The Wreck of the Asia: Ships, Shoals, Storms and a Great Lakes Survey

Contributor to newspapers and magazines in Canada, Britain and United States on travel- and transportation themes.

Author: Empress of Britain: Canadian Pacific's greatest ship (Erin: Boston Mills, 1992).

Reviewer for CBRA since 1993.

In 1882, the Asia, a passenger and cargo ship of modest dimensions, fell
victim to a storm on Georgian Bay that took the lives of more than 120
people and left only two survivors. In terms of fatalities, it was the
eighth-worst disaster to have occurred on the Great Lakes. Robert
Higgins has written a competent account of the tragedy. One consequence
of the sinking was improved nautical charts of Georgian Bay, to which
the author devotes a few pages.

The Wreck of the Asia is an attractively designed and well-illustrated
book, although one may quibble with the inclusion of nearly identical
maps on two pages and a glossary that includes such common words as
“capsize” and “barometer.” One wishes too that the author had
resisted the temptation to state that “the Asia was Canada’s
Titanic.” The Asia’s sinking, although certainly a great tragedy, is
surely not in the same league as the Titanic disaster, which occurred 30
years later.