Chicago, Illinois

Eastland Disaster

July 1915

THE DEATH LIST OVER FIFTEEN HUNDRED

EASTLAND HORROR
KEEPS ON GROWING

Capsized Vessel Is Still Filled
With Bodies of the Dead

THE CAPTAIN IS ARRESTED

And Crowd Seeks to Mob Him As He Is
Led to the Station---Pitiful Scenes
At the Morgues

CHICAGO, July 24—After completing a tour of all the temporary morgues, First Deputy Superintendent Schnuettler, at 2:45 this afternoon, gave out a formal statement placing his estimate of the dead in the Eastland disaster at between 1,500 and 1,800.

“I have just completed a round of all the temporary morgues and talked to a dozen officials in charge of the rescue work,” said Schuettler. “There is no doubt in my mind that the dead will reach at least 1,500 and it may total 1,800.”

RECOVER 600.

CHICAGO, July 24.—Six hundred bodies, victims of the steamer Eastland disaster, had been taken from the Chicago river and vouched or by a police census at 2:15 o’clock this afternoon. First Deputy Police Superintendent Schuettler gave out the figures.

“There are at least 700 bodies still in the steamer’s hulk or in the river,,” said ‘Schuettler. “The bodies now accounted for include 353 bodies that are at the temporary Reid-Murdock morgue alone.

Early Estimate of Dead.

CHICAGO, July 24.—That at least 500 were drowned with every indication pointing to the number probably going into four figures when the steamer Eastland sank in the Chicago river early today, was the estimate of police and coroner officials at noon.

At that time several plates had been cut into the up-turned side of the vessel. A score of men were carrying out the bodies as fast as they could get in and out.

An official of the Western Electric company declared that several departments in which only girls were employed had undoubtedly been wiped out. Most of the employes [sic] in departments where only girls and women were employed were assigned to the Eastland.

Captain Arrested.

Acting under a demand from Commissioners of Public Works W Burkhardt, Deputy Chief Schuttler at 10:30 o’clock ordered the arrest of Captain Pedersen and First Mate Beil. Schuettler intimated that there had been a clash of authority in the matter of the rescue work between some boat officers and the police. It was said one of the former had ordered the drillers to stop cutting out the side plates.

Three huge dredges were put to work on Commissioner Burkhardt’s order in an effort to stand the Eastland on end. To prevent possibility of bodies being swept down the river orders were issued at the great pumping stations, which force the water from the lake to the drainage canal, to reverse the process sufficiently to make the water stagnant.

Two city divers went to work shortly after this. Four more were to be put to work this afternoon.

The commission stores and business houses in the neighborhood of the Clark street bridge vied with one another to give assistance and comfort to the saved. The Steele-Wedeles coffee house ordered business suspended. Clerks were set to work ripping open sacks of coffee to make up a great caldron of the beverage for scores of rescued who were taken into the store.

Among those to go to the Steele-Wedeles establishment was Walter Landschiede who said his home was in Philadelphia.

A Near-Riot

Ten thousand or more persons, who crowded South Clark street, along which Captain Pedersen and Fisher were taken to headquarters at the city hall, indulged in a near-riot when they recognized the prisoners.

Before the twenty policemen who were escorting the men could beat back the crowd two men had reached Pedersen. One of them struck him in the face. The police had to draw clubs and wield them before the crowd gave way.

[illegible] from the attack on Pedersen, the crowd tried to reach the dock. The neighborhood for blocks around, already jammed with 20,000 to 30,000 persons, soon was impassible. Outlying precincts were cleaned of roundsmen and deskmen to augment the police in that district. It was more than an hour before the police could restore a semblance of order.

Say 300 Dead

CHICAGO, July 24.—One hundred are known to have been drowned, and some apparently reliable estimates place the death list at 300, when the excursion steamer Eastland sank near her dock at the Clark street bridge early today.

The Eastland, according to Captain Pedersen was carrying within seventy of her capacity of 2,070 souls.

The boat sank so quickly due, it was believed to crowding at the outer rail, that scores were carried under and are believed to have been crushed into the muddy bottom by the boat’s weight.

Scores were still imprisoned in the state rooms and lower decks of the partially submerged boat two hours after the accident. Their cries for help could be plainly heard on shore above the noise of automatic drills which were used to cut out the side plates of the ship.

Many of the victims were women and children. So thick were the waters covered with human beings for an hour after the Eastland sank that rescuers passed by bodies that seemed to be motionless and drew out only those showing obvious signs of life.

Several causes were given for the accident. Captain Pedersen told a United Press representative that a broken “air shot” let in water that resulted in the boat’s careening. William J. Palmandon, nephew of the Lusitania victim, who was a passenger, laid the accident to the system of water ballast in vogue. This ballast, he said, was not to be taken on until the boat had gone into the lake on her way to Michigan City. The water where the Eastland sank is not more than twenty feet. The upper side stuck three or five feet above the water’s edge. It is from state rooms ranged along this side, where many passengers were caught in a trap, that cries for help came.

The rescue work was greatly retarded, despite the quick response from every boat that was near by, because of the panic. Every available pulmotor was rushed to the scene, but through lack of them many persons died on the docks after being brought ashore. Eye witnesses corroborated the story told by Edward Schaack, a commission merchant, and F. W. Willard, a passenger on the Eastland. Schaack was some yards from the dock when the boat went over. He commandeered a large row boat and paddled to mid-stream. He dragged Willard from the water, and with him climbed to the boat’s upturned side. The two drew ninety passengers from below decks through a port hole.

Peter Horwick, a musician went overboard with his violin when the boat tipped. An unknown woman struggled in the water, hanging to the violin when Horwich came up. He managed to swim with the woman to shore.

Caspar Lahnd was a passenger with his wife, his son Caspar, 8, and his daughter, Cecilia, 12. All were separated when the outer rail went under. Swimming about, Lahnd picked up his daughter and took her safely to shore within a foot of where his wife had landed. The boy is missing.

The tragedy struck Chicago with a blow like that of the Iroquois theater disaster. Even after private automobiles had augmented police patrols and ambulances there were not enough vehicles to take the dead and dying to hospitals. All the State street stores eliminated their delivery services and rushed their auto trucks and horse-drawn wagons to and from the police department.

Police from outlying districts were called in as well as traffic policemen to aid. As a result the normally jammed loop district thoroughfares were well nigh impassable. Street car motormen had no one to tell when to cross busy corners. At some crossings impassable masses of wagons, autos and street cars locked those streets for many minutes at a time. The excursion was the annual picnic given the Western Electric employees by the firm. Nineteen thousand were on the Eastland and five other boats chartered by the company to take the men, women and children to the grounds at Michigan city for the holiday play.

The excursion was cancelled and the other boats disgorged their passengers, some of whom had relatives or close friends on the boat that wend under. It was because of this scattering of the employes [sic] that it was almost impossible at first for frantic officials to get any list of those who were aboard the Eastland.

According to Ross H. Geeting, a commission salesman, who was a passenger, the panic as the boat went under was indescribable. Anna Golnick, who saved herself by hanging to two chairs, corroborated Geeting’s statement that women carrying babies were beaten down and trampled by men in the wild rush from the under-decks. “The boat swung several times unsteadily.” Said Geeting. “before the final dip. It was at that last terrible lurch that everyone at once seemed to grasp what was happening. The screaming and panic was frightful. Many women had almost all of their clothing torn off before they could get to the rail or a porthole to jump.

There were also terrible scenes enacted about the stanchions and every stable upright upon the upper deck as men and women fought to get hold. Even after the boat settled on her side there was struggling on the slippery upturned side plates. There must have been at least fifteen or twenty of all sexes and ages who were literally pushed off to their deaths who might have been saved if they had heeded the calls from Captain Pedersen and other ship’s officers to remain quiet.

At St. Luke’s hospital, Miss B. Ritzhack, of Brokfield, Ill., hour after hour begged physicians to let her go in search for her husband and four children, all babies. Mrs. Ritzhack was found floating unconscious near the bank. It was feared the husband and children were drowned, but officials feared the effect of the shock and told the woman they had been accounted for.

Blames New Seamen’s Law.

DETROIT, Mich, July 24—That the new seamen’s labor law enacted at the last session of congress was responsible at least in part for the Eastland horror in Chicago today is the contention of A. A. Schants, general manager of the Detroit & Cleveland Transportation company.

“From what I have learned of the accident I am convinced that it was due in part at least, to the presence of life rafts and other heavy equipment required by the seamen’s law.”

Schantz said. “When the bill was before congress we argued that some such accident was likely to occur, but they laughed at us. The boat was simply top-heavy and turned turtle—and accident that couldn’t have occurred had she been properly trimmed.

Pitiful Scenes.

Pitiful scenes wracked the hearts of workers in the big Ried-Murdock warehouse and salesroom at the foot of Clark Street. The officials of the company literally took their doors off their hinges and permitted establishments of a morgue there.

The bodies were piled in long rows along the floor and all who claimed to have relatives or friend missing were permitted to pass by.

Many of these had been rescued and wore clothes donated by clerks and workers in the district, their having been torn off in the panic and mad fight for life.

Some of the rescued were badly injured. Many during the early hours just after the disaster wandered all the way up into the loop district with clothing torn and heads and arms bleeding. One man was picked up in a dazed condition a half mile from the dock. There was a jagged wound in his forehead. He could not tell his name. He was removed to the Iroquois hospital.

Joseph A. Forrester, who holds a Mississippi river master and pilot’s license, declared the Eastland never should have been used for passenger service.

Forrester, who is visiting here and was early on the scene, continued: “There were not enough holds below the water line. The Eastland was built too high. When she started listing nothing on God’s earth could stop her, because there was more above water than below, which is contrary to all ideas of boat construction.

Wife Torn From Him.

Among the passengers who put the death list at a high figure was Theodore Soderstrom, who was pulled out unconscious. He declared he held his wife up for what seemed hours and then she was torn from his grasp by two women who struggled to hold themselves up on his shoulders. She was drowned.

Soderstrom said he didn’t believe it was a broken “air shoot” that caused the big boat to tip over.

“The passengers were crowded on the outer rail from ten to thirty deep in places. I noticed the boat beginning to careen slightly, but at first it gave me no uneasiness. Then, just before we pulled out, several hundred passengers who had been waving to persons on the dock came over to the outer rail. Almost instantly the boat lurched, righted itself, and then pitched once more.

“By this time passengers knew there was something wrong. It all happened so quickly. For a third time the boat lurched, this time slowly, and there were screams as everyone tried at once to get to the side next to the dock.

“Many were beaten down to the deck unconscious in this mad rush. Probably a dozen persons—it may have been more—jumped into the water. Several were women. They were crushed under by the side of the boat before they had a chance to swim away, for after the boat got part way over it seemed to drop on its side like a stone.”

continued >> Go to page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Articles transcribed by Patty.  Thank you, Patty!

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