The Tragic Legacy of the Steamship Eastland

 

By Paul Stiglic,  ACBS Southern California Chapter

 (Acknowledgment:  Most of this article is based on the book "Eastland, Legacy of the Titanic" by George W. Hilton, Stanford University Press, 1995.)

Most people are quite familiar with the major marine disasters, which include:

A.  Titanic.  Lost April 14, 1912 with a loss of 1523 lives after striking an iceberg.  Everyone is familiar with and continues to be further educated about this story.

B.  Empress of Ireland.   Lost May 29, 1914 with a loss of 1012 lives.   This Canadian Pacific Railway's transatlantic passenger steamer was outbound from Quebec in the St. Lawrence River when she was struck on the starboard side by the Norwegian collier Storstad.  She sank in 14 minutes while attempting to ground herself on the south river bank.

C.  Lusitania.  Torpedoed by a German submarine on May 17, 1915 off the coast of Ireland with a loss of 1198 lives.

The Titanic and Lusitiana both were lost on the high seas, while the Empress of Ireland was in a fog bound major waterway.  In all three cases, extenuating circumstances were also involved.   This article deals with the steamship Eastland, which capsized on July 24, 1915 with a loss of 844 lives, while still secured to her dock in the very narrow, shallow and flat calm Chicago River.  The disaster occurred during the routine process of loading the ship.

 

THE SHIP

The Eastland was built by the Jenks Ship Building Company of Port Huron, Michigan in 1903.  She was 265' long, 38.2' wide and displaced 1961 gross tons.  Her sleek lines conveyed the appearance of speed in the open lake.  She saw service in both Lake Erie and Lake Michigan.  In Lake Erie she carried passengers on the Cleveland to Cedar Point run.  In Lake Michigan she ran from Chicago to South Haven, Benton Harbor, St. Joseph and Michigan City.

The Eastland was notoriously top-heavy and temperamental and had a habit of careening not only in heavy seas, but also in smooth water.  Certainly part of the problem was in her high upper decks, where as shown in Figure 1, passengers tended to congregate in large numbers.  Much heavy equipment, including her life boats were also on the upper deck.

In hopes of improving stability , the Eastland employed a water ballast system which consisted of twelve tanks located along the ships bottom.   The advantage of such a system is that the tanks could be emptied to reduce Eastland's draft to 10'-6' to navigate shallow rivers, and they could then be filled to increase the draft to 14'-0' for stable cruising.  However, as was shown in later analysis, when partially filled, the tanks were destabilizing due to the water sloshing about in the tanks. When filled, there is no water sloshing and the tanks are quite stabilizing. A noted naval architect, Dr. Sadler, estimated that in a partially filled ballast tank, the water sloshing effect results in the same destabilizing to the ship as if the equivalent amount of water were to be located on her upper deck.  To make matters worse, the tanks were either empty of partially full during docking, loading and unloading operations, which is where the Eastland came to grief.

Early in her career, Eastland had a very close call.  On July 17, 1904 after leaving South Haven, Eastland was running at full speed with a load of 3,000 passengers.  About 1.5 miles out into Lake Michigan, the ship, for no obvious reason, began listing to port by some 12 to 15 degrees.  Her ballast tanks were partially full.  The crew reduced speed, ordered the passengers off the upper decks and shifted water in the tanks to right the vessel.  In some 10 minutes the ship straightened up, but immediately began to list more severely to starboard; some 20 to 25 degrees.  With further filling of the tanks and shifting of the passengers, the list was corrected and the Eastland proceeded to Chicago.  This was a very close call.  Had the ship capsized, she would have continued over until she floated keel-up, with a huge loss of life.

 

During the winter of 1914, just prior to her capsizing, two changes were made which further reduced stability:

1.  Concrete flooring was poured on the main and 'tween decks to replace rotted wooden flooring.  This added some 57 tons to the ship's upper levels and worsened its top heaviness.

2.  Three life boats and 6 large life rafts (10 tons total) were added to the top deck.  These were added in hopes of increasing Eastland's allowable passenger load to 2500.  At this time, because of the Titanic sinking, lifeboats for all were required.  Thus, these new safety regulations contributed to the Eastland Disaster.

 

THE DISASTER

The Eastland was chartered for the Western Electric Companies' annual picnic to be held on July 24, 1915 near Michigan City, Indiana.  Passengers would board in Chicago at the Chicago and South Haven wharf, which as shown in Figure 2, is located on the Chicago River, just west of the Clark Street Bridge.  From there the Eastland would take the Western Electric employees to Michigan City, some 38 miles south east of Chicago on Lake Michigan, then return for them that evening.  About 7,000 people were to attend the picnic and several ships were chartered, with the Eastland scheduled for the first departure at 8:00 AM.

This would be the first test of the Eastland's stability with all of the destabilizing changes made the previous winter and with al full load of 2500 passengers.  The crew had no experience trimming the ship under these conditions.

The Chicago River at the point of the Eastland's dock is not much wider than the ship's length.  It was about 20' deep and the current at the time of the disaster was only 1 to 1.5 MPH.  These conditions are hardly a prescription for disaster.

The Eastland returned to Chicago 11:55 PM on July 23 from a Masonic excursion.  During the night she took on coal from a river barge.  It was estimated she ended up with 104 tons aboard, 79 tons to port and only 24 tons to starboard.   This uneven loading also added to her stability problems.

 Chronologically, the disaster follows this:

• 6:15 AM.  The ship was positioned for starboard boarding and the ballast tanks were emptied.

• 6:30 AM.  Passengers began loading using only the aft gangway.  Some 5,000 people had already arrived for the excursion and they made their own selection of the ship the would take to the picnic.

• 6:41 AM.  The Eastland began to list 10 degrees to starboard, which was not unexpected as passengers went to the upper decks and congregated on the starboard side to wave to friends on the wharf.   The crew corrected the list by partially filling the port ballast tanks, which further reduced stability due to the water sloshing problem.  At this point the ship was probably unstable.  Technically, it would be said to have a negative metacentric height, which means the center of gravity is now above the center of buoyancy.  Under these conditions no stable vertical position for the ship exists.   She would simply roll slowly from side to side and would be in danger of capsizing.

• 6:53 AM.  The ship took a 10 degree port list, which was again corrected by admitting water to the ballast tanks.

• 7:10 AM.  All 2,500 passengers were now loaded, so there were 2, 573 people aboard, including crew.

• 7:16 AM.  The list to port now worsened, and a malfunction of some sort disabled the water ballast system for 6 minutes at this critical time.  The ship at this point was doomed and this was the final chance to unload the passengers to safety, which was not done.

• 7:18 AM.  The list corrected itself, the gangplank was taken in and preparations were made to cast off.   The stern lines were cast off.

• 7:28 AM.  The ship now assumed a list of 45 degrees.  Dishes were falling from the shelves, a piano rolled across the deck and panic was universal.  The Eastland then gently rolled over without a splash.  Her forward mooring lines were still tied when she capsized.

The Eastland came to rest in the mud in 20' of water and 20' from the dock.  Figure 3 is the scene directly following with people swarming to the starboard side.  The tug Kenosha (not shown) quickly positioned herself between the Eastland and the wharf to serve as a bridge for survivors.  The alarm to the local fire and police departments was actually given a few minutes before the capsizing by workers on the wharf who knew the ship was doomed.  Help arrived almost immediately from all sources.  However, the casualty rate to those passengers on the port side was very high, especially those who were below deck.  To make matters worse, the crew were urging passengers to go below just before the disaster in hopes of correcting the list.  The final toll was 844 deaths, of which 472 were women, 290 children and 82 men.  The passengers included a large number of young single women who worked in the Western Electric Hawthorne plant.

A large plaque is now located along the Chicago River at the site of the disaster.

 

THE AFTERMATH

The Eastland was righted and refloated within 3 weeks following the disaster.  In 1917 she was acquired by the US Government and converted to the gunboat Willmette, shown in Figure 4.   With her upper decks removed and a total load of naval personnel never exceeding 375, the Willmette was now quite stable.  However, before she could be put into service, World War I ended.   She was then used as a training ship by the Naval Reserve until after World War II.  She was decommissioned on November 28, 1945 and cut up for scrap early in 1947.  Thus the Eastland survived the disaster by 32 years.

 

 

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