Thanks in part to an Arlington Heights-based organization, the story of Chicago’s SS Eastland tragedy is being told alongside that of the most famous ship disaster in history, the sinking of the RMS Titanic.
Through Sept. 4, the Museum of Science and Industry, at 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, is presenting “Titanic: The Exhibition.”
The exhibit features the largest collection ever gathered of artifacts from the doomed luxury liner, which hit an iceberg and sank in April 1912 on its maiden voyage from England to New York.
Some 1,500 of the Titanic’s passengers and crew died. On the Eastland, a lake excursion boat that rolled over in the Chicago River in July 1915, the death toll was about 800.
The museum’s exhibit unites the two maritime calamities.
Jean Decker of Arlington Heights, whose late mother-in-law was one of the Eastland’s 1,700 survivors, was among those who attended a special preview of the Titanic exhibition Feb. 16 at the museum.
“They put on a beautiful exhibit of the Eastland at the end of the Titanic exhibit,” she said.
Decker, along with her daughters Susan Decker and Barb Wachholz and her son-in-law Ted Wachholz, founded the Eastland Disaster Historical Society in 1998 to preserve memories of the local tragedy, which took place on the river between Clark and LaSalle streets.
Ted Wachholz said he had been working with the museum since last May to prepare the Eastland portion of the exhibit.
“The Eastland disaster has a separate room within the Titanic exhibit, which we are very proud of,” he said.
The society loaned several artifacts to the museum, he said, including original sheet music of a song that was written about the disaster and stars that the coroner’s office awarded to Eastland heroes.
Also loaned to the museum was a copy of a memorial newsletter published after the tragedy by Western Electric, which had chartered the boat on that fateful day almost 85 years ago to take employees and their families to a company picnic in Indiana.
In addition, said museum exhibit developer Liz Garibay, on display is the flagpole from the Eastland.
“We have about 20 different families that contributed to the (Eastland) exhibit,” Ted Wachholz said.
“The exhibit itself does a phenomenal job of telling the story,” he said. “The exhibit is really wonderful. I can’t say enough about it.”
For instance, Ted Wachholz said, the Eastland exhibit includes a hands-on display that allows visitors to see and feel the difference between a stable boat and an unstable one.
“It’s a fairly technical, complex topic,” having to do with buoyancy, the boat’s center of gravity and other considerations, he said.
Theories about why the Eastland rolled over include overfilled port ballast tanks and the imbalance caused by several tons of concrete that had been used to shore up its rotting wood decks.
Also cited as contributing to the boat’s top-heaviness were the additional lifeboats that were installed as a reaction to the Titanic tragedy.
That connection to the Titanic prompted museum officials to pursue the Eastland display, Garibay said.
“We saw that with the Titanic (exhibition) we had a great opportunity to re-educate the city about the (Eastland) disaster,” she said.
In addition to presenting technical information, the museum’s display also honors Eastland victims, rescuers, survivors and their families, as well as those who had to deal with the aftermath of the tragedy.
“It wasn’t just a ship that rolled over,” Ted Wachholz said. “A lot of people were involved.”
Garibay said the museum linked up with Eastland families through the society. She said she contacted Ted Wachholz after seeing the society’s Web site.
“One of their missions is to record the history and the stories behind the Eastland,” Garibay said, and families contacted through the society were happy to cooperate with the museum.
“I think everyone in the Eastland community realizes how important (the display) is,” she said.
Besides the Chicago exhibit, Ted Wachholz said the society has a “virtual museum” that it displays every month at one or two suburban libraries. It is scheduled to be at the Palatine Public Library, 700 North Court, during March.
When displaying at a library, he said, the society typically offers an Eastland program that includes a 30-minute presentation and a question-and-answer session.
At those programs, Jean Decker said, “Everybody seems to know someone who was on that ship.”
Ted Wachholz said they encounter up to a dozen families with Eastland connections at each program. Then the society follows up with them to document their stories, he said.
Along with the museum and the Underwater Archaeological Society of Chicago, the Eastland society was also involved with a recent effort to recover artifacts from the Chicago River.
“There was a team of about 15 divers that came in on a volunteer basis,” Ted Wachholz said.
They entered the murky and frigid waters Dec. 12, he said, and brought up a number of items from the river bottom, including old bottles, shoes and license plates.
“No, we didn’t find anything that traced directly back to the Eastland,” Ted Wachholz said, but the dive was successful at drawing media coverage and focusing attention on the vessel’s history.
He said that when he asked people attending the exhibition preview if they knew about the Eastland, most remembered the December dive.
In addition to giving a boost to the society’s efforts to promote awareness of the Eastland, Ted Wachholz said, “The Titanic exhibit is pretty cool too.”
That exhibit features hundreds of Titanic artifacts, as well as recreations of two of the ship’s staterooms, its boarding entrance and its grand staircase.
Additional information about the Titanic exhibition is available by calling (773) 684-1414 or accessing the museum’s Web site, www.msichicago.org. A link to there is offered on the society’s own Web site, www.eastlanddisaster.org.
While the Titanic has been immortalized in books and on the silver screen, Ted Wachholz said that many people, including longtime residents of the area, are still surprised to hear about the Eastland.
Some of the exhibit’s visitors already knew about the Eastland, Garibay said. However, she said, “Other people have no idea.”
The Eastland exhibit, Garibay said, includes a video featuring interviews with three of the six living survivors of the tragedy.
“I saw a woman watching that video,” she said, “and halfway through, I heard her gasp.”
The story of the Eastland is likely to have a similar effect on many of the hundreds of thousands of museum visitors who are expected to tour the special exhibit.
With the Eastland’s tie-in to the museum’s Titanic exhibition, Ted Wachholz said, “That’s going to start informing people about what happened.
