The sinking of the Titanic on April 15, 1912, had a significant impact on vessel safety that endures today. However, one of the changes had an unintended result.

One of the best-known changes was the requirement that vessels sail with enough lifeboat capacity for everyone on board. By January 1914, The International Conference on the Safety of Life at Sea, meeting in London, stated as a "Fundamental Principle" that "At no moment on its voyage may a vessel have on board a total number of persons greater than that for whom accommodation is provided in the lifeboats and life rafts on board." On March 4, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the La Follette Seaman's Act, mandating, among other requirements, lifeboats for all. Four and a half months later, the new law contributed one of the worst maritime disasters in U.S. history-the capsize of the Great Lakes passenger steamer Eastland, which left 844 dead-according to George W. Hilton in his book, Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic.

By July 24, 1915, World War I had been raging in Europe for 11 months. The Titanic was old news by this point, and the Cunard liner Lusitania, sunk on May 7 by a torpedo from a German U-boat resulting in 1,201 deaths, had become a household word.

In downtown Chicago, however, prospects of death seemed far away from the south bank of the Chicago River, where the early morning July temperatures were mild, boding well for a picnic day trip on Lake Michigan. Alongside the Clark Street dock lay the 275-by-38.2-foot Eastland, a handsome, white, twin-screw passenger steamer that was one of six vessels that had been chartered to transport employees of the Western Electric Company to a company picnic in Michigan City, Ind.

Eastland had been launched in 1903 by the Jenks Ship Building Company in Port Huron, Mich., for the Michigan Steamship Company's 77-mile service between Chicago and South Haven, Mich. It was sold to Lake Shore Navigation Company in 1907 and operated for five years without incident on Lake Erie. In 1913, Eastland returned to Lake Michigan under the ownership of the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company.

Twenty-two days prior to the accident, Eastland's owners, in response to the La Follette Act, had mounted three additional lifeboats, six additional life rafts and their associated handling gear on the upper deck, raising her lawful capacity to 2,500. Earlier that summer, two decks diagnosed with rot had been reinforced with concrete. These were not the first additions of weight to the Eastland. Before Eastland was even a year old, the ship's original owners added machinery to her upper deck. A forced-air system was installed to pre-heat the air being fed into her boilers' fireboxes, part of a successful attempt to increase her speed. A primitive but effective air conditioning system was also installed, passing ventilation air through a cascade of lake water in order to cool the closed interior compartments. The exact weight of these early additions is unknown, but according to the Eastland Memorial Society, questions about the ship's stability were raised numerous times due to a consistent list, particularly when loading passengers. Lincoln P. Paine, in Ships of the World, An Historical Encyclopedia, recounts a story that rumors of the Eastland's instability led the Lake Shore Navigation Company to offer a $5,000 reward to any competent engineer who could prove the ship was unsafe. Despite the offer, no challenge to the ship's safety came forward.

Eastland's bow was facing downstream for a prompt departure when passengers began to board at 0640 on July 24. During passenger boarding, the vessel gradually developed a starboard list, toward the dock, which onlookers concluded was the result of so many passengers gathering along that side of the ship to greet acquaintances ashore who were still waiting to board.

Eastland's chief engineer, 32-year-old Joseph Erickson, who had been employed aboard the ship for less than four months, had seen the vessel behave in this way before. He had learned all the routine steps that would correct the ship's list. In this case, as was customary, he responded by pumping water ballast into the port ballast tanks at 0648. The list was temporally stabilized at 0651. The vessel began to list to port at 0653. It temporarily stabilized but resumed the port list at 0700. By 0710, the ship was loaded to its 2,501-passenger capacity. By 0715, observers across the river remarked that the Eastland was listing badly to port. At 0718, Eastland recovered momentarily as the aft breast line was taken in but then resumed its list to port. At 0720, Eastland began shipping across the port decks and the list continued to steepen. This motion occurred over a period of just a few minutes, as boarding was completed, and the gangways were taken in. The passengers who were already aboard, especially those who had congregated near the starboard rail on the upper deck, could see that there would be no new arrivals and accordingly began to disperse, some crossing the deck to the port rail to observe the river as the vessel got under way. At approximately 0724, Eastland's captain rang "stand by" on the engine room telegraph and pressed a buzzer to order the stern lines off.

Capt. Harry Pederson, 55-years old and, like ship's engineer Erickson, Norwegian born, was also accustomed to his vessel's propensity to occasionally take on a remarkable degree of list. He was unconcerned as he ordered the stern lines off at 0724 and signaled the tug Kenosha, standing by under the bow, to get ready for departure. The lines were taken off and, without influence from her own engines or from her tug Kenosha, the stern very gradually began to swing away from the dock. As it did, the Eastland's list to port steepened and never stopped. With thousands of people gazing in disbelief and the three bow lines still tied to the pier, the Eastland steadily, almost gracefully, rolled over and came to rest on its port side in 20 feet of water. Down in the engine room, as the murky, brown water poured in, Erickson realized the danger that was upon him and the ship. He stayed below deck and frantically opened cold water valves into the boilers, pulling their temperature down sufficiently to avert an explosion. He later managed to escape.

The water was shallow enough that most of the starboard hull plates remained dry. Many passengers on the upper deck were able to scramble over the rail onto the Eastland's side, and those below decks near a gangway were similarly lucky to find a perch on the outside of the hull. Despite the shallow water and proximity to the pier, 844 people drowned-841 passengers, two Eastland crewman and one crewman from the nearby ship Petoskey.

As Hilton describes in his book in great detail, the explanation of the Eastland's loss was more complex than simply the additional weight of new lifeboats and other equipment. The ballast tanks that Erickson was in the process of trimming spanned each half of the width of the hull. They had been designed into the ship to allow her to temporarily reduce draft when crossing the shallow bars at small harbor entrances along the Lake Michigan shore. When filled, they increased not just the draft but also the stability of the vessel. In a state of partial discharge, however, as they were on that July morning, the water within had a considerable free-surface effect, like that of a shallow dishpan of water. The fundamental stability of the vessel had always been delicate when the tanks were anything other than full because of the decrease in displacement combined with the added weight aloft. As the Eastland righted herself on the day of her disaster, the tanks' contents shifted from starboard to port and remained there for the duration of the incident. Further, the tank vents were open throughout the capsize, and, as the port tank vents submerged, river water backfilled that set of tanks while the starboard set contributed little or nothing to stability. Due to the plumbing of the intake and discharge manifold, the tanks' contents could not be transferred from one side to the other-they had to be emptied or filled one at a time, another contributing flaw.

Federal indictments were filed against the operators of the Eastland, charging them with conspiracy to operate an unsafe ship. Eventually they were found innocent, on the narrow but legally compelling grounds that there was no conspiracy-everyone acted independently and, furthermore, behaved as they always had, as they thought right and proper based on their experience of the ship. The state of Illinois also charged the crew on various counts, but, due to the separate federal case and subsequent extradition difficulties, the state never prosecuted anyone. Later, the indictments were dropped against all but Pederson and Erickson. Both men survived the capsize and escaped prosecution, Erickson through an untimely death from heart disease and Pederson by the expedient of never returning to Illinois. According to Paine, court cases related to the Eastland continued for another 20 years after the sinking, with most courts placing the blame on Erickson and not the company.

Although not a direct result, a review of Hilton's Book, Robert Johnson's book on the history of the U.S. Coast Guard, Guardians of the Sea, and the evolution of stability regulations in the Federal Register from 1942 to 1950 suggests that the loss of the Eastland was a factor in producing what mariners know today as the "stability test," now required of all U.S.-registered passenger and merchant vessels. Some vessel owners grumble about the test; they seem to regard it as another needless, oppressive act of the federal government. Perhaps the test does reek of zealous over-regulation. After all, no designer, builder or operator would wish to have anything to do with a vessel prone to roll bottom-up. But presumably neither did anyone associated with the Eastland, which reached that state incrementally.

The civilian Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation, successor to the Steamboat Inspection Service, developed modern stability rules. In the years after the Eastland accident, other vessels, including tugs and other non-passenger types, were lost as a result of stability flaws, and stability regulations became gradually more sophisticated in response. In 1942, by a wartime executive order of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Bureau of Marine Inspection and Navigation was transferred into the Coast Guard. In 1946, upon the major post-war reorganization authorized by President Harry S. Truman, the Coast Guard permanently took over vessel inspections.

The Titanic reaches out from the past and touches the daily lives of every mariner, not just those who traverse the wintry North Atlantic. The unfortunate Eastland, which author Hilton says was Titanic's legatee, touches us even more surely. Eastland had been modified in several ways during her short career, each minor but ultimately critical. Each change represented another link in the chain of incidents that would send her passengers and some of the crew to their deaths. On the night that Titanic sank, Eastland was already a deeply flawed vessel, but the law that resulted from Titanic, and the changes that Eastland's owners made in response, set the stage for another influential catastrophe.

Alan Bliss has held a Master's license since 1982. He is presently a graduate student of history at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Photographs courtesy Eastland Memorial Society.