Eastland Memorial Society

EXCURSION BOAT CAPSIZES IN THE CHICAGO RIVER; 1800 PERSONS DROWNED
Horror-Stricken Crowds Watch Futile Attempt At Rescue From Pier; Nation In Mourning Over Disaster

STEAMER EASTLAND, LOADED WITH HOLIDAY CROWD TURNS TURTLE AND HEAVY LADEN, IS LOST WITH NEARLY ALL OF ITS PASSENGERS

Over Two Thousand Employees of Western Electric Company Bound for Lake Ride Thrown into Water or Carried Down When Ill-fated Ship Keels Over on Side in Act of Leaving Pier -- But Few Escape from Death Trap They Boarded a Minute Before

Second Regiment Armory Becomes a Vast Morgue with 1500 Bodies

Catastrophe Plunges Great City into Deepest Grief, While Great Crowds Wait Patiently for Hours in Hope of Finding Bodies of Kin or Friends -- Many Heroic Rescues Recorded -- Federal and State Investigations Begun With Empanelling of Grand Jury

[Associated Press Dispatch] CHICAGO, July 24 -- Thousands ost their lives in the Chicago river through the capsizing of the Eastland. After working ceaselessly all day and far into the night, the bodiesof 812 passengers were taken to the Second Regiment armory. Coroner Hoffman said he hopes the total dead will not exceed 1800.

W.C. Steele, secretary-treasurer of the St. Joseph & Chicago Steamship company, owners of the Eastland, was arrested tonight and locked in the police station.

The steamer was leased by the Indiana Transportation company, whose officers said they were not responsible for the licensing of the ship and not in control of the crew.

Kolin Avenue, a small street near the factory of the Western Electric company, was in universal mourning tonight. Every house had lost one or all of its occupants. Many of the ill-fated residents of the street tonight lay in the morgue or beneath the steel hull of the Eastland over which the searchlights shot a blinding glare while hundreds of men were searching for more bodies.

CHICAGO, July 24 -- Possibly eighteen hundred persons, most of them women and children, were drowned within a few feet of land by the capsizing of the steel steamer Eastland, as it was about to leave the wharf in the Chicago River where there were 500 relatives and friends of the employees of the Western Electric company who were leaving on an excursion across Lake Michigan. The ship rolled on its side in 25 feet of water within five minutes after it began to list.

Coroner Hoffman at eight o’clock tonight estimated the number of bodies to be taken to the Second Regiment armory at 1,560. Of these it is said 800 have already reached the armory from morgues, and other places they were first taken. Other estimates of the dead ran as high as 2,000, but these do not agree with the statement that more than 2,500 were aboard the vessel and that during the day that seven hundred bodies were taken from the river or the hull of the overturned steamer, whose side were cut open by gas flames to admit divers. Several were taken alive from the cabins of the ship after it had laid on its side in the river for four hours but three hundred others said to be in the hull must be dead.

Under the glare of searchlights tonight, scores of men worked on the hull to reach the bodies. The steamer lay at the bottom of the river, half on one side protruding from the water. The cause of the capsizing had not been determined tonight but federal, city and state officers are conducting investigations to determine whether the ship was top-heavy from faulty designing, improperly ballasted, or poorly handled in warping from the wharf.

Under misty skies 7,000 men, women and children wended their way to the river wharf early to fill five large lake steamers for a holiday trip to Michigan City. The Eastland was the first loaded. Rain began to fall as the gangplanks lifted when the limit of 2,500 was reached and white dresses peeped from raincoats along the shore rail as those aboard waved goodbye to friends ashore and on other steamers, then the passengers swarmed to the left side as the other passengers drew up. A tug hitched to the Eastland and with the orders to cast-off the engines began to hum. Instead of moving forward, the laden ship wavered side-wise toward the shore. The passengers were startled and the crowd of the riverside increased. The ship heeled back and turned slowly and steadily toward the left side. People began sliding toward the rail, water entered the lower portholes and the ropes snapped off the piles to which the vessel was tied. Those on the wharf, attracted, screamed but were helpless. Finally the ship dived under the swift current of the river. The scene that ensued was heartrending. There was much heroism and many men were drowned while attempting to rescue women. Tonight Chicago is a city of mourning. The police arrested all the officers of the Eastland.

After a hole had been cut in the protruding side of the vessel and many dead bodies removed, a thrill passed through the crowd as word was passed along that a baby girl had been found alive among the hundreds of dead in the ship. The child was in a starboard stateroom where it was held from the water by a chair that was jammed against the berth. The baby only awakened as she was carried to land. The mother was not found. Two women were found alive in another stateroom above the water but that ended the hopes that any number escaped death in the death trap itself.

During the mighty turning of the ship with its cargo of humanity, lifeboats, chairs and other loose appurtenances on the decks slipped down the sloping floors, crushing the passengers toward the rising waters. Many passengers who sank entangled with clothing and bundles did not rise, but scores came to the surface, giving the river the appearance of a crowded bathing beach. Many seized floating chairs and other objects. Those on shore threw out ropes and dragged in those who could hold to the life-lines. Employees of the commission firms along the river threw crates, chicken coops and other flotable things into the current, but as most of these were swept away by the stream, boats put out.

Tugs rushed to the scene with shrieking whistles, and many men snatched off their coats and sprang into the river to aid the drowning. With thousands of spectators ready to aid and the wharf within grasp, hundreds went to their death despite every effort at rescue.

One mother grasped two children in her arms, as she slipped from the steamer into the water. One child was torn from her, but she and the other were saved. Fathers drowned after aiding their wives and children to safety.

The Second Regiment armory, situated in a thickly settled part of the west side, was surrounded early in the evening by a great throng of people. Most of the victims were residents of the west side, and nearly every elevated train bound for the residence portions of that section carried its group of weeping men and women. It was hoped to have the recovered bodies all in the armory by 10 o'clock, and until that time no one was admitted. Accordingly thousands formed in line hours before the great doors were opened, eagerly awaiting the chance to seek the bodies of kin and friends, believed to have been lost.

While those on land were disposing of the dead and injured rescued, divers in the heart of the sunken vessel sent up almost a constant stream of corpses. First it was a gaily dressed girl in teens who was caught between a pile of chairs, next a boy gathered from the lifeless arms of his father, than an old woman, who had gone aboard to watch her grandchildren or a little girl with bare legs and boots with gay ribbons sodden against the lace of her holiday gown.

Amidst all the horrors and heartache the various departments attended to the pressing duties of disposition of the dead and injured, tracing the missing, inquiry as to the cause of the disaster and precautions against diseases from sunken bodies and corpses drifting through the city toward the canal locks. Federal Judge Landis ordered a grand jury empaneled to investigate the catastrophe. District Attorney Hoyne prepared for a county grand jury inquiry. Coroner Hoffman selected a jury to look into the cause of the deaths and the health commissioner arranged to purify the river for fear disease might spread by the presence from many bodies in the stream. Preparations are being made to inspect the capsized ship.

PASSENGERS’ RUSH TO LOOK AT LAUNCH CAUSED DISASTER
[Associated Press Dispatch] CHICAGO, July 24 -- That a sudden rush of persons on the decks of the Eastland to the portside to look at a speeding launch caused the catastrophe was the assertion of Jack Elbert, guage tender on the steamer. He said he and J.M. Erickson, chief engineer, escaped by wading through the water in a hatch and crawling out a port hole into the river.

"The Eastland was kept stable by means of the water ballast system." Elbert said. "Water is pumped into the chambers until it becomes steady This is done even before freight is taken aboard. The first thing I noticed this morning was that the Eastland began to lean to starboard. Erickson was in charge of the pumps. He gave an order to steady the boat, and we pumped water in the other side until she was even. Wehad just evened her up when the launch came down the river and the crowd on deck rushed over to port side to look at it."

"The weight all on one side apparently proved too much and the Eastland began to tilt badly. We worked frantically at the pumps to try to bring her back." Eye witnesses informed the police that a man in the launch operating a moving picture camera attracted the passengers.