The Eastland Disaster of 1915 - SPECULATIONS AND OTHER RAMBLINGS
AI generated art of Eastland Disaster. ©2024 Natalie Zett
Commentary
Unfortunately, the Eastland Disaster Memorial Society website is no longer active, though parts of it can still be accessed via the Wayback Machine. Among all the sites dedicated to the Eastland Disaster, this one remains a standout for its thoroughness.
Launched in the late 1990s, the site was known for its beautiful design, rich content, and numerous images. For someone like me, who only recently discovered the Eastland Disaster, it was an invaluable resource. Luckily, I had printed out several pages, and I’m reprinting one of those articles here. The original author is believed to be Mary Bonevelle.
The Eastland Disaster of 1915
MY OWN SPECULATIONS AND OTHER RAMBLINGS
According to Mary Bonevelle (author attribution uncertain).
“Many feel that the courts made a grave error in ignoring what they believe was the true cause of the disaster--the ship's top-heaviness. I also believe that the top-heavy construction of the ship was primarily to blame. There are many obvious explanations for the ship's top-heavy nature (and other explanations that require a knowledge of naval engineering, but I will not go into those here).
The Eastland's very structure, in terms of length, height, and width was enough to make it top-heavy. A ship that was so long and so high with only a beam of 36 feet would inevitably experience stability problems. Just as it is difficult to balance a thin book on its spine, it is difficult for a tall, long, and narrow ship to stay balanced in water currents and waves.
In addition, just prior to the 1915 season, several changes had been made to the Eastland. In particular, two inches of concrete had been laid between decks to keep the wooden floors from rotting. The weight of this concrete was probably well over 14 tons and only added to the top-heaviness of the vessel. However, the federal inspection apparently did not perceive this as a problem.
AI generated art of Eastland Disaster aftermath. ©2024 Natalie Zett
When the Eastland was first built, it had cabins located on the lower decks. But because the ship was mainly used for day cruises, the cabin space was decreased. Yet, most passengers preferred to ride on the upper two decks because these afforded the best view. The weight of passengers on the upper decks of the ship while the interior decks were less popular certainly made the ship top-heavy.
In his book, EASTLAND: Legacy of the TITANIC, George W. Hilton asserts that the Eastland's top-heaviness was largely due to the amount and weight of lifeboats required on ships. He explains that after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912, a general panic led to the irrational demand for more lifesaving lifeboat capacity for passengers of ships. Lawmakers unfamiliar with naval engineering did not realize that lifeboats cannot always save all lives, if they can save any at all. (The speed and manner in which a ship sinks are greater determinants of how many can be saved than the total lifeboat capacity.) So, the owners of the Eastland, in an attempt to increase the registered capacity of the ship, found that they had to secure more heavy lifeboats to the Eastland where several lifeboats already existed on the upper deck. Without question, many factors made the East/and much more top-heavy than any ship should be.
Some have speculated that, at the time of the disaster, the Eastland had actually been resting on the riverbed, making it more apt to tip as it was not actually floating. This theory has never been substantiated, though.
The issue of the ballast tanks cannot be ignored. (For those of you who do not know, ballast tanks are tanks within the hulls of ship that can be filled or emptied to balance a ship. On cargo ships these tanks are especially important as cargo often shifts uncontrollably in rough seas.) The way in which the Eastland's particular ballast tanks were engineered made them tricky to operate. The tanks could not be filled or emptied rapidly, and the water within the tanks could not be moved from one side to the other. Again, discussing the ballast tanks would involve naval engineering jargon, so I will leave that to those industrious individuals who wish to research this topic on their own.
My interest in the Eastland disaster does not lie in the debate as to what caused the disaster. I am most concerned with a completely different aspect--why do so few people know about the disaster? I was told by the editor of Chicago History magazine that those from the Chicago area are quite familiar with the disaster. But while attending graduate school in Illinois where the majority of my classmates were from the Chicago area, I was surprised to find that none of them had even heard of the incident.
Almost everyone in the United States has heard of the Great Chicago Fire. Yet this event occurred almost 44 years before the Eastland disaster and the fire claimed only a quarter as many lives as were lost on the Eastland. I believe there are a few factors which contribute to the obscurity of the Eastland disaster.
AI generated art of Eastland Disaster in the Chicago River. ©2024 Natalie Zett
Sources. Finding books that give more than a few paragraphs (if that) about the Eastland is quite a challenge. Take, for example, The World Almanac of the U. S. A., published in 1996 by World Almanac Books. In the section titled "Moments in Recorded History," the almanac give a year by year account of major events in U. S. history. But, the almanac skips from 1914 to 1916. Apparently, the editors and authors felt that a tragedy that claimed the lives of over 800 U. S. citizens was not substantial enough to list in the "Moments in Recorded History." Many other reference books display similar ignorance of the Eastland disaster. I only know of one book dedicated solely to the Eastland disaster (Hilton's). It is a great shame that more has not been written about the event. It is also sad that children in schools do not generally learn about the Eastland in their history classes.
Money. The reason the Chicago fire is so well known is because of the monetary damage. The Eastland disaster resulted in a relatively low public cost while the cost of the Chicago fire was extremely costly. In a society where money has, for many, a greater value than human life, guess this is not surprising.
The victims. The victims of the Eastland disaster were mainly Eastern European immigrants. They were not influential members of society. They were factory workers with last names like Rutvki, Buzkowski, Grajek, Frackowiak, and Zajicek. Their deaths probably impacted their families, the Western Electric Company, and nothing more. I can't help but wonder--if the Eastland Disaster had claimed the lives of wealthy, influential, fifth- or sixth-generation Americans, would the disaster be more widely known and discussed today?
World War I. Self-explanatory. Yet, the Eastland Disaster occurred two years before the U. S. officially entered the war. I'm not sure that WWi really detracted that much from the publicity of the disaster.
A cover up? The Chicago-St. Joseph Steamship Co. may have been able to find ways to minimize damage to their reputation by suppressing press coverage of the disaster to some extent. This theory is purely speculative on my part and probably cannot be proven true or false.
I believe that the Eastland disaster should be remembered if only because so many lives were lost and so many families affected. Although the maritime lessons learned through the disaster are obsolete, the Eastland's true legacy is that it showed that the unexpected can occur even when all conditions indicate otherwise. No one would have ever suspected that a ship preparing to depart for a festive occasion on a warm July day would just "tip over" drowning hundreds. Yet the original situation before the disaster and the dire results set up a dichotomy that make the entire evert seem almost surreal to anyone who tries to picture the events in his or her mind. Neither the victims of the disaster nor the rescuers who saved lives that day should ever be forgotten by American history.”
Original Source (The original website is no longer in existence.): http://www2.novagate.net/~bonevelle/eastland/spec.html - 8/6/98
Disclaimer: The authorship of this piece is attributed to Mary Bonevelle based on available evidence. However, due to the lack of accessible verification, this attribution may not be definitive.
In this video, we commemorate the 109th anniversary of the Eastland disaster by highlighting the individuals whose stories have been covered in our podcast since November 2023. These untold narratives honor the memory and legacy of those affected by the tragedy. Here is the link to the complete video: https://tinyurl.com/2bps9bvt
