On this day 110 years ago, a ship in the Chicago River between LaSalle Drive and Clark Street was loaded with more than 2,500 passengers — many of them Western Electric Co. employees and their families — ready to embark on a day trip to Michigan City, Indiana.
The SS Eastland had been known as the “Greyhound of the Great Lakes.” The vessel, however, was built to serve as a freighter — not an excursion vessel.
“It was owned by a couple of rich guys who had no business being in the boat business,” Tribune columnist Rick Kogan wrote in 2019. “It was a disaster waiting to happen.”
Here’s a look back at what’s become known as the Eastland Disaster and its aftermath.
July 24, 1915
When the Eastland swayed then suddenly rolled onto its side, hundreds of passengers became trapped inside the vessel — just feet from the dock — as water poured in.
A total of 844 people died, making it one of the worst maritime events in United States history and the deadliest single day event in the city’s history (about 300 died in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and 602 were died in a fire at the Iroquois Theatre in 1903).
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Bodies of the dead were taken to the 2nd Regiment Armory, which later became the site of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios. Bodies were laid out in rows of 85, and after seven days, all had been identified.
Photographers with the city’s eight daily newspapers raced to the scene on that summer Saturday morning as word of the Eastland quickly spread to newsrooms.
Lyman Atwell of the Herald, Robert Hollihan Sr. of the American and Godfrey Lundberg and Fred C. Eckhardt of the Tribune also took photos that day.
Another photographer was Jun Fujita, a 25-year-old Japanese immigrant who had been taking pictures in Chicago for about a year. Fujita ended up capturing one of the iconic photos of the day, a picture of a firefighter with an anguished look on his face holding a dead boy. Fujita also took photos of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre and the city’s 1919 race riots, before he took to writing poetry.
July 31, 1915
The Tribune printed five pages of obituaries about the Eastland’s known victims.
Campaigns were started to reimburse victims’ families. The Red Cross distributed a total of $170,000 (or roughly $5.4 million in today’s dollars) to families in the form of 540 checks.
Aug. 13-14, 1915
After settling into several feet of mud, the ship was lifted to an angle of 70 degrees, and finally righted by the Favorite, a tug boat.
December 1915
William “Frenchy” Deneau had been considered a hero for recovering hundreds of victims’ bodies following the disaster. The experienced diver was back in the river months later laying cable when he hit metal.
Deneau believed he had found a submarine owned by Peter Nissen, an adventurer who garnered front-page headlines for his successful navigation of Niagara River rapids along the U.S.-Canada border. He worked with the federal government to secure ownership of the vessel and raise it.
Starting in February 1916, visitors to the Rector Building on State Street could tour the “tragic and historic relic.” Deneau, now calling himself a captain, placed a full-page advertisement in the Tribune for “the most intensely interesting exhibit ever shown in Chicago.”
The Tribune had no further mention of Deneau’s prized artifact. The boat’s connection to Nissen is confounding and its whereabouts today are unknown.
February 1916
Six men had been indicted for operating an unsafe ship and for criminal negligence. They were:
- Robert Reid, U.S. steamboat inspector whose connection with the Eastland’s inspection was exposed by the Tribune
- C.C. Eckliff, U.S. inspector of steamboat boilers
- William H. Hull, vice president and general manager of the St. Joseph-Chicago Transportation Co., which owned the Eastland
- W.K. Greenebaum, general manager of the Indiana Transportation Co., which charted the Eastland
- Harry Pedersen, captain of the Eastland
- Joseph M. Erickson, chief engineer of the Eastland and son-in-law of Reid
A trial was held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that featured famed attorney Clarence Darrow, who represented Erickson. A judge ruled the prosecution failed to make a case against the men.
Nov. 21, 1917
The Eastland was salvaged and sold to the U.S. Navy. Many Chicagoans gathered to boo the vessel as it left the Chicago River to undergo restorations and some modifications, that would convert it into a gunboat. Its name changed to the USS Wilmette, and it functioned mostly as a training ship on the Great Lakes. The Wilmette riddled a German submarine with cannon fire in 1921, sending it to the bottom of Lake Michigan about 20 miles east of Highland Park.
After World War II, the Wilmette was sold for scrap.
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June 4, 1989
Students at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora had researched the tragedy and were shocked to find no details about it in school textbooks. That’s why they worked to erect a plaque at Clark Street and Wacker Drive.
Eastland survivor Libby Hruby told those assembled for the dedication of the marker that she was plucked from the water by her sister.
After it disappeared in 2000, the plaque was replaced and rededicated in 2003.
December 2014
A collection of nearly 100 black-and-white glass-plate negatives — many of them never published — were discovered in the basement of Tribune Tower.
The images from the Tribune archives were found inside two cardboard boxes in the newspaper’s dimly lit, temperature-controlled basement archives five floors below Michigan Avenue. Marianne Mather, a photo editor at the Tribune, discovered the Eastland images as she searched for other images.
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The photographs capture the aftermath of one of Chicago’s worst disasters: rows of sheet-covered bodies inside a temporary morgue, two women crying while clutching a baby in a blanket, a Coast Guard crew hauling a woman out of the river, the Eastland flopped over in the water like a plastic toy in a bathtub, dozens of people atop its side, awaiting rescue.
July 24, 2015
Several hundred people gathered on the Chicago Riverwalk — many of them descendants of the Eastland’s victims and survivors — to mark a century after the tragic event.
Others visited Bohemian National Cemetery at Pulaski Road and Foster Avenue on the Northwest Side, which has 143 Eastland victims buried in its plots — the most of any cemetery in the Chicago area. Of the 22 families wiped out by the disaster, four are buried at Bohemian. Some, including those of Czech ancestry, include a short line — “obet Eastlandu,” or “victim of the Eastland.”
Flashback: Touring the Bohemian National Cemetery grounds with ‘Cemetery Lady’ Helen Sclair
A memorial was unveiled just prior to the major anniversary. It features a black plaque that describes the disaster on one side and gives details of the Eastland gravesites on the other. A granite slab with a steamship’s steering wheel juts out of a granite slab with carved ripples that represent the sinking of the ship and its raising following the incident.
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