Christopher Robbins was a down-at-the-heels freelance journalist in London when a "friend"—an expat American drug dealer who masqueraded as a count—linked h

Describes the building and early voyages of the steamship and explains how the great ocean liner sank to the bottom of the Saint Lawrence River in 1914.

"Dark Descent makes the reader a vicarious participant in what is a very extreme sport."—Philadelphia Inquirer On May 29, 1914, the passenger liner Empress of

The Empress of Ireland’s last voyage ended on May 29, 1914, when she was rammed by a Norwegian coal-carrier in a fog patch on the St. Lawrence River near Rimo