- AP photo / file
- Passengers wait for help after the Eastland capsized in the Chicago River on July 24, 1915. More than 800 others didn’t make it out alive.
It happened in plain view—at 7:30 AM in the middle of a city—but the SS Eastland disaster has long been unfathomable. How did a 260-foot-long steamship simply tip over while docked in the Chicago River?
I recently sat down with McCarthy, a former reporter and editor in Chicago for the Wall Street Journal, to talk about his fascinating new book, Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America (Lyons Press).
Let’s take a step back and look at the landscape in 1915. This was an era when the industrial Great Lakes region was on the upswing—the cargo and passenger ship industries were booming, and for a while shipbuilders couldn’t keep up with demand.
But at the same time, you have the Eastland‘s operating company, which was cruelly apathetic toward the passengers they were taking on.
Yes. One was in 1903 outside South Haven, Michigan, and one was in 1907 outside Cleveland. One of the people aboard that trip was so afraid that he took a train back home to port.
- Clarification: As McCarthy notes in his book, more passengers died when the Eastland capsized—844 to 832—though the total number of deaths, including crew, exceeded 1,500 from the Titanic sinking.
