[2] This ship – the first of two CP vessels to be named Empress of Japan[3] – regularly traversed the trans-Pacific route between the west coast of Canada and the Far East until 1922.

[4] During the First World War she served as armed merchant cruiser, becoming HMS Empress of Japan for the period that she was a commissioned ship of the Royal Navy.

The white-painted, clipper-bowed ship had two buff-colored funnels with a band of black paint at the top, three lightweight schooner-type masts, and an average speed of 16-knots.

[8] The ship left Liverpool on 11 April 1891 on her maiden voyage via Suez to Hong Kong and Vancouver, arriving in British Columbia on 2 June.

[5] The dragon figurehead has been preserved at the Seawall in Stanley Park[10] Empress of Japan was refitted as an Armed merchantman during the Great War; and consequently, she lost the elegant white gleam associated with luxury cruise ships.

[12] In 1923, the war-weary ship was used in a different kind of battle when Canadian Pacific used the aging Empress of Japan to house strikebreakers in a dispute with the Vancouver and District Waterfront Workers' Association.

Various portions of the ship's once lavish interior were also scavenged by local homeowners from Vancouver's wealthiest neighbourhoods and added to their homes and property values.