The wreck of the Empress of Ireland lies at a depth of about 45 meters off Sainte-Luce in the Bas-Saint-Laurent region and has never been refloated. The ship sank during the night of May 28 to 29, 1914, taking 1,012 of the 1,477 people on board. The Quebec Register of Cultural Heritage describes the sinking as the deadliest in the history of Quebec and Canada. The Empress of Ireland sank in just 14 minutes after colliding with the coal freighter Storstad. The wreck was designated in 1999 by Quebec as a protected site. Built in 1906 in Glasgow, Scotland, by the Fairfield Shipbuilding yard, the Empress of Ireland was a passenger ship that, with its twin, the Empress of Britain, formed the flagship of the Canadian Pacific (CP) company. It departed from Quebec on the afternoon of May 28, 1914, under the command of Captain Henry George Kendall, on his 192nd Atlantic crossing. The Titanic had sunk barely over two years earlier, on April 14, 1912. Around 1:55 a.m., in thick fog, the Norwegian coal freighter Storstad struck the Empress of Ireland on the center of its right side. The breach measured 4 meters by 14, allowing approximately 60,000 gallons of water per second to enter. John Willis, author of a book on the sinking, explained in an interview with Radio-Canada that the maneuvers to avoid the Storstad turned into confusion. The Storstad, filled with coal, tore open the passenger ship. Many English immigrants were on board that night, disappointed not to have secured a satisfactory job in Canada. An hour and a quarter after the telegraphist's SOS, rescue arrived on board the Eureka, then the Lady Evelyn. The crew of the Storstad also participated in the operations, and the survivors were taken to Rimouski. Remains of the deceased are still found there. The wreck was located only in 1964, just over 7 kilometers off Sainte-Luce-sur-Mer. Overshadowed by the outbreak of World War I, the tragedy had fallen into oblivion, recalls HistoriaTV. The ship lies on its starboard side at the bottom of the river. It is 172 meters long and 20 meters wide, and retains its metal hull with four continuous decks, all the engines, one of the two large propellers, and the navigation instruments. The passenger quarters and staff quarters, furnishings, and objects transported also remain. Parks Canada sees it as the most complete example in the country of an early 20th-century ocean passenger ship. It is also the only remaining vestige of such a ship that belonged to the Canadian Pacific before World War I. Dozens of thousands of immigrants crossed the Atlantic on board the Empress of Ireland between 1906 and 1914. Their descendants remain attached to this symbol of their roots in Canada, according to Parks Canada. Before 1999, divers went back with objects. The first divers to descend worked for official reasons. As early as 1914, divers were given the task of recovering the 252 silver bars that the ship was transporting, coming from Cobalt, Ontario. A schooner, the Marie-Joséphine, was responsible for their transport. Then came the era of visitors. Between the discovery in 1964 and the designation in 1999, 35 years passed. Divers retrieved objects from the wreck during this period. Official sources consulted do not provide an inventory of these recoveries, and their extent remains impossible to quantify. On April 15, 1999, Quebec designated the wreck. Radio-Canada sees it as the first protected underwater site in the country. The designation targets the ship, its cargo, and the personal effects of the crew or passengers. Parks Canada added a designation as a National Historic Site on April 20, 2009. It encompasses the ship and the debris dispersal area surrounding it. A memory maintained on land. At Pointe-au-Père, a monument perpetuates the memory of the victims. In the Rimouski cemetery, another memorial honors the memory of seven victims. The wreck, however, does not allow itself to be forgotten. In 2012, Le Soleil reported concerns about its degradation, lying at the bottom of the water for nearly a century. John Willis, curator at the Canadian Museum of History, estimates that it still has secrets to reveal. The Parks Canada plaque is installed at the Pointe-au-Père Maritime Museum: it is the simplest starting point to approach this story without putting on a wetsuit.