The Magnificent Empresses by Phil Collings

West Vancouver has a front-row view of all the ships that pass through the First Narrows into Vancouver’s inner harbour, and for many years the most beautiful of the regular visitors were the Empresses of the Canadian Pacific Railway’s trans-Pacific fleet.

The completion of the C.P. railroad to Vancouver in 1885 raised a demand for the next step: a regular mail steamship service to Hong Kong and Japan. This would be made commercially attractive by a British Government mail subsidy of 100,000 pounds a year, in addition to the profits of trade in tea, flour, cotton goods and, increasingly, passengers. First-class passengers travelled in luxury, but the great volume of passengers carried were Chinese immigrants in steerage.

At first, the CPR chartered a few sailing ships; next they bought three second-hand Cunard steamships, the Abyssinia, the Parthia, and the Batavia. In modern eyes, these ships appear incredibly small to cross the Pacific in, let alone provide a scheduled first-class passenger service. The Abyssinia, largest of the trio, was only 363.5 feet long, that is, 30 feet shorter than the later three-funnel coastal steamers such as the Princess Marguerite. Yet the Abyssinia carried 200 first-class and 868 steerage passengers and maintained her schedule across the 4,300 miles of the world’s largest ocean.

The First Empresses

The Abyssinia, the Parthia, and the Batavia were only a stopgap. The CPR had ordered three brand-new ships from the Naval Construction Yard at Barrow-in-Fronses in England, and in 1890 they slid down the ways – the Empress of India, the Empress of Japan and the Empress of China. They were fine, white-painted ships with funnels, racy yacht-like lines, clipper bows and figureheads which matched their names. They were sisters: 455 feet long, 52 feet on the beam and having a draught of 33 feet. They exceeded their contract-specified speed of 16.5 knots and regularly crossed from Victoria to Yokohama in 11 days. On a typical Empress 'inward' voyage (eastbound), a total of 797 passengers were carried, of which 110 were first class. History hasn’t described the steerage accommodation of the rest, but the first class lived in a pampered world of their own, eating elaborate meals and reading their own ship’s newspaper, printed on board, with items such as “Our canine friends” which reported on the passenger’s pets.

Much of the décor of the public spaces was hand-painted on glass, very elegant, with an Oriental motif. The only complaint about these first Empresses was that they were very lively in a seaway, so that anything movable on board had to be chained or screwed down: a modern passenger might have objected to the lack of private bathrooms. The first-class traffic was seasonal, peaking in April, May, and June. The steerage traffic was governed by politics; the more difficult it was for the Orientals to settle in Canada and the US, the shorter the passenger list.

The Second Empresses

Fast though the first Empresses were, this was an age of furious industrial development, and by 1907, when they were sixteen years old, the call went out for two yet faster ships driven by the new turbine engines. These were the Empress of Russia and the Empress of Asia, which went into service in 1913. Speed equals size in naval architecture, and to achieve (and exceed) their required speed of 21 knots, they were 592 feet long compared to the 455 feet of the first three. They were built by the British yard of Fairfield, and in appearance were a complete contrast to the earlier ships, which were an exercise in style and elegance. The new ships were bulky, angular, cruiser-sterned, and topped by three large squared-off funnels.

They entered service in 1913, and they and their predecessors immediately became embroiled in the First World War. The Empress of India became a hospital ship. The Empress of Japan became an auxiliary cruiser armed with 4.7-inch guns. After the war, these two ships were in due course sold to the breakers. The Empress of China had been broken up earlier, wrecked on a reef off the entrance to Tokyo Bay in a fogbank in 1911. She had always been the hard-luck ship of the first three Empresses.

The next two, the Empress of Russia and the Empress of Asia, were returned to their regular trans-Pacific run in 1916, but throughout the war they were commandeered at intervals, often for the transport of Chinese workers.

The Later Empresses

Of course, an artifact as complicated as a ship has to be ordered years in advance, and the next Empress had been scheduled to complete during the war. Inevitably, the construction was put on hold while the shipyard concentrated on war production, and the new ship didn’t appear until well after the armistice. This was the Empress of Canada, the largest to date. She was 653 feet long, oil-fuelled, and driven by double-reduction turbines. Having waited for so long, the company had her laid down as soon as possible; maybe too soon because quality of materials and skilled craftsmen were not easy to obtain after the disruptions of the war, and she was dogged by minor problems all her days. Her appearance was angular. She was an enlarged version of the 1913 ships, still with the tree tall funnels, although in her case there was an element of deception in that the after funnel was in fact a dummy which only served as a ventilation shaft.

At the end of the war, German ships were being seized and sold for war reparations. Canadian Pacific took advantage of a bargain purchasing the German liner Tirpitz (approximately the same size as the Empress of Canada at 615 feet long) renaming her Empress of Australia and putting her on the trans-Pacific run. As if the company hadn’t enough trouble with the hard-luck Empress of Canada, now they discovered that the German ship had experimental machinery that used too much oil and broke down on her first scheduled trip.

Nevertheless, through the 1920’s, these four, the Empresses of Russia, Asia, Canada and Australia, maintained the service, helped out from time to time when they were down for refits by the two-funnelled Empress of France from the trans-Atlantic run.

The Last Empress of the Pacific

The second Empress of Japan, the biggest of the series at 666 feet of length overall, was ordered in 1928 and went into service in 1930. In appearance, she closely resembled the Empress of Canada, but engineering-wise, she incorporated many of the latest advantages and was a fast and efficient ship. The Pacific record holder, she crossed from Yokohama to Race Rocks in seven days and 20 hours.

Alas, by this time the Depression had arrived and in the mid-1930’s hostilities broke out in the Far East. The CPR’s new shipbuilding programme was postponed and in the end cancelled.

The Empresses wore surprisingly well, particularly the Empress of Russia which actually made as good speed and consumed less oil in 1939 than she had in 1925. All four of them were heavily involved in the Second World War. The Empress of Asia was sunk at Singapore by Japanese bombers. A submarine torpedo sank the Empress of Canada. The Empress of Russia was accidentally destroyed by fire in a shipyard in 1945. The Empress of Japan, renamed the Empress of Scotland, was not released from the Navy until May 1948, by which time she had carried the incredible total of 258,292 passengers. She was then transferred to the Atlantic service and was eventually broken up in Italy in 1971, the last of her line.

Post Script

The Vancouver Maritime Museum has several fine large ship models, including no less then two of the first Empress of Japan (dates given as 1891 – 1926). One of the models has black topsides and sports a number of naval guns. The museum also has the Empress of Japan’s original bell and figurehead.