Trip report by Heather Knowles

© Copyright 2006, Northern Atlantic Dive Expeditions, Inc., All Rights Reserved.

This year marked the fifth consecutive year that Dave and I have been going to up dive the Empress of Ireland. Diving the wreck has become a passion for us, and despite our yearly declaration that each trip is our last one for a while, we find ourselves planning to go back the following year the moment we step into the car to drive home. There aren’t many wrecks out there like this that are accessible and in good such condition, especially considering this is an early 20^th century passenger liner, and one with significant historical importance. It’s a shallow Titanic in many ways when you consider the type of vessel, the era in which it existed and the magnitude of the tragedy associated with its sinking. Only, you don’t need twenty thousand plus dollars and hokey character on Deep Sea Detectives to dive it in a submersible, you just need a couple hundred bucks in Canadian cash and the ability to deal with some rather cold water.

This particular year we also headed up with one of the largest groups we personally have gone up there with – and so we had 3 boats chartered that would cover us for all 4 days of diving. The landscape of charter operators is changing up in Rimouski and this means that finding operators to accommodate larger groups either in part or in whole is going to become challenging, at least in the interim. There are only so many good days for diving when you consider the weather and tides – couple this with a half a dozen big groups that lock in trips way in advance – and there’s not too many opportunities remaining.

Our charters were arranged with Jean-Pierre Bouillon and Dany St Cyr, who we’ve worked with over the years. Due to availability, we would only have Jean-Pierre’s boat for one day, and then the group would be shifted over to Jean-Michael Auger’s operation aboard the "Stage and Deco" – a 25 or 26 foot aluminum boat that could carry up to 10 divers. While it sounded like a great arrangement, there were only 5 in our group assigned to Jean-Pierre’s boat, while the other 4 of us were going to be on Dany’s boat. Either those guys were going to get a real treat and have a spacious arrangement, or they were going to be in a mixed group… ay uh, eh.

The boats - in the foreground moving back is Dany's RIB "Dalyka I", Jean-Michael's "the Stage and Deco" and Jean-Pierre's "Marie AB" (photo by Aaron Brown).

Leaving early Thursday morning we enjoyed a mostly uneventful ride up to Rimouski. For the first time in all the years we’ve been going to Canada we got finally dinged at the border. When the border patrol officer asked Dave if he had a twin who had been to Canada recently, I knew we weren’t whizzing through this stop. Sure enough, we had to pull over, go into immigration and explain why we were going to Rimouski, which apparently is so remote that "even Canadians don’t go there." While it might have been amusing to tell them we were meeting friends coming in on a ship from "overseas" up there, it probably wouldn’t have sped up the process of getting out of there. After about 30 minutes of sitting in a completely empty waiting area, someone finally came back and gave us our passports. Then we stepped outside for a vehicle inspection. Fortunately, once they got a look at the mountain of diving gear in the car, they decided against tearing it apart and waved us along.

Once we arrived in Rimouski we hooked up with Peter and Kathy, who we were closely in pace with on the ride up until our delay at the border. We put our dive gear together and then stepped out for dinner at Le Nipigon, which luckily sees more action than it’s namesake out in the river. Since the Nipigon’s sinking and all the fanfare associated with that has passed, the interest has tapered – a lot. So much so that apparently at the time of our visit, no one had yet been on the Nipigon that season other than to buoy the wreck. I can’t say that I am surprised. Given the choice of diving a world-class wreck like the Empress of Ireland, or a scuttled destroyer that had been "prepared" for sinking (even less interesting), I’d choose the Empress every time.

The locals had informed us that this particular season had been windy with a lot of days blown out due to weather. And do we ever know how that can be. Last year at this time we had spent 4 days sitting in a hotel room waiting for the weather to break (never did). We had gotten the first 2 days in, and they were real good days, but 4 days in Rimouski with nothing to do was brutal. But if you go up there enough, you’ll eventually deal with this, the odds favor it. Our only hope was not to repeat it this year. The forecast actually did look good, but in this part of the St. Lawrence River, the forecast is only somewhat reliable within hours, not days. And even more so, there are weather pockets along the river. We’ve made trips to the wreck before where it was rough the whole ride up to the wreck, but calm on the wreck site – and vice versa. Indeed, our first day began exactly this way.

The group was split up so that Peter, Kathy, Scott, Roman and Aaron were on Jean-Pierre’s boat, while Dave, Steve, Jerry and I were taking Dany’s boat. Dany’s availability was limited, so instead the boat was run by his friend Al. We got the boats loaded, everyone found their places, and we headed out. The morning air was cool – temperatures were in the high 50s in the morning, add in the wind especially when underway, and it was actually kind of cold. To make matters slightly worse for those of us in Dany’s boat, a severe winter storm had destroyed the public launch ramp at the lighthouse/museum, so Dany had to keep his boat at the marina. While this made loading and unloading a little easier, it also added some traveling distance, which in a 20 ft rigid hull inflatable with no shelter, matters.

Apparently, those craftsman benches don't burst into flames if they're removed from a quarry parking lot after all!  The boys unload their u-haul in the cool morning air (photo by Aaron Brown).

Soon after departing the marina the seas kicked up – there was a light NE wind blowing, but it was enough to make things choppy. We got a pretty good pounding on the way up, making for a long 25 minute ride. But when we got the wreck the winds were light and the seas calm – no current either. Once again it appeared that we picked the right dates for the tides. Steve and Jerry suited up first, followed by Dave and me. Since this was the first time we’ve used our PRISMs up here, it was a typical "first time" kind of experience figuring out how to suit up – in other words, it could have been smoother. It probably would have helped if both of our masks hadn’t been broken by the pounding on the way up. The plastic do-dad that holds that strap on was broken on both of the masks in basically the same place. Since we were flying light on gear, there were no spares on board. We were able to get the straps to "stay" enough to put the mask on (which we wear under our hoods anyway). Once we got suited up and in the water, things were good.

Our first dive was in the stern section of the wreck. It’s hard to pick a favorite section of the wreck because the entire wreck is great, but the stern is always a pretty dive, and usually has better visibility than other parts. The visibility was good – maybe 20-25 feet – and the current was light. The water was cold with bottom temperatures around 38 degrees (less in some places inside the wreck). We dropped down to the starboard rail and then began working our way forward. Swimming around, the Empress immediately felt familiar; we’ve lost count of how many dives we have on the wreck, but it’s definitely somewhere between 30 and 40 dives now – not as many as some, but a good number.

Dave enjoys the beautiful weather.  Jerry is all smiles -- he's on a "first class trip".  Al watches over...

It was a great dive to kick off the trip, and with numb hands we headed up after about 30 minutes bottom time. We elected to do just one dive this first day since our masks needed some work (we did succeed in fixing them later). Once everyone else finished up, we returned to the marina. That afternoon we refilled tanks, organized gear and then prepared for dinner out as a group. The group also got to check out the museum and gift shops.  We’ve got a string of favorite restaurants in the area, so we kicked off the eating tour with a visit to the Maison du Spaghetti followed by a much needed good night’s sleep.

Boosting O2 is fun!  At right, Roman and Scott eagerly await the encore performance by a recently re-united Depeche Mode (photo by Aaron Brown).

The next day the weather was quite nice so we were optimistic that our kidneys would remain in the proper position in our body on the ride out. With the second day also came a boat change – Jean-Pierre’s group now moving over to Jean-Michael’s boat. And sure enough, there was going to be a mixed group, which means conflict is inevitable. Our plans allowed for 2 dives on the wreck each day, but this other group (a group of instructors from Montreal apparently) only wanted to do one dive per day.

The group enjoys some hot dogs.  The guy in the orange shirt was diving the wreck in a wetsuit with no hood.  Uh huh ... (photo by Aaron Brown).

Out on the wreck, while warming up from our first dive on Dany’s boat, we watched Jean-Michael’s boat pull away after their first dive. We were a bit surprised to see that and I could only imagine what was going there, but basically it amounted to a miscommunication resulted in a misunderstanding about our group getting to do 2 dives – and so they left after one dive. Things got straightened out; as Jean-Michael was very diplomatic and accommodating to us, but the other group was a bit frumpled over it. Each day they, ok just this one broad who was a complete prima donna with a totally rancid attitude, would appeal to Jean-Michael to tell us Americans to go eat it and only allow 1 dive. I couldn’t see what the big deal was about hanging out topsides while people did another dive, but whatever… our group got to do 2 dives, we were happy.

Jerry and Steve -- in happier times.

Anyway, back on our boat, we had our own mini-drama to deal with, but at least we didn’t have any problems doing 2 dives so it wasn’t that serious. The second day we were tied in to the mid ship mooring. Dave and I spent both of our dives mainly inside the wreck, which seems like its getting siltier and siltier all the time. The inside of the wreck is a maze of layers of decks, passageways and debris. Add in the odd angle of the wreck and it can become very disorienting inside. This is definitely a good wreck to be running lines if you’re more than just a little way’s in.

The PRISMs were performing quite well on the trip, which was great. One of the things about doing this trip is that when the weather is bad and you can’t dive, the days are like eternities they feel so long. But when the weather is good, the days are very full and fly by. As such, spending a few hours toiling over a rebreather running through various "trouble-shooting" steps is something that we pray to avoid. Fortunately, we did not have any problems with the rigs during this trip. And with a couple of AL40s with O2 in them, and 2 sets of doubles jammed with air, we were able to top up our rebreather cylinders each day, not needing one compressor fill the entire time. I still believe, however, the most important spare part that any rebreather diver can have is a complete open circuit rig, and both Dave and I had our open circuit gear in the car in case it was needed. Reason number 9,453,095 not to give up open circuit just because you have a rebreather: your rebreather takes a dump, you can’t fix it but you still want to dive.

The biggest issue with any rebreather in very cold water is going to be moisture. And the PRISM is not called a "steam machine" for nothing. The design of the scrubber, while extremely efficient in scrubbing gas, means a lot of moisture ending up in the bucket, which even with foam absorbent pads, will still result in moisture getting on the face of the sensors. It’s just the way it is with CCRs in cold water. In warm-water Roatan we didn’t see much of this, so it was initially a rude awakening when we starting diving our rigs in the Northeast. I’d say the rebreathers did very well, but you just have to be prepared for a more frequent occurrences of out of range/voted out sensor alarms, and be able to act appropriately.

Dave back from a great dive with his PRISM.

For our third day on the wreck we returned to the stern section. Our plans this day were to swim forward to the area forward of the shafts atop of which the aft funnel once sat. This is a very pretty part of the wreck, but in sort of a no-mans land between the stern and mid ship moorings. We tried to work with the other boats to find out where they were going so that everyone could get on the section of wreck they wanted. We had plans to dive the bow the last day, so other than that we were pretty flexible about location. We did 2 dives in this area, which were great except for the severe pain I had in my hands due to the cold. I had put a different pair of gloves on, which were tighter fitting. I thought this would be a good thing, but in the end, I think it cut down on circulation because my hands hurt so bad it felt like I had burned myself. We found an area that was once a baker’s shop, and dropped in a couple of decks to a very cavernous abyss like area that I am guessing leads to holds. The dive wasn’t planned to fully explore the interior, so we needed to save that for another time. Other than the cold hands crimping my style a bit, we once again enjoyed excellent visibility being able to look up and see the hull stretching over our heads with green light filtering down. In this place decks have sloughed off, but the hull remains so it stretches overhead – an awesome sight. Dives like those make me wish the water wasn’t so cold (or that I was tougher), because I would have loved to stay for an hour down there.

For our last night out we took the group on a tour to visit Jean-Pierre’s house to show the first-time Empress divers his personal annotated deck plans along with some artifacts like a first-class smoking room porthole that everyone was drooling over (for sale – only $5,000). Then we proceeded to Dany’s house to show the group his dive store set up and the letters from the stern of the ship. We then headed over to Captain Hommard’s restaurant for a final seafood feast. Not everyone was keen on checking out a local Rimouski strip club that has quote, "some of the worst strippers you’ve ever seen", so the group retired after the meal in preparation for our last day on the wreck.

The weather had been great all along, but it was beginning to wane. We were starting to catch the edge of the remnants of the hurricane that was moving though the Northeast. This brought with it some light rain, there was not much wind, but it was cold. We cruised up to the wreck and grabbed the bow mooring as planned. Again, no current was present, as we had enjoyed all week. But we were already cold from the ride up – and going in already cold is a tough way to start a dive.

Aaron hangs out.  Yup that reflector tape on your shirt works.

We suited up comfortably, having gotten our formula down for suiting up and getting out of gear. We found it was actually quite easy to strip off the rig in the water, of course we don’t have 3 or 4 handsets, controllers and integrated dive computers attached to us, so that helps. Anyway, we dropped down on the wreck. The visibility was a bit lower – perhaps 15 feet. It was still very good for the Empress, but consistent with our past experiences diving the bow finding the visibility a bit lower. We headed aft and explored the remaining structure that was crew’s quarters on the foredeck. I have always found this to be a particularly disorienting part of the wreck because of the lower visibility and sharp angles. We dropped down a bit further swimming forward and then up and over the rail onto the hull, over the letters to the near end of the bow. Working back I was peering into portholes along the hull. There are some compartments, particularly in this section, which was mostly crew area, that seem completely inaccessible to do the silt and debris piles. I could only peer in from outside the hull.

When our time was up, we once again said so long to the Empress, for this year. We of course will be back next year. We had planned on only one dive this day since we wanted to get a jump on the long drive. It was a good decision anyway, because I was truly so cold after the first dive that I don’t think I could have done another dive unless I could warm up, which didn’t seem possible given the air temperature and the need for at least a 1.5-2 hr surface interval.

Some might say its a fashion statement...

Upon our return to the marina, we packed up our gear for the ride home, said so long to the guys, hit Tim Hortons for a cup of hot coffee and a few donuts, and then hit the road. We encountered a lot of traffic, but it was smooth sailing through the border and around 11:30 pm at last we were home, tired and looking forward to a good nights sleep with memories of another great trip.

The group returns to the marina after great dives (photo by Aaron Brown).

Thanks to all for making this a fantastic time. We had some of the best all-around conditions we’ve ever seen on the wreck. The first timers were spoiled … but that’s ok, those who chose to go back will no doubt get their chance to see the tough days, so we must enjoy the good ones to the fullest when we get them.

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