Samuel Robinson (sea Captain) - Great Kanto Earthquake

Great Kanto Earthquake

When the 1923 Great Kantō earthquake struck Yokohama at a little after noon on 1 September 1923, Captain Robinson was aboard the Empress of Australia. He was finalizing routine preparations for a scheduled departure later in the day; but the greatest natural disaster in modern times was about to reorder those priorities. He would be credited with saving the ship, his crew and passengers, and more than 3,000 others during the unfolding catastrophe.

The Empress of Australia earned international acclaim and recognition for her captain because it was the ship which was able to offer the most help in evacuating the devastated metropolis of Tokyo. In the chaos which developed after the ground stopped shaking, Robinson kept his ship near the quay at Yokohama in Tokyo Bay for the next twelve days, providing such help as he and his crew were able to offer.

The ship remained anchored off Yokohama for several days, and then she sailed for the port of Kobe laden with refugees.

Robinson's own contributions were minimized in the report he prepared for the Canadian Pacific home office. He displayed a seemly modesty in this summary:

"One of the most gratifying things, and the dominant factor in the whole proceedings is that everyone with whom we have had to deal on board has worked together without friction, disagreement, or complaint during this terrible catastrophe ... some of the hardest workers having lost families or homes or business possessions, and in some cases all of these."

A group of passengers and refugees who were aboard during the disaster commissioned a bronze tablet and presented it to the ship in recognition of the relief efforts. When the Empress of Australia was scrapped in 1952, the bronze tablet was rescued. It was formally presented to Captain Robinson, then aged 82, in a special ceremony in Vancouver.