September 25 is World Maritime Day, and this year’s theme is “Our Ocean, Our Obligation, Our Opportunity.” It’s a theme that could easily apply in 1914 when the Empress of Ireland sank, killing four more passengers than the Titanic.
Oliver Mardall:
One of those passengers was 31-year-old Ensign Oliver Mardall of Vancouver.
Mardall was a social worker with the Salvation Army, a musician with the Canadian Staff Band, and he was headed to London with 160 other Salvationists from all over Canada, for the 10th International Congress.
Dozens of people at the dock waved off friends and family. As the ship sailed out of the St. Lawrence River at 4:30 pm on May 28, 1914, the Salvation Army’s staff band dressed in red tunics, gave a concert on the deck.
The Salvation Army Staff Band:
Later that night, Mardall led the band in another impromptu concert. Some sang loudly while others joined in with harmonicas, fiddles, accordions, and other instruments they had brought with them. Mardall led the choruses of “Rocked in the Cradle of the Deep,” making everyone dip their knees on the word deep. “I never knew Ollie to be so happy as he was then,” wrote Major George Atwell. “We sang a few lively songs at first then a few sentimental ones and ended with hymns. Most of the boys went to bed about 11:30 pm.”
Less than 3 hours later, the Empress was hit by a Norwegian collier in heavy fog and sank in 14 minutes.
Only 220 passengers survived, and sadly Mardall was not one of them. He, like many of his comrades gave up their lives helping others to survive.
Leaves wife and four children:
Oliver left his wife Isabelle and four children under the age of 6, in a rental house in Kitsilano with a Salvation Army pension of less than five dollars a week. The Province newspaper set up a fund for the Mardall family
The Province wrote: “Mr. Mardall was one of our own citizens of Vancouver, a highly-respected and hard-working young man and the Province thinks that timely assistance to his wife and little children would be particularly worthy.”
Attorney general, William Bowser, who would become BC Premier in 1915, was one of the first to contribute. He had known Mardall personally from his work with prisoners, and contributed $50 to the fund (about $1,600 in 2025 dollars).
The Salvation Army held a memorial service on July 24, 1914, and erected a brass plaque at the Army Hall in East Vancouver bearing the names of Ensign O. Mardall, Major N. Simco, Deputy Bandsmaster Wakefield, Dorothea Axten, and Leonard Axten, Dorothea’s four-year-old son. The following week, the Mardall family at least had some resolution when Oliver’s body was recovered from the wreck.
And that was all I could find out about Mardall, until June this year, when Oliver’s grandson John sent me an email.
Dies a Hero:
“After the sinking, my grandmother Babo (Isabelle Mardall) moved to Toronto, where Mardall was buried, and where with the help of the Salvation Army and relatives she raised her four children,” he says.
Tragically, Oliver’s oldest son, also named Oliver, drowned in a canoe accident in 1926.
“Uncle Leslie followed a music career and moved to the United States. Eventually he worked for San Francisco State University. Both he and my father John, served in WWII. My father worked for the City of Toronto as a Director of Recreation. Aunt Kay, the baby at the time of the sinking, grew up and lived in Toronto,” he says. “I grew up regularly visiting the big blue suitcase in the basement of our home that contained many of the newspapers you refer to in your book. I always remember reading the letter from an Army survivor to my grandmother. In it he described how my grandfather helped him get to a lifeboat and then returned to help others. Unfortunately he perished in the cold water.”
The sinking of the Empress of Ireland stands as the worst maritime disaster during peacetime in Canadian history. It took the lives of over a thousand people. Ten were from British Columbia.
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