SS Eastland

The SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. On July 24, 1915 the ship rolled over while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew were killed in what was to become the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.

Following the disaster, the Eastland was salvaged and sold to the United States Navy. After restorations and modifications the Eastland was designated as a gunboat and renamed the USS Wilmette. She was used primarily as a training vessel on the Great Lakes and was scrapped following World War II.

Construction
The ship was commissioned in 1902 by the Michigan Steamship Company and built by the Jenks Ship Building Company. In April 1903, the ship was named by Mrs. David Reid of South Haven, Michigan. She received a prize of $10 and a one-season pass on the ship. The ship was named in May, immediately before its inaugural voyage.

Early problems
Following its construction the Eastland was discovered to have design flaws making it susceptible to listing. The ship was top-heavy along with the center of gravity being too high. This became evident when passengers congregated en masse on the upper decks. In July 1903, a case of overcrowding caused the Eastland to list with water flowing up one of the ship's gangplanks. The situation was quickly rectified but this was the first of many incidents. Later in the same month the stern of the ship was damaged when it was backed into the tugboat George W. Gardner. In August 1906 another incident of listing occurred which resulted in the filing of complaints against the Chicago-South Haven Line which had purchased the ship earlier that year.

Mutiny on the Eastland
On August 14, 1903, while on a cruise from Chicago to South Haven, Michigan, some of the ship's firemen refused to stoke the fire for the ship's boiler. They claimed that they had not received their potatoes for a meal. When they refused to return to the fire hole, Captain John Pereue ordered the six men arrested at gun point. Firemen George Lippen and Benjamin Myers, who were not a part of the group of six, stoked the fires until the ship reached harbor. Upon the ship's arrival in South Haven, the six men, Glenn Watson, Mike Davern, Frank La Plarte, Edward Fleming, Mike Smith, and William Madden, were taken to the town jail. Shortly after the mutiny Captain Pereue was replaced.

The Eastland disaster
On July 24, 1915, the Eastland and two other Great Lakes passenger steamers, the Theodore Roosevelt and the Petoskey, were chartered to take employees from Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, to a picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. This was a major event in the lives of the workers, many of whom could not take holidays. Many of the passengers on the Eastland were Czech immigrants from Cicero, Illinois; 220 of them perished.



In 1915, the new federal Seamen's Act had been passed because of the RMS Titanic disaster. This required retrofitting of a complete set of lifeboats on the Eastland as on many other passenger vessels. This additional weight, ironically, probably made the Eastland more dangerous and it worsened the already severe problem of being top-heavy. Some argued that other Great Lakes ships would suffer from the same problem. Nonetheless, it was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. The Eastland was already so top-heavy that it had special restrictions concerning the number of passengers that could be carried. Prior to that, in June 1914, the Eastland had again changed hands, this time bought by the St. Joseph and Chicago Steamship Company, with Captain Harry Pedersen appointed the ship's master.

On the fateful morning, passengers began boarding the Eastland on the south bank of the Chicago River between Clark and LaSalle Streets around 6:30, and by 7:10 a.m., the ship had reached its capacity of 2,572 passengers. The ship was packed, with many passengers standing on the open upper decks, and began to list slightly to the port side (away from the wharf). The crew attempted to stabilize the ship by admitting water to its ballast tanks, but to little avail. Sometime in the next 15 minutes, a number of passengers rushed to the port side, and at 7:28, the Eastland lurched sharply to port and then rolled completely onto its side, coming to rest on the river bottom, which was only 20 feet below the surface. Many other passengers had already moved below decks on this relatively cool and damp morning to warm up before the departure. Consequently, hundreds were trapped inside by the water and the sudden rollover; others were crushed by heavy furniture, including pianos, bookcases, and tables. Although the ship was only 20 feet from the wharf, and in spite of the quick response by the crew of a nearby vessel, the Kenosha, which came alongside the hull to allow those stranded on the capsized vessel to leap to safety, a total of 844 passengers and four crew members died in the disaster.

The bodies of the victims were taken to various temporary morgues set up in the area for identification; by afternoon, the remaining unidentified bodies were consolidated at the 2nd Regiment Armory, on the site which has since been transformed into Harpo Studios, the sound stage for The Oprah Winfrey Show and other productions. One of the makeshift morgues was set up in a building that is now the Excalibur Club, located close to the Chicago Hard Rock Cafe.

One of the people who was scheduled to be on the Eastland was 20-year-old George Halas, who was delayed leaving for the dock, and arrived after the ship had capsized. Despite stories to the contrary, there is no reliable evidence that Jack Benny was on board the Eastland or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that the Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Jack Benny received his training on the Great Lakes naval base, where the Eastland was stationed.

Eastland disaster and the media
Writer Jack Woodford witnessed the disaster and gave a first-hand account to the Herald and Examiner, a Chicago newspaper. In his autobiography, Woodford writes:"And then movement caught my eye. I looked across the river. As I watched in disoriented stupefaction a steamer large as an ocean liner slowly turned over on its side as though it were a whale going to take a nap. I didn't believe a huge steamer had done this before my eyes, lashed to a dock, in perfectly calm water, in excellent weather, with no explosion, no fire, nothing. I thought I had gone crazy."

Carl Sandburg, then better known as a journalist than a poet, wrote an angry account accusing regulators of turning a blind eye to safety issues. He also claimed that many of the workers were there on company orders for a staged picnic: "Grim industrial feudalism stands with dripping and red hands behind the whole Eastland affair."

Sandburg also wrote a poem, "The Eastland," that contrasts the disaster with the mistreatment and poor health of the lower classes at the time. After first listing the quick murderous horrors of the disaster, then surveying the slow murderous horrors of extreme poverty, Sandburg concludes by comparing the two: "I see a dozen Eastlands/Every morning on my way to work/And a dozen more going home at night." It was too harsh for publication in his day, and not published until 1993.

In 2012, Chicago's Lookingglass Theatre produced an original musical about the disaster entitled Eastland: A New Musical and written by Andy White.

Inquiry and indictments
A grand jury indicted the president and three other officers of the steamship company for manslaughter, and the ship's captain and engineer for criminal carelessness, and found that the disaster was caused by "conditions of instability" caused by any or all of overloading of passengers, mishandling of water ballast, or the construction of the ship.

Federal extradition hearings were held to compel the six indicted men to come from Michigan to Illinois for trial. During the hearings, principal witness Sidney Jenks, head of the shipbuilding company that built the Eastland, testified that its first owners wanted a fast ship to transport fruit, and he designed one capable of making 20 miles per hour and carrying 500 passengers. Defense counsel Clarence Darrow asked whether he had ever worried about the conversion of ship into a passenger steamer with a capacity of 2,500 or more passengers. Jenks replied, "I had no way of knowing the quantity of its business after it left our yards... No, I did not worry about the Eastland." Jenks testified that there was never an actual stability test of the ship, and stated that after tilting to an angle of 45 degrees at launching, "...it righted itself as straight as a church, satisfactorily demonstrating its stability."

The court refused extradition, holding the evidence was too weak, with "barely a scintilla of proof" to establish probable cause to find the six guilty. The court reasoned that the four company officers were not aboard the ship, and that every act charged against the captain and engineer was done in the ordinary course of business, "more consistent with innocence than with guilt." The court also reasoned that the Eastland "was operated for years and carried thousands safely", and that for this reason no one could say that the accused parties were unjustified in believing the ship seaworthy.

Second life as USS Wilmette
After the Eastland was raised on August 14, 1915, she was sold to the Illinois Naval Reserve and recommissioned as USS Wilmette stationed at Great Lakes Naval Base. She was converted to a gunboat, renamed Wilmette on February 20, 1918, and commissioned on September 20, 1918 with Captain William B. Wells in command. Commissioned late in World War I, Wilmette saw no combat service. She trained sailors and engaged in normal upkeep and repairs until placed in ordinary at Chicago on July 9, 1919, retaining a 10-man caretaker crew on board. On June 29, 1920 the gunboat was returned to full commission, with Captain Edward A. Evers,, in command.

On June 7, 1921, the Wilmette was given the task of sinking UC-97, a German U-Boat surrendered to the United States after World War I. The guns of the Wilmette were manned by Gunner's Mate J.O. Sabin, who had fired the first American shell in World War I, and Gunner's Mate A.F. Anderson, the man who fired the first American torpedo in the conflict. For the remainder of her 25-year career, the gunboat served as a training ship for naval reservists in the 9th, 10th, and 11th Naval Districts. She made voyages along the shores of the Great Lakes carrying trainees assigned to her from the Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois. Wilmette remained in commission, carrying out her reserve training mission until she was placed "out of commission, in service," on February 15, 1940.

Given hull designation IX-29 on February 17, 1941, she resumed training duty at Chicago on March 30, 1942, preparing armed guard crews for duty manning the guns on armed merchantmen. That assignment continued until the end of World War II in Europe obviated measures to protect transatlantic merchant shipping from German U-boats.

During August 1943 the Wilmette was given the honor of transporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Admiral William D. Leahy, James F. Byrnes and Harry Hopkins on a 10-day cruise to McGregor and Whitefish Bay to plan war strategies.

On April 9, 1945, she was returned to full commission for a brief interval. Wilmette was decommissioned on November 28, 1945, and her name was struck from the Navy list on December 19, 1945. In 1946, the Wilmette was offered up for sale. Finding no takers, on October 31, 1946, she was sold to the Hyman Michaels Company for scrapping which was completed in 1947.

Memorials
A marker dedicated to the accident was dedicated on June 4, 1989. This marker was reported stolen on April 26, 2000 and a replacement marker was installed and rededicated on July 24, 2003.

There are plans for a permanent outdoor exhibit with the proposed name "At The River's Edge". This exhibit would be at the exact location of the disaster. The exhibit will include 6 steel frames for a total of 12 panels. The 12 panels will combine text with high-resolution images to tell the story of the disaster.