The Eastland Disaster

The SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago. She was owned by the St Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company and made money ferrying people from Chicago to picnic sites on the shores of Lake Michigan. The Eastland was launched in 1903, it was designed to carry 650 passengers, but major construction and refitting in 1913 supposedly allowed the boat to carry 2,500 people. The same year, a naval architect told officials that the boat needed work to change structural defects to remedy and prevent listing, there could be a serious accident.

On July 24th, 1915 employees of Western Electric Company were heading to an annual picnic. The Eastland and four other Great Lakes passengers steamers, the Theodore Roosevelt, Petoskey, Racine and Rochester where chartered to take employees to Michigan City, Indiana for the picnic.

7,300 people arrived at 6 a.m. at the dock between LaSalle and Clark Streets, while much of the crowd boarded the Eastland, with even more people than the allowed number of 2,500. Many gathered on the port side of the boat to pose for a photographer, creating an imbalance on the boat.

The crew attempted to stabilize the ship by admitting water into her ballot tanks, but within the next 15 minutes by 7:28 am the Eastland lurched sharply to port and rolled completely onto her port side, now resting on the river bottom, in 20 feet of water. With many passengers having moved to the lower decks to warm themselves on what was a cool and damp morning, it would leave many trapped. Although there was a quick response by nearby vessels a total of 844 passengers and four crew members died in the disaster. It would be found out that twenty-two entire families would be wiped out by this tragedy.

The Eastland was pulled up from the river, renamed the Willimette and converted into a naval vessel, and would be scrapped following World War ll. All lawsuits against the owners of the Eastland were thrown out by a court of appeals and the exact cause of the tipping and subsequent disaster has never really been determined.

The often overlooked importance of the lifesaving stations was realized with the Chicago Lifesaving Station, on Lake Michigan, when built in 1875, it is reported that a lifeboat detachment was indicated in the area as early as 1878. The worst marine disaster within the scope of operations of this station was the capsizing of the steamer ‘Eastland’ on 24 July 1915, with 2500 passengers on board. 280 were rescued by the Old Chicago crew and 400 bodies were recovered. It was estimated that this station was involved in saving at least 6000 lives through 1935.

‘This Day in History’, hundreds-drown-in-eastland-disaster.

On that ‘wee note’ till next month, Monday April 4, 2022

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