - "Philadelphia Inquirer". On May 29, 1914, the passenger liner Empress of Ireland was struck by the freighter Storstad and sank in fifteen minutes, taking more than 1,000 victims with her. It remains one of the largest losses of life ever in a maritime accident. At more than a hundred feet deep in the frigid Gulf of St. Lawrence, diving the Empress is like trying to navigate an unfamiliar sixty-story building lying on its side at a forty-five-degree angle, in pitch blackness with only a flashlight.In "Dark Descent", Kevin McMurray takes us deep into the bowels of the lost ship, first to relive her tragic death and then to join the divers who have probed the wreck's secrets. It's an adventure from which some divers don't return. 'Impressively researched...For those who love the lure of the deep water and the mysteries of shipwrecks, this specialized history will be a pleasure' - "Publishers Weekly". 'Kevin has a remarkable knack of adding life and realism. A great job' - R. W. Hamilton, Chairman of the Board, Divers Alert Network.

From the Back Cover

"Dark Descent makes the reader a vicarious participant in what is a very extreme sport."—Philadelphia Inquirer

On May 29, 1914, the passenger liner Empress of Ireland was struck by the freighter Storstad and sank in fifteen minutes, taking more than 1,000 victims with her. It remains one of the largest losses of life ever in a maritime accident.

At more than a hundred feet deep in the frigid Gulf of St. Lawrence, diving the Empress is like trying to navigate an unfamiliar sixty-story building lying on its side at a forty-five-degree angle, in pitch blackness with only a flashlight. In Dark Descent, Kevin McMurray takes us deep into the bowels of the lost ship, first to relive her tragic death and then to join the divers who have probed the wreck's secrets. It's an adventure from which some divers don't return.

"Impressively researched. . . . For those who love the lure of the deep water and the mysteries of shipwrecks, this specialized history will be a pleasure."—Publishers Weekly

"Kevin has a remarkable knack of adding life and realism. A great job."—R. W. Hamilton, Chairman of the Board, Divers Alert Network

Kevin McMurray is an award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the The New York Times, Outside, Sunday Times (London), and Men's Journal. An experienced diver, he has visited the wreck of the Empress of Ireland on multiple occasions. He is the author of Deep Descent: Adventure and Death Diving the Andrea Doria.

About the Author

Kevin F. McMurray is an award-winning journalist and photographer whose work has appeared in the New York Times, Outside, Yankee, Men's Journal, and the Sunday Times of London.

Customer Reviews

Empress of Ireland - a deep and dangerous wreck.
I was drawn to purchase this book as I really enjoyed reading McMurrays' account of the various efforts made to explore the Andrea Doria over the years. (Deep Descent - Adventure and death diving the Andrea Doris, available through Amazon) This book about the Empress of Ireland was more like the curate's egg, being good in parts, and much space is inevitably given to the disputes over access to the wreck, issues over the legality of retrieving artefacts from the wreck and attempts to set up a museum about the wreck (eventually successful) with an underlying Quebecois versus Anglophone versus the Yanks conflict present! However, I cannot see how the author could have got round this overload of information as the various long drawn out disputes profoundly affected access to, and diving on, the wreck. Hey, a Yank comes up with a plate and gets arrested is the basic sequence!
This is an excellent reference book regarding the history of diving on the wreck and the disaster itself, but I feel too many dry facts, and the accounts of the sparring between the various involved parties and the hamfisted involvement of the local Quebec government, took away from the stirring, exciting accounts of some of the dives.
The other sobering feature about this wreck was that the dead were all around those who penetrated deep inside, with bones of those who drowned trapped in the ship present in many areas. If it had been a military ship sunk in action it would have been declared a war grave and penetration of the wreck would have been banned. As it was there was a lot of argument over what happened to artefacts and little thought given to the fact that a very large tomb was regularly being entered and stripped of artefacts that appeared valuable to collectors. I personally felt that a huge important point being missed in this regard, respect for the dead. Perhaps the fact that the ship was lost in 1914, nearly a century ago has shaped attitudes. The local government classes the wreck as an archaeological site and that speaks volumes.
McMurray also catalogues the diving deaths on the wreck, six up until 2002, and analyses what went wrong, as far as can be ascertained. I felt that he personally was tempting fate by bringing an elderly lady back to the scene of her youthful dives, though the story made good copy, and indeed things did go badly wrong, but luckily without fatalities. "Don't become the story!" seemed appropriate!
In conclusion this book is worth a read as the accounts of the dives more than make up for some of the drier parts of the account. (5 stars for the diving, 3 stars for the rest, so a shoogly 4 stars overall)

Could have made room for some better quality photographs.
Make no mistake, this is as complete a work on the ship "Empress of Ireland" as one might wish to find. The story of the tragedy itself is told in fascinating detail and the individual accounts of personal loss, survival and even the death of a professional salvage diver in the days following the demise of this once great ship reveal a level of research which is both thorough and complete.

It all happened in 1914, only two years after the loss of the Titanic but also only a few months before Europe would be plunged into a conflict which would become known as the Great War, or the War to end all Wars. How curious, therefore, that the story of the Titanic lives on - and on, and that that of the Empress of Ireland seems to have become lost alongside the wreck itself.

Anyone wanting to know anything at all about the Empress of Ireland need hardly look further than this book - which is, indeed a job well done. My only criticism is reserved for the standard of reproduced photographs - some of which are no bigger than postage stamps and many of which are not clear.

First class reference material for historians, anyone with an interest and, especially, those contemplating diving the wreck itself. Read the book first, you might just change your mind.

NM

Absorbing read
As with Kevin F. McMurray's earlier book Deep Descent, this book mixes the history of the ship and it's sinking along with details of it's diving history. The good thing about his knowledge of this wreck is that it is first hand. He himself is a diver with many years experience and he has actually dived The Empress or Ireland.