Latest news with #EmpressOfIreland
Yahoo
10-08-2025
- General
- Yahoo
He died in the Empress of Ireland shipwreck. A century later, his belongings found his family
For the first time in 111 years, items once belonging to the late Albert Mullins were back in the hands of his family members thanks to the detective work of one Montreal historian. Wearing white cotton gloves, Caroline Mullins from Bournemouth, England held a dollhouse furniture set, travel mementos and flipped through an album containing scraps of paper from her great uncle — who, for much of her life, had remained a mystery. She was never told about his successful instrument business, travels abroad with his wife and daughter or even that he was one of the 1,012 people killed on board the Empress of Ireland when it sank off the coast of Rimouski, Que., in 1914. "I didn't know them," said Caroline, her eyes welling with tears. "But well, it's still very personal, isn't it?" Tracing back items to owners 'extremely rare' Unravelling her relative's story started when she stumbled upon a 2023 article by Montreal historian David Saint-Pierre. He had written about recently obtained items from the wreck connected to a man named Albert Mullins. Six months later, Saint-Pierre received a Facebook message from Caroline. "She decided right away that she wanted to cross the ocean and come see the artifacts," he said, which were being transferred to Quebec's Société d'histoire du Bas-Canada. "It's extremely rare that we get the occasion, the opportunity to trace back items directly to their owners. So I don't think it will happen often again." He says it might be the only example of items recovered from the shipwreck that could be traced back directly to one single passenger. They're being preserved and kept in a bunker, near Montreal. The items were originally found and recovered in 1986 in a canvas bag by a diver who dove the site 206 times, but rarely entered the ship's baggage room during his dives, says Saint-Pierre. On one trip, he picked up what would later be identified as Mullins's items — drying and storing the materials for decades before they changed hands to Guy D'Astous, who owns a private collection and is the collection director at the Société d'histoire du Bas-Canada. In 2023, Saint-Pierre laid eyes on the scraps of paper organized in a photo album and started to connect the dots. It included the name of instrument stores — and Saint-Pierre knew why. "Doing research on the Empress for so many years, there are a few passengers that we begin to know, and I knew of Albert Mullins," said Saint-Pierre. "I started having thoughts that it could be related to Albert." "It gives special significance to what I do,' says historian At the time of his death, the 40-year-old had been travelling 18 months and was heading back home to England on the Empress in first class when the Canadian Pacific steamship collided with a Norwegian freighter — sinking in 14 minutes. Both Mullins and his young daughter died, while his wife sustained two broken legs and returned to England months after her recovery to rejoin their son back home. Mullins had been a successful businessman before his death, founding and operating Barnes and Mullins instrument wholesaler — still in business today. When Saint-Pierre got a glimpse of the handwritten notes detailing music and book shops, he reached out to the British company to supply a writing sample from Mullins. "And it confirmed 100 per cent of the scraps of papers were his, because he had a quite particular and peculiar handwriting, especially the Fs and the Es were unmistakable," said Saint-Pierre. "I really like that feeling of seeing the research fall into place and be useful and touch people and it makes it personal. It gives special significance to what I do because otherwise, it would be just objects." The bodies of Mullins and his daughter were never recovered, and Caroline says she brought her daughter on the trip to Quebec as a way to pay their respects for the accident sometimes referred to as the "forgotten tragedy." "The purpose of us coming here is that we wanted to connect to it," she said. "We didn't want it to be forgotten within the family."
CBC
10-08-2025
- General
- CBC
He died in the Empress of Ireland shipwreck. A century later, his belongings found his family
For the first time in 111 years, items once belonging to the late Albert Mullins were back in the hands of his family members thanks to the detective work of one Montreal historian. Wearing white cotton gloves, Caroline Mullins from Bournemouth, England held a dollhouse furniture set, travel mementos and flipped through an album containing scraps of paper from her great uncle — who, for much of her life, had remained a mystery. She was never told about his successful instrument business, travels abroad with his wife and daughter or even that he was one of the 1,012 people killed on board the Empress of Ireland when it sank off the coast of Rimouski, Que., in 1914. "I didn't know them," said Caroline, her eyes welling with tears. "But well, it's still very personal, isn't it?" Tracing back items to owners 'extremely rare' Unravelling her relative's story started when she stumbled upon a 2023 article by Montreal historian David Saint-Pierre. He had written about recently obtained items from the wreck connected to a man named Albert Mullins. Six months later, Saint-Pierre received a Facebook message from Caroline. "She decided right away that she wanted to cross the ocean and come see the artifacts," he said, which were being transferred to Quebec's Société d'histoire du Bas-Canada. "It's extremely rare that we get the occasion, the opportunity to trace back items directly to their owners. So I don't think it will happen often again." He says it might be the only example of items recovered from the shipwreck that could be traced back directly to one single passenger. They're being preserved and kept in a bunker, near Montreal. The items were originally found and recovered in 1986 in a canvas bag by a diver who dove the site 206 times, but rarely entered the ship's baggage room during his dives, says Saint-Pierre. On one trip, he picked up what would later be identified as Mullins's items — drying and storing the materials for decades before they changed hands to Guy D'Astous, who owns a private collection and is the collection director at the Société d'histoire du Bas-Canada. In 2023, Saint-Pierre laid eyes on the scraps of paper organized in a photo album and started to connect the dots. It included the name of instrument stores — and Saint-Pierre knew why. "Doing research on the Empress for so many years, there are a few passengers that we begin to know, and I knew of Albert Mullins," said Saint-Pierre. "I started having thoughts that it could be related to Albert." "It gives special significance to what I do,' says historian At the time of his death, the 40-year-old had been travelling 18 months and was heading back home to England on the Empress in first class when the Canadian Pacific steamship collided with a Norwegian freighter — sinking in 14 minutes. Both Mullins and his young daughter died, while his wife sustained two broken legs and returned to England months after her recovery to rejoin their son back home. Mullins had been a successful businessman before his death, founding and operating Barnes and Mullins instrument wholesaler — still in business today. When Saint-Pierre got a glimpse of the handwritten notes detailing music and book shops, he reached out to the British company to supply a writing sample from Mullins. "And it confirmed 100 per cent of the scraps of papers were his, because he had a quite particular and peculiar handwriting, especially the Fs and the Es were unmistakable," said Saint-Pierre. "I really like that feeling of seeing the research fall into place and be useful and touch people and it makes it personal. It gives special significance to what I do because otherwise, it would be just objects." The bodies of Mullins and his daughter were never recovered, and Caroline says she brought her daughter on the trip to Quebec as a way to pay their respects for the accident sometimes referred to as the "forgotten tragedy." "The purpose of us coming here is that we wanted to connect to it," she said. "We didn't want it to be forgotten within the family."
CBC
17-06-2025
- General
- CBC
Search for century-old artifact from Canadian shipwreck solved with a call from the U.S.
David Saint-Pierre says he had little information to go on in his effort to hunt down the keeper of a 111-year-old artifact from the shipwrecked Empress of Ireland. He had a photo of a man in a diving suit, an address from 1975 and a name: Ronald Stopani. Saint-Pierre — a maritime historian who has studied artifacts recovered from the site of the 1914 shipwreck off the coast of Rimouski, Que. — treated it like a modern-day scavenger hunt. He was looking for the Marconi wireless apparatus, the communication system used to receive and send wireless telegraphs on the ship before it sank, claiming the lives of more than 1,000 people. The system included a tuner, work table and keys to send messages. Saint-Pierre and staff at the Empress of Ireland Museum in Rimouski discovered it was found and recovered during an expedition to the site 51 years ago by a diving crew from Rochester, N.Y. With Saint-Pierre's help, the museum found Stopani — a member of the diving crew who first pulled it up from the water in the 70s — and in the spring, the apparatus was sent back to Quebec. 'I didn't even know if that man was still alive' The process of finding Stopani involved dozens of emails, Facebook messages, a handful of phone calls and physical letters, says Saint-Pierre. "I didn't even know if that man was still alive," said Saint-Pierre. "It was a shot in the dark." He says he wrote to "probably anyone" with the last name Stopani on Facebook for a few weeks. "If your name is Stopani, you probably have one of my messages in your junk box," joked Saint-Pierre. One day in January, he got a call back. In an interview with CBC News, Stopani said he still had the apparatus stored in a clear storage box in his home in Las Vegas — and he was eager to donate it. "As soon as I opened up the letter, it even had a picture of me in there so I knew exactly what it was," said Stopani, reached in Las Vegas. "I wanted to donate them for a while, but I had no way of contacting anybody." The 81-year-old, who splits his time between his homes in Florida and Nevada, says he half expected to be contacted. Years earlier, the family of his best friend, Fred Zeller — who had led diving expeditions to the shipwreck and who recently passed away — told Stopani that they travelled to the Rimouski museum to donate artifacts Zeller found and documents from over the years. Included in the donation was the photo of Stopani with the Marconi and correspondence between him and Zeller from the mid-1970s — when the pair met up to dive the shipwreck together. It was that photo and letter which first inspired Saint-Pierre and museum staff to find Stopani — and the pictured artifacts. Five decades later, Stopani still remembers the day he pulled the items up from the floor of the St. Lawrence River — decades before it was prohibited to recover artifacts. "Believe me, it was cold," he said, adding that during the dive in July, he could see small pieces of ice floating in the river. He recalled inflating his dry suit to float up to the surface with a bag that he says weighed about 30 kilograms. For the next 51 years, the artifact was well-travelled as he brought it with him on his moves from Rochester to Brampton, Ont., to Florida and finally Las Vegas. Having shipped the Marconi out a few months ago, he says sending it back to Quebec made him feel "elated." Artifact to be sent for restoration work Roxane Julien-Friolet, a museologist, says the Marconi arrived at the museum in mid-March and in great condition. "We're just amazed and really honoured to have this really important object part of our collection now," said Julien-Friolet. She says it will be sent for restoration work and then displayed. Operated by telegraphist Ronald Ferguson, this device was a very useful tool, she says, and part of the reason some were saved from the wreck in 1914 after an SOS message was sent. Saint-Pierre says laying eyes on the device gives historians even more information as to what happened on board. In a photo, Saint-Pierre's friend noticed the switch on the tuner was turned off. "It means that … [Ferguson] had to abandon his post [but] he took the time to turn the machine off," said Saint-Pierre. "Which was standard protocol. So really a professional man." Ferguson was one of the 465 survivors of the wreck and lived until the 1980s, he says. Saint-Pierre has since connected with Ferguson's son, who lives in the U.K., and informed him that his father's instrument was finally found. "That was also a great moment for me to be able to tell [him]," said Saint-Pierre.
