Eastland Disaster (1915): The Ship That Capsized in Chicago

The Eastland disaster took place in Chicago on the morning of 24 July 1915, when the passenger steamer SS Eastland rolled over while still tied to her dock in the Chicago River. The ship had been chartered to take employees of the Western Electric Company and their families to a company picnic, and 844 people were killed. It remains the greatest loss of life from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.

Background

The Eastland was a passenger steamer built in 1903 in Port Huron, Michigan, for excursion trips on Lake Michigan. From early in her career she had a reputation for instability. She was narrow and tall for her length, and alterations over the years made her more top-heavy.

After the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, new American safety rules required passenger vessels to carry more lifeboats. The Seamen’s Act of 1915 reinforced this, and extra lifeboats and rafts were added to the Eastland’s upper deck. This well-meant change added weight high up on a ship that already had little margin of stability.

In July 1915 the Western Electric Company’s Hawthorne Works, a huge telephone equipment plant in the Chicago suburbs, organised its annual employee picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. Several steamers were chartered, including the Eastland, which was owned at the time by the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company.

The capsizing

Passengers began boarding the Eastland at its dock on the south bank of the river between Clark and LaSalle Streets at about 6:30 a.m. Many were young workers, some with children, dressed in their best clothes for the outing. Within about half an hour roughly 2,500 people had come aboard, close to the ship’s licensed limit.

As the ship filled, she began to list, first towards the dock and then towards the river. The crew tried to correct this using the ballast tanks, but the list kept growing. Many passengers were on the upper decks, and some moved to the river side to watch boats go by, adding to the problem.

At about 7:28 a.m. the Eastland rolled over onto her port side and settled on the river bottom in about 6 metres (20 feet) of water. Hundreds of people inside the ship were trapped below decks as water poured in, and many on deck were thrown into the river. The whole capsizing took only a few minutes, and the ship was still tied to the wharf when it happened.

Rescue and victims

Crew members from nearby vessels, passers-by and emergency workers rushed to help. People stood on the upturned hull and cut holes in it to pull survivors out, and others threw objects into the water for people to cling to. Despite these efforts, 844 people died, almost all of them passengers. Among the dead were 22 entire families.

A temporary morgue was set up in the Second Regiment Armory on the Near West Side, where relatives came to identify the dead. The losses were felt most heavily in the immigrant neighbourhoods of the city’s West Side, particularly among Czech, Polish and other Central European families whose members worked at the Hawthorne plant.

Inquiries and trials

Several investigations followed. The captain, Harry Pedersen, the chief engineer, Joseph Erickson, and company officials were indicted, but the cases failed in the courts. In 1933, after years of litigation, a federal appeals court ruled that the steamship company was not liable for the disaster. The court largely blamed the engineer, who had died in the meantime, for failing to handle the ballast tanks properly.

Historians have since stressed that many factors combined: the ship’s long-known instability, the extra weight of the new lifeboats, the ballast arrangements and the large number of passengers. The disaster is often compared with the General Slocum disaster of 1904 in New York, another case in which an excursion trip ended in heavy loss of life.

Legacy

The Eastland was raised and sold to the US Navy, which converted her into a training gunboat named USS Wilmette. She trained naval reservists on the Great Lakes for decades before being scrapped after the Second World War.

For many years the disaster was little remembered compared with the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, even though it killed far more people. Since the late twentieth century, the Eastland Disaster Historical Society has worked to record the victims’ names and stories, and a historical marker now stands near the site on the riverbank.

Timeline

• 1903: The Eastland is built in Port Huron, Michigan, as a Lake Michigan excursion steamer.
• 1915, March: The Seamen’s Act is signed, and more lifeboats are later added to the Eastland.
• 1915, 24 July, about 6:30 a.m.: Passengers start boarding for the Western Electric picnic.
• 1915, 24 July, about 7:28 a.m.: The Eastland capsizes at her dock; 844 people die.
• 1915, late July: Bodies are taken to the Second Regiment Armory for identification.
• 1918: The raised ship is commissioned into the US Navy as USS Wilmette.
• 1933: A federal appeals court rules that the owners are not liable.

Why it matters

The Eastland disaster killed more passengers than any other shipwreck on the Great Lakes, in calm water and only metres from the shore. It showed how safety rules applied without regard to a ship’s stability could backfire, and it left a deep mark on Chicago’s working-class immigrant communities.