WHAT THE SURVIVORS TELL
Continued

J.V. Brown, of department 3092, was a member of the photographic committee of the picnic, and was among the last aboard the "Eastland." He was one of the comparatively few to escape of those who were caught on the river side of the lowest deck.

When I boarded the boat I went over to talk to the inspectors who were checking the people as they came on. I didn't see the actual count, but they told me that there was room for seven hundred more people. They must have been keeping good count, for one of the inspectors said that his count was within nine of the other man's. Considering the crowd, that was mighty close.

I was curious to see whether they actually checked everybody, and stayed there about five minutes. They did. Whenever a woman came through carrying a baby they counted two. I could hear the double clicks of the counters.

At one time the boat was listing so heavily to the starboard (dock) side, owing to the crowds on that side of the decks, that the top of the entrance was within two or three feet of the floor of the dock, so that people couldn't get in. After the boat had straightened up they began to come on board again.

The last on were two girls. I noticed them especially, as they were part of a party of six or eight that was split. After these two were aboard, the inspectors said the boat was full, and refused to let the rest through. The girls wanted to go back, but weren't allowed.

As soon as the gang-plank had been pulled in, Willard and I went in to see the purser about a place to put the cameras. The purser and I left Willard and started toward the engine room. Willard was by the stairway, and Macnutt, who had come up, was standing near him.

The purser and I were about twenty feet from the stairway, on the port (river) side of the boat, when suddenly I saw water begin to come in through the portholes. My first impulse was to jump for the stairs. You can get an idea of how fast the boat went over the fact that I was under water before I could reach them.

My idea was to get up the stairs to the deck above, which was more open. I swam over and started to go up - or rather along - them, for the boat was on her side by this time. But suddenly on of the people in the water grabbed my legs, another got hold of one arm, and a third got me by the hair.

Let me tell you, no man is a hero under water. I fought. I finally got loose - still under water - and managed to get to the top of the stairs. It was pitch black, but off to one side was a lighter streak. I made for that, and shot out of the water as far as my waist. I was in the dancing hall, with a porthole overhead.

Well, to me, I was saved. I had my head out of water, at least. A big armchair was floating by me; I managed to get across that, and coughed up a lot of river water. Suddenly someone grabbed the chair from below. It went down, and never came up. I had to swim again.

There were a good many people in there, most of them girls. Jack Morgan, from the machine shop, was fifteen or twenty feet away. He saved the lives of I don't know how many girls. He had found something to stand on and had a cane with a curved handle. He would reach out with the cane, hook some girl who was floundering around, and pull her in to him. At one time I counted seven hanging on to him.

One of the 2 x 4 posts that enclosed the musicians' stand was out of the water, and there were five girls hanging on to it, all fighting to pull themselves up.

I called out to them, "Girls! For God's sake stop fighting! Keep down and just keep your noses above water, and you'll all be saved." Those girls quieted down like magic. All five finally got out.

All this time I was swimming around - six or seven hours it seemed, although it probably wasn't over ten or fifteen minutes.

The people above had got the portholes open, and threw down life preservers. I managed to get one around each of the five girls, and then tried to get one around myself. Don't let anybody tell you that you can put on a life preserver in the water. I had to give it up, and finally got two, holding one under each arm, like a package.

They started to lower ropes through the portholes. The five girls were hauled up, and then I tried to get the rope around a fellow who had come up near me. He was so crazed with fright that he couldn't help himself, and every time I tried to help him he would try to pull me under. I had to fight him off as best I could, with my arms down at my sides holding my life preservers on.

Finally I got the end of the rope tied in a knot, made him straddle it, told him to hold on, and signaled to them to pull him up. He let go, and dropped back into the water.

I was getting pretty weak, so I put a life preserver on him, took hold of the rope myself, and went up.

When I got out on the side of the boat I couldn't stand. So I sat down and managed to slide down to a tug. Some firemen helped me off, and another fellow took me over to Steel & Wedell's warehouse and got me some hot coffee.

While I was in there I met a man whom I hadn't seen in ten years, who used to go to school with me. He got me a blanket and sent me home in an automobile.

My clothes were in rags where the people had clutched at me on the stairs. They had taken such a tight grip that when I tore loose, their hands simply took out pieces of the cloth. The back of my coat was gone, but some bills were still in my pocket, and my committee badge was still pinned to my lapel.

Lawrence Kramer is office boy for H.F. Albright, General Superintendent of the Hawthorne Works. Let him tell his experience in his own words.

I started for the picnic with another kid, who works in department 2063. When we got on the boat we saw how crowded it was, up on the upper decks, so we only went up one flight of stairs, to the second deck. It was pretty crowded even there, but we finally got a couple of chairs over on the river side of the boat. The part of the deck where we sat had walls, so that we weren't out in the open at all. We were sitting near the head of the stairs, at one end of a sort of alley that ran clear across from one side to the other. On the right side of this alley was the wall of one of the inside cabins; on the other side were the stairs, and then came the wall of another cabin.

We noticed that the boat seemed to be tipping over a good deal, but we didn't think much about it until it went clear over. I remember we couldn't keep our feet, and kept slipping back toward the side of the boat. The soda fountain was near where we were, over beyond the stairs, and that broke loose and fell down on a lot of people that were piled up near me.

When I came up out of the water I could see the portholes of the dock side of the boat right over my head. I got over to the wall of the cabin ahead of the stairs, and stood up on that. There were portholes in the side of that cabin too, and you could see the people who were caught inside. They'd come up to the surface of the water, and look at you, and then they'd go down again. Gee, it was awful!

When the boat started to go over, the other kid got over to the other side and hung on to one corner of the cabin that was toward the back of the boat. But a man fell down on top of him and knocked him into the water. After he came up he got over to where I was standing out of the water, and climbed up with me. The ceiling of the deck was behind us, and it had cross beams on it. So we crawled up that. I'd boost him, and he'd pull me up to where he was. When we got up to the top, we could just stick our heads out of the porthole, by reaching over. The other kid went through, and then I got hold of the edge of the porthole and swung over. There was a bench under the porthole, and I got one foot on that, and that steadied me.

I managed to get half way through the porthole, and then a fireman pulled me through the rest of the way.