night, dropped anchor in thirty feet of water in high tide and went to sleep for just a couple of hours. We set the alarm for a few minutes before sunrise. I didn’t want anyone spotting us when the sun came up. We wanted to look for the wreck in daylight as we passed. I dropped onto my bunk and fell asleep instantly. Hollie curled up with Marie on her sleeping bag and I heard her whisper sweetly to him as I drifted off.
Chapter 11
WE NEVER HAD a chance of finding the
Carolus.
I should have realized that. The river was too murky and way too deep. A few miles offshore the bottom fell to a thousand feet! It was fifty miles between banks still. That was some river! Maybe, if we made hundreds of passes back and forth, crisscrossing like a spider’s web, we might have picked her up on sonar. Maybe. But we could never go down there, not even close, and could never even peek at her. I had other things I was supposed to be doing anyway, like getting to Montreal and back.
So, we moved on. An hour and a half later, we found another wreck. It was lying in our path in only a hundred and thirty feet of water and it was gigantic!
The
Empress of Ireland
was the biggest naval disaster in Canadian history, not counting the Halifax Explosion, and I had never even heard of it. Marie told me all about it but I could hardly believe it. In 1914, the giant luxury ocean-liner, five hundred and seventy feet long, was sailing down the river from Quebec City when she collided with another ship, tore up her bow and sank like a stone. Within minutes, over a thousand people drowned. This was kind of hard for me to grasp. The
Empress of Ireland
was as long as eleven of Cartier’s ships in a row! That was unbelievable! Now, she was lying in only a hundred and thirty feet of water. If she stood on end, four hundred and forty feet of her would stick out of the water. Talk about a sea monster! And yet, as we slowed to a drift above the wreck, just offshore from Rimouski, the river was peaceful and friendly. You would never know such a monstrous vessel lay beneath the river’s gentle flow, or that such a terrible tragedy had taken place here, one of the greatest tragedies Canada has ever known.
But there was more.
Marie said that the
Empress
was carrying a sarcophagus with a princess from ancient Egypt. A mummy. And the mummy was supposedly cursed and believed to have caused the disaster.
“Whoa! That’s crazy,” I said. “Do you believe that?”
“Not really. But a lot of people did. And some say that the wreck is cursed still.”
“Why?”
“Because a lot of divers have died here, looking for treasure and stuff. And bodies and parts of bodies have washed out of the wreck ever since it went down.”
“Creepy. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No. Do you?”
“I’m not sure.”
Marie ran her fingers through Hollie’s fur. “I believe in the Loch Ness monster.”
“What? You don’t believe in ghosts but you believe in the Loch Ness
monster?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because ghosts are not from this world, but large creatures have always existed, especially in the deep. In prehistoric times they were
really
big. And, we have other prehistoric creatures around today, like the coelacanth.”
She put her face to Hollie’s face. “You’re precious.”
“The what?”
“The coelacanth. A fish from the dinosaur age. We used to only find fossils of them. Then, fishermen started catching them in their nets.”
“Cool.”
“So … that’s why I believe there is a huge creature deep in Loch Ness.”
We were gliding through the water on battery power at periscope depth. Visibility was about ten feet through the observation window, but a murky visibility, nothing like at sea. A hundred feet down, visibility would be even worse. No doubt that contributed to the danger of diving at such a wreck. A bigger danger, I imagined, was the size of her. Divers would swim inside, become lost and their air would run out. That’s what
Chapter 11
WE NEVER HAD a chance of finding the
Carolus.
I should have realized that. The river was too murky and way too deep. A few miles offshore the bottom fell to a thousand feet! It was fifty miles between banks still. That was some river! Maybe, if we made hundreds of passes back and forth, crisscrossing like a spider’s web, we might have picked her up on sonar. Maybe. But we could never go down there, not even close, and could never even peek at her. I had other things I was supposed to be doing anyway, like getting to Montreal and back.
So, we moved on. An hour and a half later, we found another wreck. It was lying in our path in only a hundred and thirty feet of water and it was gigantic!
The
Empress of Ireland
was the biggest naval disaster in Canadian history, not counting the Halifax Explosion, and I had never even heard of it. Marie told me all about it but I could hardly believe it. In 1914, the giant luxury ocean-liner, five hundred and seventy feet long, was sailing down the river from Quebec City when she collided with another ship, tore up her bow and sank like a stone. Within minutes, over a thousand people drowned. This was kind of hard for me to grasp. The
Empress of Ireland
was as long as eleven of Cartier’s ships in a row! That was unbelievable! Now, she was lying in only a hundred and thirty feet of water. If she stood on end, four hundred and forty feet of her would stick out of the water. Talk about a sea monster! And yet, as we slowed to a drift above the wreck, just offshore from Rimouski, the river was peaceful and friendly. You would never know such a monstrous vessel lay beneath the river’s gentle flow, or that such a terrible tragedy had taken place here, one of the greatest tragedies Canada has ever known.
But there was more.
Marie said that the
Empress
was carrying a sarcophagus with a princess from ancient Egypt. A mummy. And the mummy was supposedly cursed and believed to have caused the disaster.
“Whoa! That’s crazy,” I said. “Do you believe that?”
“Not really. But a lot of people did. And some say that the wreck is cursed still.”
“Why?”
“Because a lot of divers have died here, looking for treasure and stuff. And bodies and parts of bodies have washed out of the wreck ever since it went down.”
“Creepy. Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No. Do you?”
“I’m not sure.”
Marie ran her fingers through Hollie’s fur. “I believe in the Loch Ness monster.”
“What? You don’t believe in ghosts but you believe in the Loch Ness
monster?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because ghosts are not from this world, but large creatures have always existed, especially in the deep. In prehistoric times they were
really
big. And, we have other prehistoric creatures around today, like the coelacanth.”
She put her face to Hollie’s face. “You’re precious.”
“The what?”
“The coelacanth. A fish from the dinosaur age. We used to only find fossils of them. Then, fishermen started catching them in their nets.”
“Cool.”
“So … that’s why I believe there is a huge creature deep in Loch Ness.”
We were gliding through the water on battery power at periscope depth. Visibility was about ten feet through the observation window, but a murky visibility, nothing like at sea. A hundred feet down, visibility would be even worse. No doubt that contributed to the danger of diving at such a wreck. A bigger danger, I imagined, was the size of her. Divers would swim inside, become lost and their air would run out. That’s what
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