2,500 people in their clean picnic clothes
July 24, 2015 12:26 PM   Subscribe

One hundred years ago today, the SS Eastland, about to set out for a company picnic in Indiana, tipped over at its dock in the Chicago River with over 2,500 people aboard. Eight hundred and forty-four of them died in one of the worst non-military maritime disasters in American history. The Chicago Tribune has published some previously unseen photographs of the recovery efforts. [warning: a couple of these are potentially disturbing]

Carl Sandburg was pretty upset about it, too.
posted by theodolite (39 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
I don't know if it was true for this case, but when I researched 19th century riverboat disasters I found a huge number of people died because back then few people knew how to swim. For example, a boat would go down on the end of a pier and still most people would die because they couldn't stay afloat for three minutes or move to shore. I remember one case when there were many native Americans aboard and they were the only survivors because they were taught to swim.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 12:36 PM on July 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


I don't know if it was true for this case, but when I researched 19th century riverboat disasters I found a huge number of people died because back then few people knew how to swim

The articles I have read on this particular disaster indicate that not to be the case. Most of the people who died were crushed under the weight of the boat, or by pieces of furniture, or simply trapped.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:40 PM on July 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Where we lived in Queens we were right near the cemetery that had a memorial for the General Slocum disaster. So I knew these sorts of accidents were a thing but never knew they were that...common...back then.
posted by Captain_Science at 12:45 PM on July 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


I found a huge number of people died because back then few people knew how to swim. For example, a boat would go down on the end of a pier and still most people would die because they couldn't stay afloat for three minutes or move to shore.

Given the layers of clothing people (especially the women) wore at that time, I'm not sure being able to swim would have helped much. I can easily see even the best swimmer being overwhelmed by soaking wet, heavy clothing.

A lot of riverboat disasters were also fires (or, outright explosions) I believe.
posted by Thorzdad at 12:46 PM on July 24, 2015 [6 favorites]


I've seen the plaque commemorating the disaster in Chicago; I noticed it because i'd picked up Jay Bonansinga's The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy at a book sale at some point. If memory serves me correctly, a theory put forth in the book is that clothes of the era would also have been heavier and weighed swimmers down.

It boggles the mind that so many died on a ship that was docked only a few feet from dry land.

.
posted by Gelatin at 12:49 PM on July 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


(By the way, it appears to me that the gallery is behind a subscription wall...)
posted by Gelatin at 12:51 PM on July 24, 2015 [7 favorites]


I don't see a cause mentioned anywhere, was one ever determined?
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:52 PM on July 24, 2015


I don't see a cause mentioned anywhere, was one ever determined?

Wikipedia cites design flaws and overloading that led to the ship being top-heavy, an issue that was, ironically, exacerbated by the installation of a new set of mandated lifeboats. A crush of passengers to the port rail started the ship rolling, and as unsecured passengers and cargo slid in that direction the motion became unrecoverable.
posted by fifthrider at 1:00 PM on July 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


"I don't see a cause mentioned anywhere, was one ever determined?"

The main theory I've heard is that the Eastland was poorly engineered and top-heavy, too easy to tip over. And that happened here as the upper decks were overloaded with passengers. [And on preview, what was said above.]
posted by JimInLoganSquare at 1:01 PM on July 24, 2015


Might as well plug my recent discovery of this excellent website collecting the music of the Calliope which was basically the only large-scale, portable music device before electricity. You knew when the riverboat or circus came to town - the whole damn town could hear it's song.

Kinda somber, thinking that this might be the music playing during that disaster.
posted by rebent at 1:01 PM on July 24, 2015 [6 favorites]


I don't see a cause mentioned anywhere, was one ever determined?

I believe that the boat was simply not designed to hold that many people.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:01 PM on July 24, 2015


I don't see a cause mentioned anywhere, was one ever determined?

The Eastland was basically not a very stable ship, it was top heavy. All the people got on board, they were mostly on the top decks, for some reason, probably to see something happening on the shore, they all moved to one side, and she rolled over. Being tied up on the Chicago River, both shores were easily visible, which is why she rolled away from the shore she was tied to.

There were previous incidents where she had almost rolled over, but was righted before a complete disaster occurred, but this time they weren't lucky.

The ship itself wasn't lost -- they righted her, pumped her out, and towed her away. She was converted to a gunboat and brought into naval service as the USS Wilmette, and she served on and off through WWII, and was finally scrapped in 1947. As part of the conversion, the deckhouse and top decks were cut down substantially, which lowered her center of gravity and metacentric heights, and that solved the tendency to roll over.
posted by eriko at 1:02 PM on July 24, 2015 [13 favorites]


Can you imagine the media shitstorm that would ensue today if a bunch of people posed on the side of a sunken ship like in picture 20? Granted, none of them are smiling, but it sure seems like the equivalent of a "I was here" selfie.
posted by thewumpusisdead at 1:02 PM on July 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


(By the way, it appears to me that the gallery is behind a subscription wall...)

Dang it. The one I linked to works fine for me, but the "digital graphic novel" is behind a paywall. Is anyone else having any luck with the gallery?
posted by theodolite at 1:03 PM on July 24, 2015


Ah - according to Wikipedia,

Following its construction the Eastland was discovered to have design flaws making it susceptible to listing. The ship was top-heavy with its center of gravity being too high. This became evident when passengers congregated en masse on the upper decks.

And, oh geez:

In 1915, the new federal Seamen's Act had been passed because of the RMS Titanic disaster three years earlier. The law required retrofitting of a complete set of lifeboats on the Eastland, as on many other passenger vessels. This additional weight, ironically, probably made the Eastland more dangerous as it worsened the already severe problem of being top-heavy.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:04 PM on July 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Look at their clothes: Everyone's head to toe in heavy wool, which is bizarre for Chicago in July, but apparently it was unseasonably cold and overcast that day. Imagine a sudden swim in heavy wool coats, the women in skirts and petticoats. Everyone in leather boots and shoes.

I am a strong swimmer, but I doubt I would survive the water in those heavy clothes.
posted by mochapickle at 1:11 PM on July 24, 2015


(Or what Thorzdad said.)
posted by mochapickle at 1:13 PM on July 24, 2015


If a ship turns turtle and the water is deep enough to allow it to do so, it isn't going to make a huge difference whether it is a few feet from shore or a few miles. Once the deck and corridors get tilted than a few degrees, it becomes impossible to escape. Even for those on deck; they'll slide down towards the side that is already digging into the water and will be trapped or crushed when it inverts. Even the very quick thinking who go off the down side immediately will be hard pressed to get free of the ship footprint in time.
posted by tavella at 1:14 PM on July 24, 2015 [3 favorites]


Though it looks like it only keeled over half way, so those in cabins/passenger areas on the side that was above would have a good shot. But those on the submerged side would likely die, and people on deck would be suddenly dumped into the water, with a mass of other people all struggling. Add in heavy clothing and inexperience with swimming, and yeah, still deadly.
posted by tavella at 1:23 PM on July 24, 2015 [1 favorite]


Once the deck and corridors get tilted than a few degrees, it becomes impossible to escape.

As noted previously here on the Blue in this horrific account of the sinking -- nearly a century after the Eastland -- of the MS Estonia. Once the disaster started unfolding, there was precious little time to escape the ship. Only those who moved quickly made it -- and far from all of them.
posted by Gelatin at 1:26 PM on July 24, 2015 [5 favorites]


My sister sent an article by Neil Steinberg this morning which is behind the Chicago Sun-Times quiz-wall. It's mostly about the survivor, a girl who could swim. But with these additions:
But the ship, notoriously unstable, could not right itself. For a few minutes it listed back and forth, starboard toward the pier, then port, toward the center of the river, and back. The captain tried to trim the ship, filling various ballast tanks. For the picnickers, the swaying was a lark; they whooped happily as the boat tilted this way, then that.

Then the Eastland began to tip to port and kept going. A refrigerator toppled over, sending bottles of beer crashing. A piano crushed a boy. The laughter turned to screams as the boat turned on its side and settled in water that came exactly to its midpoint...

That night, when a temporary morgue was opened, the curious far outnumbered family members attempting to identify lost loved ones. After the city erected barriers along the river to give privacy to the recovery of bodies, a janitor at a nearby building admitted the gawkers to the roof for a dime a head. When the names of the deceased were announced — including 22 entire families — some of their homes were burglarized.

Come Monday, hundreds began showing up at the Hawthorne works, hoping to fill the jobs of those who had not yet been buried.
posted by readery at 1:26 PM on July 24, 2015 [25 favorites]


I've lived in Chicago nearly a decade, and how no idea about this disaster. Wow.
posted by Windigo at 1:28 PM on July 24, 2015


The Sandburg is prophetic given Rev. Barber's words earlier this month. Extreme deaths are easier to wrestle with than socioeconomic policy.
posted by CBrachyrhynchos at 1:28 PM on July 24, 2015


Though it looks like it only keeled over half way, so those in cabins/passenger areas on the side that was above would have a good shot. But those on the submerged side would likely die

And as noted previously, the tilting decks would have dumped people into the submerging side, plus Bonansinga's book noted that heavy furniture (like a piano) also came crashing down, crushing ot trapping people.
posted by Gelatin at 1:30 PM on July 24, 2015


NOTE: To get to the gallery (this worked in firefox, FWIW) I copied the link address and googled it, then clicked the link. This frequently works with NYT and New Yorker stories. But don't click for the "graphic content" shots or it will throw you out...
posted by ivanthenotsoterrible at 1:33 PM on July 24, 2015


There's also a very nice website put together by the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, including a list of passengers with a surprising number of photographs, personal accounts, etc.
posted by theodolite at 1:37 PM on July 24, 2015


For the picnickers, the swaying was a lark

Those people were very different from me. I'd have been scrambling off that tub the moment it started swaying back and forth.
posted by Greg_Ace at 1:41 PM on July 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


Also as a note Hawthorn Works where the employees and families on the outing were from was Western Electric's premier factory for phone equipment, considered a technological marvel of its day. People would have lined up to take the jobs of the dead; it was a place where people could count on a lifetime of decent wages and job security.
It remained the premier employer of the area until 1983 when the Bell System broke up.

Now there's a mall there with Payless Shoes, Rent-a-Center and a White Castle.
posted by readery at 1:43 PM on July 24, 2015 [9 favorites]


I grew up in Chicago and vaguely knew of the disaster. But the pictures are chilling. Thanks for posting them.
posted by persona au gratin at 1:44 PM on July 24, 2015


Can you imagine the media shitstorm that would ensue today if a bunch of people posed on the side of a sunken ship like in picture 20? Granted, none of them are smiling, but it sure seems like the equivalent of a "I was here" selfie.

It would absolutely be a controversy if it happened today, but disaster selfies were actually pretty common in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It would be interesting to know when that changed, and why. I imagine that some of it might have to do with a) the relative novelty of photography, b) the relative lack of portability of early cameras, and c) the fact that early photography processes required the subjects to stand still (although I'm not sure that was still true in 1915).
posted by mudpuppie at 2:41 PM on July 24, 2015


When the names of the deceased were announced — including 22 entire families — some of their homes were burglarized.

Huh. So people have always been terrible, not just the punks these days?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 2:57 PM on July 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


What does Sandburg mean by "the con"? I would think it meant consumption, hence tuberculosis, but he says that separately.
posted by Countess Elena at 2:59 PM on July 24, 2015


"By the way, it appears to me that the gallery is behind a subscription wall..."

Try allowing cookies for the Trib site. At least it worked for me, after I did that.
posted by talking leaf at 2:59 PM on July 24, 2015


Huh. So people have always been terrible, not just the punks these days?

Hell, if it were a quiet coastal village instead of a city pier, the folks on land would have picked the bodies clean and let the survivors drown.

It seems fairly recently, even in my memory, that newspapers stopped publishing the home addresses of the deceased in their funeral notices to protect their homes. In the past, the addresses usually appeared, and could make for helpful genealogical information, but we can't have nice things.
posted by Countess Elena at 3:03 PM on July 24, 2015 [2 favorites]


.
posted by ZeusHumms at 3:39 PM on July 24, 2015


Can you imagine the media shitstorm that would ensue today if a bunch of people posed on the side of a sunken ship like in picture 20?

It's very likely that photo was for the paper, and was probably either the investigation team or city officials or the engineers involved in righting the ship. The point would have been to show people that the situation was being taken seriously. I think the tradition of photographing investigative teams for pretty much any newsworthy crime didn't fall out of vogue until the 70s, maybe later.

It would be weird now because it's really unsafe and we just don't have a "group photo" culture like that anymore, but we'd certainly see at least a couple press conferences at or very near the site.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:52 PM on July 24, 2015 [4 favorites]


The Chicago Tribune also had an illustrated version of events located here. Brings it home a little bit more.
posted by lester's sock puppet at 8:34 PM on July 24, 2015


That night, when a temporary morgue was opened, the curious far outnumbered family members attempting to identify lost loved ones.

and for the trivia minded that temporary morgue would go on to be the lair of the great Chicago Bee Queen.
posted by srboisvert at 5:34 AM on July 25, 2015


The General Slocum was another tragic disaster of the era involving picnickers.
posted by Chrysostom at 9:37 PM on July 27, 2015


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