The worst disaster in Chicago history was not 1903’s Iroquois
Theater fire, when 603 people died in a blaze during a performance
of a Christmas play. Nor was it the Great Fire, which destroyed the
whole of the city from Fullerton Ave. to the near Southwest Side.
That dubious honor goes to the sinking of the boat the Eastland,
according to members of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, a
group devoted to preserving the memory of the Eastland and those who
died on it.
More than 2500 people boarded the Eastland from the Chicago
river wharves between LaSalle and Clark streets on July 24, 1915.
They were Western Electric employees and their families, bound for
the annual company picnic in Michigan City, Ind. But the ship never
even made it from the dock before it capsized in the river, turning
a cruise into a catastrophe.
Despite heroic rescue efforts—welders tried to save those
trapped beneath decks by cutting holes in the sides of the ship, and
police and volunteers formed a human chain to save others—800 people
died that hot July day. According to legend, their ghosts still
haunt Harpo Studios—once the site of a temporary morgue set up for
victims of the accident.
But divers scouring the bottom of the river Sunday, Dec. 12,
were not looking for ghosts. They were looking for the more tangible
remains of the Eastland’s passengers—like the combs Elsa Neumann
lost when a rescuer pulled her out of the water by her hair.
Sponsored by the Eastland Historical Society, the Underwater
Archeological Society and the Museum of Science and Industry, 14
volunteer divers braved 45-degree waters to search the river’s
bottom for artifacts that were to be displayed in the museum’s
Titanic exhibition, opening next February.
But the divers turned up nothing but old bottles, a cup, some
pipe and a saw horse in the river’s murky waters. The stuff may be
nothing more than trash, as none of the recovered items are known to
have come from the Eastland.
Though the dive did not salvage any of the Eastland’s artifacts,
it did much to revive interest in the ship’s tragic history. One of
those on hand working to stimulate that interest was the Eastland
Memorial Society’s founder, Karl J. Sup. It was his grandmother who
lost her combs. Coincidentally, also on board that day was her
future husband, Herman Krause, whom she had not yet met.
Once widely known as the worst tragedy in Chicago and Great
Lakes naval history, the Eastland disaster eventually faded in
memory. The Titanic was commemorated in film, and the Edmund
Fitzgerald in song, but the Eastland was forgotten.
Ironically, it may have been the sinking of the H.M.S. Titanic
three years earlier that led to the Eastland disaster. The Eastland,
already unstable, was made even more top-heavy by the additional
lifeboats it was required to carry after the Titanic tragedy.
