RMS Empress of Ireland: Pride of the Canadian Pacific's Atlantic Fleet Paperback – May 27, 2014

A well produced volume with plentiful images of a diverse range. Enjoyable to read thanks to a rich variety of text sources, well chosen contextual topics, the inclusion of diary passages, profiles of the ship's masters and lots more. I highly recommend it, especially to readers who, like me, had some prior knowledge of the Empress of Ireland incident and are curious to find out more. This book will satisfy much of that curiosity.

Derek Grout's RMS Empress of Ireland is of the same format as other issues from William H Miller, Mark Chirnside, Andrew Britton and others. Without question this is far superior to any of the others. Grout's text draws heavily from contemporary publications and passenger journals. He wastes no time or paper droning on about his own latest cruise. His lavish illustrations include many color reproductions from contemporary Canadian Pacific brochures, posters and post cards showing public rooms as well as cabins and crew spaces. One photo struck me in particular: passengers dancing on the promenade deck at night, with a young girl seeming to encourage a reluctant young man to dance with her & two boys leaning at the railing. Hard to imagine a similar, very human scene on the more pretentious, chic super ships commonly written about.

She was the largest and most beautiful of all the Canadian Pacific steam ships to sail on the UK to Canada route. Her 1914 sinking in 14 minutes following a foggy collision very similar to what happened 40 years later to the Andrea Doria was almost equal in number of lives lost to that of the Titanic 2 years earlier.

I have other books on the "Empress of Ireland" - including one by Derek Grout - which is also great - but this one is more geared towards photos and renderings of the ship and even has a lot of interior views which are extremely rare - the text is short and concise - seeing the 100th anniversary is coming up in a few days - this is a very welcome book.

Initially enthusiastic about a new angle on the rarely covered disaster, i was impressed with he ship's early history and service.But the nature of this ship's story is the sad nature of its death.Barely covered by two paragraphs, this is not a book to refer to if you are interested in the disaster and its causes.Not wanting to sound ghoulish, there is a terrible human tragedy here that is ignored by this writer.Neither is there any details of the rescue, the attempted evacuation of the ship, the impact of the Marconi system...the outcomes of the inquiry...There is a lot that is inexplicably left out.However what there is, is covered well and lavishly illustrated. Sadly, look elsewhere for the whole story of this ship.

This Book is an Excellent Supplement to your Collectioneven if you have the author's previous book on the subjectas well as forgotten empress the other relatively recent asall three are complementary of each other and each containsa large amount of material not in the others

Lots of information on the ship itself vice just coverage of the sinking. The liner made many successful trips across the Atlantic and this book shows many interior photos -a well done book.

I enjoyed this book....felt sorry for the ship being lost and its people....reading it one could/can tell she was one of Canada's loved and one of its favorite ships. I also had a copy sent too my sister in Va., she is Irish and I wanted her too share the history of this liner.