Overloaded and Top Heavy, the "Eastland" Founders at Its Dock in the Chicago River--Faulty Construction of Excursion Boat and Shallowness of Water Are Contributing Causes of the Unusual Marine Disaster

For more than eleven years the steamship "Eastland," one of the fastest twin-screw boats on the Great Lakes, navigated without meeting with disaster. It was notoriously topheavy and temperamental. It had a habit of careening, not only when in a heavy sea, but when in smooth water. From the time of its launching it was a constant source of trouble to its owners and navigators alike. But by keeping an engineer at the pumps to trim it whenever it listed dangerously, and on one occasion by turning a fire hose on its passengers to drive them below, the ship carried hundreds of thousands of pleasure seekers between different lake ports during its career without accident.

But on Saturday morning, July 24, the ship, loaded with 2,500--or more--picnickers, turned over on its port side and sank at its berth in the Chicago River.

The catastrophe occurred in the very heart of the city and before the gaze of thousands of persons. One second there was a din of laughter, shouts of "bon voyage," and the strumming of stringed instruments, the next second there was a bedlam of sickening screams, the swish of churning water, and the hollow groans of death.

How many persons lost their lives is not yet known. A week after the disaster 836 bodies had been recovered and all but one of them identified. Five hundred and seventeen passengers were still missing. The majority of the victims were women, girls, and babies.

It was literally not more than one minute after the steamer had toppled over and lay half submerged with its port side resting on the bottom of the river, that rescuers were at work pulling countless bedraggled forms from the muddy water. In five minutes more, hundreds of policemen, firemen, sailors, dock hands, and volunteers were busy, while river craft of every description were alongside. Several hundred passengers crowded on the starboard of the "Eastland" grabbed the rails, clambered onto the upturned side of the ship, and escaped with their lives. Others at the bow and stern, who were dismayed and weakened by fear, one by one loosened their hold and fell down--the perpendicular deck into the water. Many of those who jammed the top decks were hurled free from the superstructure as the steamer went over. Hundreds of women and children on the lower decks and staterooms were hopelessly trapped.

In an incredibly short time, men with oxyacetylene torches were cutting holes in the steel hull through which a few entombed persons were drawn out alive. Subsequently divers penetrated the hold in this way and recovered hundreds of bodies. Before darkness came, poles were erected over the exposed side of the ship and powerful incandescent lamps mounted in reflectors spaced at short intervals to illuminate the hull and allow the work to proceed throughout the night. Other batteries of lights were trained from the opposite wharves, lighting the river on all sides. As rapidly as the bodies of the unfortunate ones were lifted out of the ship they were placed in waiting ambulances and taken to different morgues.

The cause of the disaster may be found in several things. Primarily the ship was faulty in construction. It was built for speed and not for stability. Its safety depended almost entirely upon the condition of the valves of its water-ballast compartments, of which it had ten. The design of its hull might be compared with that of a canoe, for the lines were graceful, its beam narrow, and its ends tapered. The bottom was almost as round as a boiler and there was no keelson. The height and weight of the superstructure, according to competent marine architects, was out of proportion to the body of the vessel. It was fundamentally top heavy.

The draft of the ship could be varied from 10-1/2 to 16 ft. in a short time by taking in, or expelling, water ballast. With the tanks empty and the upper decks of the vessel overburdened with humanity, the condition of the ship was most precarious. Whether or not this was the true situation at the time of the catastrophe is a subject to be determined. It has been asserted as fact by apparently good authorities. It has also been partly denied, the contention being made that some of the tanks had some water in them.

In view of the shallow draft of the ship when its tanks were empty--not an uncommon condition, because it is said to have been the habit of its navigators to expel the ballast when entering the river and taking it on when reaching the lake--its "metacentric height" is an interesting feature to observe. This is the determining factor in the stability of a ship. Technically it is the distance between a ship's center of gravity and center of buoyancy. The greater the metacentric height--or in other words the farther the center of gravity is below the buoyancy point of the vessel--the farther it may list to one side or the other without danger. Similarly, a ship whose metacentric height is ample is not so prone to list. In the case of the "Eastland," the metacentric height is alleged to have been only four inches. That of the average lake boat is 18 in., while in two recently built passenger steamers entering the port it amounts to 1 ft. 8 in. and 5 ft., respectively. From this it may readily be seen why the ship capsized so quickly after having listed to a certain point.

In the course of testimony before one of the six inquisitorial bodies investigating the catastrophe, it was asserted that the ship's engineer tried for 17 minutes to trim the vessel after it first commenced listing when passengers were taken aboard. Attempts were made to take water into the starboard ballast tanks in order to straighten the steamer, which was listing dangerously to port. A few minutes before the end came the vessel righted itself and it was thought the trouble had been overcome. Almost immediately, however, it again slipped toward the river, this time gradually listing more and more until it suddenly overbalanced completely and settled into the water. There is some possibility that the starboard side of the ship was grounded, and that this expedited the tragedy.

Most of the passengers were ignorant of danger, although many on the docks feared the listing long before the disaster occurred. The vessel was so completely jammed, it is said, that it was difficult to work from one side to the other of the decks; which indicates that the load was distributed. The aggregate weight of the passengers, in any event, could not have amounted to more than 165 tons, a load not great enough to capsize a thoroughly seaworthy, well-built boat of the "Eastland's" size.