The Empress of Britain

In the recent family newsletter it was noted the Henry Joseph Sears and Annie Rebecca Keen arrived in Canada on the Empress of Britain in 1908. This Canadian Pacific Railway two funnel ship built in Govan Scotland had her maiden voyage on 5 May 1906. Yes, she is the sister ship of ill-fated Empress of Ireland.

She had twin screws, which was common for ships of her size, and was 458 ft in length. With a top speed of 18 knots, the ship carried 310 first class passengers, 470 second class passengers and 730 steerage passengers. On her second voyage she set the transatlantic crossing record. Two weeks after the Titanic sank, the Empress of Britain also struck an iceberg in the North Atlantic but unlike the Titanic the Empress suffered only slight damage.

At the outbreak of WWI the Empress served as an armed merchantman patrolling the South Atlantic until she was converted to a troop transport in May 1915. For the rest of the war she carried troops primarily between Canada/USA and England.


In 1924 the aging ship was renamed the Montroyal to make way in the fleet for a larger and speeder Empress of Britain (which was torpedoed and sunk in 1940….and the largest ship sunk in WWII by U-boat). She continued her days as the Montroyal until she was sold in 1930 for scrap. In all told she made 190 trips across the Atlantic. One of its finely carved wood lounges continues to exist today as the lounge was incorporated into a Norwegian hotel that today is the Norwegian School for Hotel Management.