On a May night in 1914, the ocean liner Empress of Ireland, with 1500 passengers, sets out from Quebec, bound for England via the St. Lawrence River, its captain unaware that a coal freighter is steaming toward them. As a dense fog rolls in, the freighter rams the Empress, gouging a massive hole in its hull. A tidal wave of water pours in, the ship begins to list, its engines fail, and its lights go out, leaving passengers struggling in the dark through a maze of flooded, tilted hallways. One of those passengers is 20-year-old Bridey Collins, a domestic drudge for a wealthy family. Bridey looks for her fiancé Sean, certain he'll take care of her, only to see him rowing off in the last lifeboat, leaving her behind on a sinking ship. Flung overboard, devastated by Sean's betrayal, Bridey is tempted to give up, let herself sink.

But she's 3 months pregnant—if she dies, so will her baby. She can't let that happen! In frigid water, unable to swim, surrounded by corpses, Bridey must scrape a way to survive—for herself and her baby.

The ship sinks in just 14 minutes, drowning over a thousand passengers. But a few somehow survive: Marie, the Ojibwe cook, who mans a lifeboat filled with panicked women; Charlie, a scrappy 12-yr. old stowaway; and Reggie, a steward who rescues 20 terrified children. All find their courage tested to the limits; all will find, in years to come, that the horror of this night will affect their lives in unexpected ways.