Hello, this is Edna Ville. I am one of the writers for Macabre Tavern’s Dangerous Tides. For those unaware at the time of this recording, Yanni Hamburger had gotten sick earlier and strained his voice, so in lieu of his voiceover, I will be reading this episode out in his stead. Thank you, and enjoy this week’s episode.
Today, we are going to examine another ship on the Great Lakes that had been the harshest truth of Chicago’s waterways, forgotten in between the midst of two catastrophic events. One, of course, being the Titanic, which needs no introduction among even the most casual of maritime historians. Three years after the sinking of the Titanic, a massive ship would founder on the Chicago River, killing more working class passengers than on the Titanic, most being women and children. Despite it getting very little pop culture recognition in recent years, it stands as a cautionary tale of corporate greed, negligence, and incompetence as well as a tale of heroism among passenger ships on the Chicago River. This is The SS Eastland Disaster, here on Dangerous Tides.
In the early 1900s, business was booming on The Great Lakes, particularly around the Chicago area. In 1890, the population would reach 1 million people, and by the turn of the century it would reach 1.6 million. By 1910, that figure nearly doubled. One central business involved in the economy of Chicago was Western Electric Company, a subsidiary of American Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. Western Electric was the primary manufacturer, supplier, and purchaser of the Bell telephone system in the early 1900’s. To put it in perspective, Western Electric was the Microsoft or Google of 1915. In their Chicago plant, they had some workers’ rights issues, with some violence erupting as the workers demanded shorter days and better working conditions, so Western Electric moved this plant to Hawthorne, a neighborhood 10 miles west, as a way to accommodate more workers and less fuss.
The Hawthorne Plant occupied 203 acres of land, considered a “town within a town”, according to author and Eastland researcher, Jay Bonansinga. The population was predominantly first and second-generation Czech and Polish immigrants. Hawthorne Plant had amenities such as its own railroad station, athletic fields, company stores, gymnasium, ice cream parlors, laundries. After a grueling six day work week at Western Electric, it was meant to balance with a culture that emphasized fun. An entertainment committee called the Hawthorne Club hosted an annual company picnic, with tickets costing only 75 cents, or roughly $24 in today’s money, allowed a boat trip from Chicago to Michigan City for a day of relaxation, games, swimming, and socializing.
On the early morning of July 24, 1915, the employees of Western Electric, along with friends and family, all gathered on the south pier between North Clark and North La Salle Street. 2500 people who were excited for the company picnic waited to board the SS Eastland , tied to the wharf by five lines on the bank. At 6:40 am, the employees began to board. One would-be passenger, the 13-year-old Bobbie Aanstad (On-stod) could hardly contain herself as her uncle Olaf, her mother, Marianne, and her 9-year old sister Solveig arrived at the crack of dawn to be the first on board and get the best seats.
Upon boarding the Eastland, Marianne commented that she didn’t like the feel of the Eastland. Having grown up as the daughter of a Norwegian fisherman and spent a terrifying couple of weeks aboard a ship emigrating to America when Bobbie was just an infant, Marianne had a sense for boats’ integrity and this one didn’t feel right to her. She told Bobbie “there are too many people on board this boat.” Already one minute into boarding, the Eastland started to list on the starboard side toward the dock. Less than 15 minutes later, the Eastland listed again, this time, portside to the river. The passengers, who were inexperienced with boats, considered it like an amusement ride as the boat started listing from side to side as the ballast tanks attempted to straighten the ship.
At 7:00 am, boarding resumed and the portside list continued. The order was still given to start the Eastland’s engines. By 7:10, the Eastland was at full capacity of 2500 passengers and 70 crew. Between the next 10 minutes, the boat listed, corrected itself, then listed again before correcting itself. By 7:20am Harbormaster Adam Weckler noticed the list, yelling up to the captain, Harry Pedersen, that he would not allow the Eastland to cast off unless the ship was brought back to keel. Captain Pedersen wasn’t worried, however, because he knew the Eastland had been known to list before without incident.
The Eastland was built by the Jenks Shipping Company, who were known for building cargo ships. For those who are unfamiliar with how cargo ships are built, their stationary weight was carried on the lower decks. But the Eastland was built to be a passenger ship, which meant the weight would be carried on the upper decks. When the Eastland was launched in 1903, the ship had a reputation for being “cranky” or unstable in the water, due to the increasing top-heaviness of the boat. After the Titanic sank, the Seamen’s Act would require a retrofitting of complete sets of lifeboats on passenger ships, adding more weight to the upper-decks. Some of the Eastland’s floors were replaced with concrete, making her even more top-heavy. In short, the Eastland was designed poorly for passengers, but given the situation, the Eastland’s designers over the years had known there was more money in passenger ships.
It was certainly no secret among the ship’s owners or the passengers it attracted. In fact, around 1910, the owners themselves took out an ad in the Cleveland Plain Dealer offering a $5000 reward to prove The Eastland was dangerous, calling her the “staunchest, fastest, and safest boat devoted to pleasure on The Great Lakes”. To put it in perspective, in today’s money, it would be a little over $166,000.
So, in spite of all the instability issues, Captain Pedersen continued preparations to disembark, even as water was coming on the main deck. By 7:27am, the list was at such an angle, many of the passengers on the top deck were asked to move starboard. But because of the now 40-degree list and the slippery deck, they were unable to move. The passengers weren’t panicked. The Eastland’s band was playing ragtime, and people were joking about the ship’s lean in an attempt to stay lighthearted. While the popular convention remembers it as a sudden rush of passengers to the other side of the ship, the court records from the criminal trial and the civil trial documented testimony from every eyewitness saying they saw no sudden movement of passengers on the ship. So, in truth, the passengers were not at fault for the oncoming tragedy.
A minute later, the list increased to 45 degrees. Clean tableware fell from the shelves and shattered, the band stopped playing in the middle of a song when the piano slid to port, almost crushing two women. A new refrigerator slid to port, pinning two women under. Water rushed in from the gangway and the portholes. It was then the passengers began to panic, racing for the main stairway. The rush created a bottleneck that would crush, trap, and drown many people. The Chicago Tribune cited that staircase was where most of the bodies had been found. By then, the list was at 75 degrees.
Passengers began to jump off the Eastland while water kept coming onto the ship, furthering the list. A pylon that the ship was fastened to was ripped from the pier with a deafening snap. Finally, in the moments before 7:30 am, the SS Eastland rolled onto her port side into the Chicago River, turning over with no fanfare, and according to a nearby police officer, “like an egg in the water.” She came to rest in only 20 feet of water at only 19 feet away from the wharf, an odd sight to behold such a large ship on her side, but without drama on the surface.
To those caught underwater, however, while they were flailing in the murky depths, they may as well have been in the ocean. To the passengers trapped inside, the ship was described as a funhouse. Floors turned to walls, walls turned to ceilings as water rushed into the compartments and threw furniture around. While the Eastland was equipped with thousands of life preservers, they were all under lock and key at the time she foundered. Both inside and outside the ship, people were clawing at other people in desperation to stay afloat. Women’s best Sunday clothes for the picnic weighed them down, as it was layers upon layers, dragging them down and exhausting them. Even if one was able to tread water, you were at risk to be dragged under by another person holding onto you for dear life.
One of the few survivors located on the port side of the ship was J.V. Brown. People grabbed at his legs, his arms, his hair, dragging him underwater. In the fight for his life, Brown admitted to kicking and punching the other passengers off to find safety. When asked about why he did it under oath, he said “No man is a hero underwater.” Witnesses in the nearby buildings watched in complete terror. Merchants and workers on the wharf heaved items into the river for floatation devices, wooden boxes, ladders, egg crates, life preservers. Some of the wooden boxes created blunt force injuries and sent people underwater. Even chicken coops were thrown in, with at least 30 passengers being saved by the coops, but with thousands of victims, it wasn’t enough. One woman was described as setting her baby in a floating deck chair in the river, pushing them towards safety before blowing a kiss goodbye and sinking beneath the dark river.
Trapped inside the ship between the cabin and promenade decks were 13-year-old Bobbie Aanstad and her mother, Marianne, the one who foresaw the consequences. Because Bobbie was a strong swimmer, she was able to tread water in spite of people grabbing her from every direction. Her uncle Olaf would dive again and again beneath the black water, thick with sewage, oil, and debris, to rescue people and bring them to the surface. Olaf saved 27 people that day, staying to help even after he was rescued. Bobbie waded with garbage, food, and bodies floating all around her, to the sound of agonized screams and pounding. The water continued to rise in between decks, already made a nauseating sludge by the debris from the stockyards.
Response to the disaster was slow from the crew, but fast from the civilians. By the time the ship rolled, most of the crew fled, deserting their responsibilities to the passengers. Captain Pedersen was witnessed climbing over the rail, landing on top of the starboard side of the hull, Bonansinga remarking “He never even got his feet wet.” This isn’t to say all the crew behaved in such a manner. There was a fear the Eastland’s boiler was about to explode, compounding the catastrophe and possibly killing many more passengers. The Chief Engineer, Joseph Erickson, made his descent into the engine room and opened the boiler so they wouldn’t be shocked by the chill of the river water. He was one of the few executive officers who stayed aboard the ship until the last minute, putting his own life at risk.
At first, the police on site seemed to be in lockstep with protocol, but there wasn’t much protocol for this sort of situation. They held people back, stopping them from helping, but also were not willing to dive in, themselves. A welder and his team heard about the disaster and rushed their equipment to the scene, cutting into the hull to save those trapped. Still, the police held the line, not letting welders through as time was ticking. Inside the hull, Bobbie was wondering whether anyone would come for her family and whether they knew of the passengers inside. But some citizens refused to be held back. Reggie Bowles, who was only a teenager, got word of the Eastland and immediately got on the motorcycle he was working on, racing it to the site. A known swimming wunderkind, Reggie earned the nickname “The Human Frog” that day, for the relentless commitment to pull out as many people as he could from the river and the wreck. He finally collapsed after pulling nearly 40 corpses from the wreck. He was arrested for his efforts because according to the police, he had ignored orders to stop recovering bodies, but it was really just to give him a rest and a hot meal.
When the welders were let through to slice into the hull, Captain Pedersen appeared and demanded them to stop. After all, he was the captain, and they weren’t going to cut into his ship. The welders not only ignored him, one of the welders told him “my orders are to save lives, not be careful of the boat.” Captain Pedersen would go on an enraged tirade on the hull of the Eastland, most likely a break in his psyche and not out of wild cruelty. The crowd, of course, had no sympathy for him, with calls to beat and drown him. Both Pedersen and his first mate were eventually arrested by the acting police chief for their own safety.
The threats of the angry crowd weren’t only in jest. Help was coming now from every corner of Chicago, but people continued to drown by the minute. Between the precious minutes of 7:50 and 8:10 am, the line between rescue and recovery blurred. Many witnesses remarked on the screaming, including a nurse by the name of Helen Repa, who arrived shortly after the roll. She would remark the screaming was the most horrible of all. But what was more disturbing was the screaming slowly stopping.
The first hour saw hundreds of bodies being pulled from the river. Dr. Thomas Carter, one of the first on the scene, would repeatedly search for heartbeats, and if none were found, he’d tell the nurses “Gone, gone…” Most of the passengers had died by asphyxiation from crush injuries or drowning. If there was a person clinging to life, a lung motor was called in, which was a hand operated pump that forced air into the lungs. Strychnine would be injected into the person, in part to stimulate them, but also protect them from the river water, rife with pollutants, human and animal waste, and diseases.
But the ones who were the most intimate with these underwater horrors were the divers who came to assist in rescue and recovery, wearing heavy diving bells and bulky suits, they had no oxygen tanks on them, only a tube that snaked behind them through the debris, with the constant threat of their air supply being pinched or cut off while they searched in the guts of the Eastland. While they hoped to find survivors, it only became a recovery mission. As the day wore into night, the rescuers pressed on, most stopped only by exhaustion. Fireman Frank Swigert was at the scene all day, part of the bucket brigade that was pulling bodies from the river, handing them out on stretchers. At one point, he was handed the small body of a girl, only to find it was Swigert’s own daughter. Swigert, numb with grief, fell to the ground.
The Reid Murdoch building, which normally held a grocery warehouse and offices, became a makeshift hospital and morgue. Fitting, as it was one of the last sights the passengers saw before the Eastland rolled. When that was filled, the bodies had to be transported all over Chicago, nearly anywhere they could be placed. Funeral homes, morgues around the city, and even a floating barge on the river became a location to rest them. Eventually a large, central location was needed for the bodies, leading for the 2nd Regiment Armory to be chosen. Today it is the last known location of Oprah Winfrey’s Harpo Studios before the building was demolished in 2016. But on that day in 1915, nearly 800 bodies laid silently on the floor, lined up in rows of 85.
The onerous task of identifying them had begun… Many flocked to the armory, families looking for their loved ones, along with throngs of the morbidly curious. The lines stretched for blocks, with thousands wanting to enter. At first, attempts were made to separate out the families searching for their loved ones versus the spectators who wanted to see the bodies. Coroner Peter Hoffman, a man who would emerge as a tour de force in the aftermath and investigation of the disaster, stood at the armory and shouted in a megaphone, “In the name of God, I ask you to go away and let those seeking relatives and friends come in and identify their dead!” But people were so agitated and intent on making it into the armory, for the safety of everyone involved, Hoffman decided to let everyone in, 20 at a time in single file. Throughout the night, nurses and coroners’ assistants would help the grieving down the line of bodies, lifting covers to reveal faces, looking at watches, birthmarks, and clothing. When a body was identified, a yell would erupt in the armory from a volunteer. “Identified!”
The body would be taken to a separate area to finalize the death certificate. To move things along, Hoffman used rubber stamps that said “Drowned, July 24, 1915. From Steamer Eastland, Chicago River, at Clark Street.” As identification dragged on, a team of 40 embalmers worked around the clock. There was no large-scale refrigeration in funeral homes at the time, so embalming was necessary to stop decomposition in the scorching Chicago summer. In some cases there were two families claiming a single body as their son or daughter. Emma Schroll, an employee of Western Electric, died alongside her husband and two sisters that day, but her body had been identified as that of Margaret Morgan. Emma’s body was brought to the Morgan family home for a viewing, but the mistake was noticed beforehand and the real Margaret Morgan was found at the morgue. The Schroll family themselves had accidentally identified Emma Meyer as theirs, but by the time the mistake was found, Meyer had been buried in Emma Schroll’s grave. It wasn’t until a month after that Emma had been positively identified by a mole on her shoulder and a scar on her forehead.
In the aftermath, Hoffman had assembled a group of investigators that would discern what would happen to cause the disaster and handed out stars as rewards for recovery and rescue efforts. Olaf Ness, Bobbie Aanstad’s uncle, would be a recipient of one of the stars. But while the investigation continued, the dead needed to be tended to. The death toll would approximate to 844 out of 2500 passengers. Most were women and children. The average age of those who died were 23, and the majority who died were under 25. 58 were children and 228 were teenagers. 175 widows would claim their husbands, three of whom were pregnant. It created 85 widowers and almost 40 children were orphaned. It was the greatest loss of life ever to have happened from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes and the greatest loss of life in Chicago, dwarfing the Chicago Fire of 1871. Every other house in Cicero was a death house where the Hawthorne Plant was located, the doors standing open so people could enter to pay their last respects. Some of the houses stood dark with the doors shut, their families never returning. 22 families were killed in the entire disaster. One such family member struck a nerve in the community, victim 396, or “Little Feller”, a young boy who remained unidentified until nearly 2 weeks later. His remains would be moved to various undertakers on West Madison Street in the hopes someone would find him and identify him. It would take a group of schoolboys to identify him as William Novotnev, one of their classmates. His grandmother would be called to the undertaker’s and through the new suit pants he was wearing, confirmed it to be her grandson. His parents, James and Agnes, as well as his 9-year-old sister Mamie, had all perished, leaving no one in his immediate family to search for him.
Newspapers would soon publish the names of the identified, but that was just the beginning. The bodies had to be prepared and buried, but the funeral directors were running short on resources in the midst of an unprecedented volume of dead. There were shortages of hearses, horses, caskets, and even embalming fluid. Funeral director Otto Muchna was working nonstop upon hearing of the disaster. A second-generation immigrant with Czech parents, he was prepared to embalm yet another member of his community. His wife, Mary, worked nonstop in the chapel, applying cosmetic touches to the victims for their loved ones. In St. Mary of Czestochowa, a church and school, 29 white caskets sat before the altar.
Roughly 150 victims of the disaster were buried in the Bohemian National Cemetery, opening up a whole new section for disaster victims within the week. 52 grave diggers worked in 12 hour shifts, stonecutters struggling to keep up with demand, the cemetery crowded with mourners. There was even one cremation in the Bohemian National Cemetery, a secretary by the name of Blajena Rehakova, with the inscription inspired by a father’s anger and grief. In the Czech language, it is written “They were more concerned about profit than the lives of the passengers on board.” The only corporation that didn’t appear to put profit over the victims' lives was Western Electric, who sprang into action with relief funds. It was one of the rare cases of a company doing what needed to be done instead of being pressured. Western Electric offered $100,000 (or roughly $3.125 million today), and raised a total of $500,000 (or $15.6 million today). Western Electric also covered the funeral and burial costs for their employees and their loved ones, spending over $75,000 (or $2.3 million today).
These funds were crucial, as some funeral homes were accused of gouging the grieving families, charging from twice to up to 5 times as much as the accepted rate. Scam artists would pose as representatives of Western Electric, getting the grief-stricken to sign fake refund receipts. In the meantime, Peter Hoffman and his special jury was working with the state attorney Maclay Hoyne, to find who was to blame in the Eastland disaster. Hoffman and his people were intent on blaming Captain Pedersen and Chief Engineer Joseph Erickson. Erickson, they deduced, was the man in charge of ballast and balancing the ship. If the ship foundered, it was on him. Hoyne, on the other hand, wasn’t as convinced that the fault lay in the hands of one or even a few men. He saw the owners of the boat and the government bureaucrats in charge of inspections and approval as the men responsible through a deadly combination of greed and negligence. Most sided with Hoyne that the Eastland shouldn’t have been given the green-light to carry more than 1200 passengers and the ship was innately unstable. In 1950, the Chief of the Merchant Vessel Inspection Division of the Coast Guard would cite instability and improper procedural control.
Eventually, a federal grand jury would indict 8 men, including Captain Pedersen, Chief Engineer Erickson, and the Eastland’s owners. While it appeared justice had been served, the trial dragged on for years and did little to bring any peace of closure to survivors and families. In the end, the only person convicted was Erickson, posthumously, for criminal negligence, 20 years after the disaster in 1935. To add insult to injury, the Eastland herself was towed out of the river once she was righted, repaired, modified, and sold by the boat’s owners to the US Navy as the USS Wilmette, reclassifying her as a gunboat to train sailors.
It was tragic and infuriating that the Eastland disaster had been forgotten. After all, a giant boat had tipped over and killed more people in an hour than in any other event in Chicago’s history. Yet some, despite being born and raised in Chicago, have never heard of the disaster. The problem was that this was sandwiched between two iconic events in US history, one, of course, being the Titanic, and the other was World War I. The Titanic, of course, had passengers with lofty goals and achievements, and the Eastland was no less a ship of dreams than her much grander counterpart. However, the dreams of the Eastland’s passengers were low key in comparison to that of Benjamin Guggenheim and William Astor. The Eastland’s passengers were working class immigrants, the picnic they were headed to spoke of the public need for rest and relaxation after a grueling work week. Very relatable, but not very romantic. And by the time WWI rolled around, the disaster was eclipsed by the much larger headline of war being declared in Europe. The disaster, the trial, and the investigation still made front page news, but it wasn’t the whole page. It was a side story along with the news of the trenches. The aftermath of the Eastland never got the chance to become a cultural myth, to dominate news cycles, create characters, heroes, and villains that rise up during iconic events. And perhaps the largest hurdle was the collective trauma surrounding it, with many survivors refusing to speak of that day again.
Reggie, the teenage swimmer who recovered 40 bodies, his grandson remembers the story he told of recovering a body of a mother from deep within the Eastland’s hull, her arms still wrapped around her infant. He felt repercussions from that day his whole life. As for Bobbie Aanstad, she was rescued and went on to live a full life, never losing her love of the water. She was open about talking about the Eastland and what transpired that day. In comparison, her younger sister Solveig didn’t like discussing that day. Her granddaughters and one of the granddaughters’ husbands, would found the Eastland Disaster Historical Society with the help of the Friends of the Bohemian National Cemetery.
Thank you for joining us today. This episode is dedicated to the memory of all who sit in section 16 of the Bohemian National Cemetery, and those who lived to tell the tale to their descendants. May fair winds guide on Dangerous Tides.
Sources:
https://eastlanddisaster.org/history/what-happened
https://friendsofbnc.org/bncmap.htm
https://friendsofbnc.org/bncmap.htm#eastland
“The Sinking of Eastland: America’s Forgotten Tragedy” - Jay Bonansinga
http://graphics.chicagotribune.com/news/local/eastland/about.html
Photo credits:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Eastland
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/s-s-eastland-memorial
https://www.britannica.com/event/Eastland-disaster
https://www.amazon.com/Capsized-Forgotten-Story-Eastland-Disaster/dp/1613739435
Share this post