The SS Eastland docked |
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| Career | |
|---|---|
| Name: | Eastland |
| Owner: | Michigan Steamship Company |
| Port of registry: | United States |
| Route: | South Haven, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois route |
| Ordered: | October 1902 |
| Builder: | Jenks Ship Building Company |
| Launched: | 6 May 1903 |
| Christened: | May 1903 by Francis Elizabeth Stufflebeam |
| Maiden voyage: | 16 July 1903 |
| Nickname: | "Speed queen of the Great Lakes" |
| Fate: | Sold in 1905 to the Michigan Transportation Company |
| Career | |
| Name: | Eastland |
| Owner: | Michigan Transportation Company |
| Operator: | Chicago-South Haven Line |
| Port of registry: | United States |
| Route: | South Haven - Chicago route |
| Fate: | Sold 5 August 1906 to the Lake Shore Navigation Company of Cleveland, Ohio. |
| Career | |
| Name: | Eastland |
| Owner: | Lake Shore Navigation Company of Cleveland, Ohio |
| Port of registry: | United States |
| Route: | Cleveland-Cedar Point route |
| Fate: | Sold in 1909 to the Eastland Navigation Company of Cleveland, Ohio. |
| Career | |
| Name: | Eastland |
| Owner: | Eastland Navigation Company of Cleveland, Ohio. |
| Port of registry: | United States |
| Route: | Cleveland-Cedar Point route |
| Fate: | Sold on June 1, 1914 to the St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company of St. Joseph, Michigan |
| Career | |
| Name: | Eastland |
| Owner: | St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company of St. Joseph, Michigan |
| Port of registry: | United States |
| Route: | St. Joseph, Michigan to Chicago, Illinois route |
| Fate: | Raised after accident on October 1915 and sold at auction on 20 December 1915 to Captain Edward A. Evers. Sold on 21 November 1917 to the Illinois Naval Reserve. |
| Career (United States) | |
| Name: | USS Wilmette |
| Acquired: | 21 November 1917 |
| Commissioned: | 20 September 1918 |
| Recommissioned: | 29 June 1920 9 April 1945 |
| Decommissioned: | 9 July 1919 15 February 1940 28 November 1945 |
| Renamed: | Wilmette on 20 February 1918 |
| Reclassified: | Gunboat 1918 IX-29 on 17 February 1941 |
| Struck: | 19 December 1945 |
| Honors and awards: |
World War I Victory Medal (with Atlantic Fleet clasp) American Defense Medal (with Fleet clasp) American Campaign Medal World War II Victory Medal |
| Fate: | Sold for scrap on 31 October 1946 to Hyman Michaels Company of Chicago, Illinois and scrapped. Scrapping completed in 1947. |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Passenger Ship |
| Type: | Steamship |
| Tonnage: | 1,961 gross |
| Displacement: | 2,600 (estimated) |
| Length: | 265 ft |
| Beam: | 38 ft 2 in |
| Draft: | 19 ft 6 in |
| Installed power: | Two triple expansion steam engines Four scotch boilers (coal fired) 1,750 shp |
| Propulsion: | Two shafts |
| Speed: | 16.5 knots |
| Capacity: | As Eastland : 2752 passengers |
| Complement: | As USS Wilmette : 209 |
| Armament: |
As USS Wilmette :
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| Notes: | Two funnels Two masts |
The SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. On 24 July 1915 the ship rolled over while tied to a dock in the Chicago River.[1] A total of 844 passengers and crew were killed in what was to become the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.[1][2]
Following the disaster, the Eastland was salvaged and sold to the United States Navy. After restorations and modifications the Eastland was designated as a gunboat and renamed the USS Wilmette. She was used primarily as a training vessel on the Great Lakes and was scrapped following World War II.
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The ship was commissioned in 1902 by the Michigan Steamship Company and built by the Jenks Ship Building Company. In April 1903, the ship was named by Mrs. David Reid of South Haven, Michigan. She received a prize of $10 and a one-season pass on the ship. The ship was named in May, immediately before its inaugural voyage.
The ship soon proved to have design flaws making it susceptible to listing. In effect, it was too top-heavy—its center of gravity was too high, especially when passengers congregated en masse on the upper decks. In July 1903, a case of overcrowding caused the Eastland to list and water to flow up one of its gangplanks. The situation was quickly rectified, but was only the first of many incidents. Later in the month, the stern of the ship was damaged when it backed into the tugboat George W. Gardner. August 1906 saw another incident of listing, that resulted in the filing of complaints against the Chicago-South Haven Line, which had purchased the ship earlier that year.
On 14 August 1903, while on a cruise from Chicago to South Haven, Michigan, some of the ship's firemen refused to stoke the fire for the ship's boiler. They claimed that they had not received their potatoes for a meal.[3] When they refused to return to the fire hole, Captain John Pereue ordered the six men arrested at gun point. Firemen George Lippen and Benjamin Myers, who were not a part of the group of six, stoked the fires until the ship reached harbor. Upon the ship's arrival in South Haven, the six men, Glenn Watson, Mike Davern, Frank La Plarte, Edward Fleming, Mike Smith, and William Madden, were taken to the town jail. Shortly after the mutiny Captain Pereue was replaced.[3]
On 24 July 1915, the Eastland and two other Great Lakes passenger steamers, the Theodore Roosevelt and the Petoskey, were chartered to take employees from Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, to a picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. This was a major event in the lives of the workers, many of whom could not take holidays. Many of the passengers on the Eastland were Czech Bohemian immigrants from Cicero, Illinois. The only surviving picture of the original church building of St. Mary of Częstochowa in Cicero is from the memorial mass commemorating the twenty-nine parishioners who lost their lives in the disaster.
In 1915, the new federal Seaman's Act had been passed because of the RMS Titanic disaster. This required retrofitting of a complete set of lifeboats on the Eastland as on many other passenger vessels.[4] This additional weight, ironically, probably made the Eastland more dangerous and it worsened the already severe problem of being top heavy. Some argued that other Great Lakes ships would suffer from the same problem.[4] Nonetheless, it was signed into law by President Woodrow Wilson. The Eastland was already so top-heavy that it had special restrictions concerning the number of passengers that could be carried. Prior to that, in June 1914, the Eastland had again changed hands, this time bought by the St. Joseph and Chicago Steamship Company, with Captain Harry Pedersen appointed the ship's master.
On the fateful morning, passengers began boarding the Eastland on the south bank of the Chicago River between Clark and LaSalle Streets around 6.30 a.m., and by 7:10, the ship had reached its capacity of 2,572 passengers. The ship was packed, with many passengers standing on the open upper decks, and began to list slightly to the port side (away from the wharf). The crew attempted to stabilize the ship by admitting water to its ballast tanks, but to little avail. Sometime in the next 15 minutes, a number of passengers rushed to the port side, and at 7:28, the Eastland lurched sharply to port and then rolled completely onto its side, coming to rest on the river bottom, which was only 20 feet below the surface. Many other passengers had already moved below decks on this relatively cool and damp morning to warm up before the departure. Consequently, hundreds were trapped inside by the water and the sudden rollover; others were crushed by heavy furniture, including pianos, bookcases, and tables. Although the ship was only 20 feet from the wharf, and in spite of the quick response by the crew of a nearby vessel, the Kenosha, which came alongside the hull to allow those stranded on the capsized vessel to leap to safety, a total of 844 passengers and four crew members died in the disaster. Many were young women and children.
Writer Jack Woodford witnessed the disaster and gave a first-hand account to the Herald and Examiner, a Chicago newspaper. In his autobiography, Woodford writes:
Many of the bodies were taken to a cold storage warehouse in the vicinity, which has since been transformed into Harpo Studios, the sound stage for The Oprah Winfrey Show.[5]
One of the people who was scheduled to be on the Eastland was 20-year-old George Halas. Despite stories to the contrary, there is no reliable evidence that Jack Benny was on board the Eastland or scheduled to be on the excursion; possibly the basis for this report was that the Eastland was a training vessel during World War I and Jack Benny received his training on the Great Lakes naval base, where the Eastland was stationed.
A grand jury indicted the president and three other officers of the steamship company for manslaughter, and the ship's captain and engineer for criminal carelessness, and found that the disaster was caused by "conditions of instability" caused by any or all of: overloading of passengers, mishandling of water ballast, or the construction of the ship.[6]
Federal extradition hearings were held to compel the six indicted men to come from Michigan to Illinois for trial. During the hearings, principal witness Sidney Jenks, head of the shipbuilding company that built the Eastland, testified that its first owners wanted a fast ship to transport fruit, and he designed one capable of making 20 miles per hour and carrying 500 passengers. Defense counsel Clarence Darrow asked whether he had ever worried about the conversion of ship into a passenger steamer with a capacity of 2,500 or more passengers. Jenks replied, "I had no way of knowing the quantity of its business after it left our yards... No, I did not worry about the Eastland." Jenks testified that there was never an actual stability test of the ship, and stated that after tilting to an angle of 45 degrees at launching, "...it righted itself as straight as a church, satisfactorily demonstrating its stability."[7]
The court refused extradition, holding the evidence was too weak, with "barely a scintilla of proof" to establish probable cause to find the six guilty. The court reasoned that the four company officers were not aboard the ship, and that every act charged against the captain and engineer was done in the ordinary course of business, "more consistent with innocence than with guilt." The court also reasoned that the Eastland "was operated for years and carried thousands safely", and that for this reason no one could say that the accused parties were unjustified in believing the ship seaworthy.[8]
After the Eastland was raised on 14 August 1915, she was sold to the Illinois Naval Reserve and recommissioned as USS Wilmette stationed at Great Lakes Naval Base. She was converted to a gunboat, renamed Wilmette on 20 February 1918, and commissioned on 20 September 1918 with Captain William B. Wells in command.[9] Commissioned late in World War I, Wilmette saw no combat service. She trained sailors and engaged in normal upkeep and repairs until placed in ordinary at Chicago on 9 July 1919, retaining a 10-man caretaker crew on board. On 29 June 1920 the gunboat was returned to full commission, with Captain Edward A. Evers, USNRF, in command.[9]
On 7 June 1921, the Wilmette was given the task of sinking UC-97, a German U-Boat surrendered to the United States after World War I.[10] The guns of the Wilmette were manned by Gunner's Mate J.O. Sabin, who had fired the first American shell in World War I, and Gunner's Mate A.F. Anderson, the man who fired the first American torpedo in the conflict.[11] For the remainder of her 25-year career, the gunboat served as a training ship for naval reservists in the 9th, 10th, and 11th Naval Districts. She made voyages along the shores of the Great Lakes carrying trainees assigned to her from the Great Lakes Naval Station in Illinois. Wilmette remained in commission, carrying out her reserve training mission until she was placed "out of commission, in service," on 15 February 1940.
Given hull designation IX-29 on 17 February 1941, she resumed training duty at Chicago on 30 March 1942, preparing armed guard crews for duty manning the guns on armed merchantmen. That assignment continued until the end of World War II in Europe obviated measures to protect transatlantic merchant shipping from German U-boats.
During August 1943 the Wilmette was given the honor of transporting President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Admiral William D. Leahy, James F. Byrnes and Harry Hopkins on a 10 day cruise to McGregor and Whitefish Bay to plan war strategies.[12]
On 9 April 1945, she was returned to full commission for a brief interval. Wilmette was decommissioned on 28 November 1945, and her name was struck from the Navy list on 19 December 1945. In 1946, the Wilmette was offered up for sale. Finding no takers, on 31 October 1946, she was sold to the Hyman Michaels Company for scrapping which was completed in 1947.[9]
A marker dedicated to the accident was dedicated on 4 June 1989. This marker was reported stolen on 26 April 2000 and a replacement marker was installed and rededicated on 24 July 2003.
There are plans for a permanent outdoor exhibit with the proposed name "At The River's Edge". This exhibit would be at the exact location of the disaster.[13] The exhibit will include 6 steel frames for a total of 12 panels. The 12 panels will combine text with high-resolution images to tell the story of the Eastland Disaster.
This article incorporates text from the public domain Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships.
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