A Marconi wireless telegraph that went missing after being recovered by a scuba diver in the 1970s has been reunited with other artefacts related to Canada’s worst peacetime maritime disaster, at the Empress of Ireland Museum in Rimouski, Quebec.
The museum forms part of the Pointe-au-Père Maritime Historic Site, based around a St Lawrence River lighthouse station.
The Empress, a Canadian Pacific ocean liner, was heading east for Liverpool when she collided with the Norwegian freighter Storstad in thick fog off Rimouski, towards the mouth of the St Lawrence, on 29 May, 1914.
The incident occurred only two years on from the Titanic disaster and the 170m British-built ship had been constructed with watertight compartments and was well-equipped with lifeboats, yet she sank in 14 minutes, causing the deaths of 1,012 people. The wreck ended up at a depth of 45m.
Of the 465 people who survived, many might have done so because of an SOS message sent from the Marconi wireless telegraph machine by its operator Ronald Ferguson.
The switch on the tuner had been turned off when the machine was found in the 1970s, suggesting that Ferguson had taken a moment to follow this standard protocol even while having to abandon ship.
Museum staff knew about the switch only because it could be seen in a photograph of the apparatus taken with a diver.
They also knew the diver’s name – Ronald Stopani – but little else other than an address from 1975, historian David Saint-Pierre told CBC News. Stopani was known to have been diving with a US dive-team from Rochester, New York but the museum staff didn’t know if he was still alive or, if he was, where he lived now and whether he had hung on to the telegraph.
Saint-Pierre messaged and called anyone he could find with the surname Stopani, and eventually this January he was rewarded by a call from the diver himself, by now 81 and with homes in Florida and Nevada.
He still had the 111-year-old telegraph, which he had raised from the Empress at a time when there was no prohibition on recovering such artefacts from wrecks.
He recalled that the dive had taken place in July but that there had still been ice in the river. He said he had simply inflated his drysuit to help him raise the 30kg device to the surface.
Stopani had kept it stored in a transparent box, most recently in Las Vegas, and after 50 years it turned out that he was more than happy to donate his find to the museum.
A late friend called Fred Zeller, with whom he had dived the wreck and who had led the expedition, had told Stopani years before that he had donated various artefacts and documents to the Empress Of Ireland Museum.
Stopani has now done the same with the telegraph, which is undergoing restoration work, and he included correspondence from the 1970s between the two divers with his donation.
Wireless operator Ronald Ferguson had survived the sinking, living on until the 1980s. His son, who lives in the UK, has been informed that the machine has been located.
Roxane Julien-Friolet from the Empress of Ireland Museum said that the Marconi telegraph had arrived in very good condition. “We’re just amazed and really honoured to have this really important object part of our collection now,” she said.
The Pointe-au-Père Maritime Historic Site, which also offers access to the Canadian Navy 1960s submarine HMCS Onondaga, is open through summer until 13 October.
Also on Divernet: QUEBEC DIVERS FIND 7 SHIPWRECKS – IN 3 MONTHS! TITAN PARTS RECOVERED – AS TITANIC RADIO SALVAGE SHELVED, DIVERS RETRIEVE LUSITANIA’S MAIN TELEGRAPH, 2 WAYS TO MAKE A CANADIAN SPLASH
