Oceans of Fate

Larry Ostola speaks with Dan Black about his book Oceans of Fate. The remarkable story of how one ship — doomed by war — intersected lives and crossed into history. Completed in 1913 for Canadian Pacific, the Empress of Asia plied the oceans for nearly 30 years. Built for long-haul ocean travel during peace-time, she saw wartime service as an armed merchant cruiser and troopship before Japanese dive-bombers destroyed her in 1942. Through the Roaring Twenties and the Great Depression, she brought continents and people together, delivering mail and multimillion-dollar consignments of silk. As a luxurious passenger liner, she was a “Greyhound of the Pacific,” braving epic storms and smashing transpacific speed records. From stokehold to bridge, steerage to first-class staterooms, she steamed with a kaleidoscope of lives, including courageous and recalcitrant crew, immigrants and refugees seeking a better life or relief from disaster, drug smugglers, weapons dealers, and the idle and not-so-idle rich. This is the dramatic story of how that one ship and the lives of those on board intersected during a tumultuous period of world history, culminating in her sinking off Singapore in the Second World War. Dan Black is the former editor of Legion Magazine, and author or co-author of three previous books, including Harry Livingstone’s Forgotten Men: Canadians and the Chinese Labour Corps in the First World War, published 2019. He lives near Ottawa. If you like our work, please consider supporting it: bit.ly/support_WTY. Your support contributes to the Champlain Society’s mission of opening new windows to directly explore and experience Canada’s past.