Greene County herald. (Leakesville, Miss.) 1898-current, 1915-07-30
BIG LAKE STEAMER WITH $500
PEOPLE ABOARD cAPsIzEs
IN CHICAGO RIVER.
BELIEVE VESSEL FAULTY
Experts Say the Eastland Was Not
Properly Constructed.--West
Electric Employees Were off
For Pleasure Day.

Chicago.-A thousand persons lost
their lives in the Chicago river on
July "a by the capsizing of the excur.
sion steamer Eastland while warping
from its wharf with more than 2,400
employees of the Western Electric
Company and taeir relatives and
friends ON board. bound for a pleasure
trip across Lake Michigan
After working ceaselessly all, day
and far into the night, the bodies of
842 victims of the catastrophe, most
of them women and children, were col
lected from temporary morgues and
taken to the Second Regiment Armory.
When these bodies had been tagged,
Coroner Hoffman, taking into consid-
Grafton estimates of bodies thought to
be in the hold of the steamer, lying on
it's side in the river, and in the stream
itself, said he hopes that the total dead
would not exceed 1000
The Eastland, saidsby marine archi-
tects to have been topheavy and ba
lasted in an uncertain manner, turned
gan to list, pouring its gala passengers
into the river or imprisoning them IL.
it's submerged hulf
Every effort was made by thousands
of persons on the river wharf to res
cue the drowning men, women and
children, but many went down almost
within grasp of the river bank. Moth
ers went to death while their children
were snatched to safety. Other chill
dren died in the arms of their parents,
who finally were saved. Hundreds of
girls, freed for day from their tasks
of making telephones and other cleo
trical apparatus in the factory of the
Western Electric Company, dressed in
their smartest white frocks, drowned
miserably.
A pail of sorrow hung over the en-
tire West Side of Chicago, where the
majority of the victims lived. Kolin
Avenue. small street near the fac
tory of the Western Electric Com
pany, was in universal mourning. Ev-
cry house lost from one to all its occu-
pants in the disaster.
Efforts to discover the cause of the
accident were begun long before the
work Of rescue wes over. Federal and
county grand juries were ordered a
coroner's jury was empanelel and all
the officers ard crew of the Eastland
were arrested.
w. c. Steele, secretary and treas
urer of the st. Joseph Chicago Steam
ship Company, who owned the East
remodeled later, because top-heavy, it
is said, was also arrested and locked
up at police station. The steamer
was leased by the Indiana Transporta,
tion Company, whose officers said
they were not responsible for the IL
censing of the ship and did not con-
troll the crew.
Under the glare of searchlights
scores of men worked in the hull of
the vessel to remove the bodies. The
steamer lay on the bottom of the river,
one side protruding like monument
to the hundreds it had drowned as it
turned over.
Marine architects asserted that the
Eastland was faulty in design, that
the top deck had been removed be
cause of the tendency of the ship to
list, and also pointed to the POSSIBLE
lty that the ship had been unevenly
or insufficiently ballasted The East
land used water ballast, so that it
could pump out some on entering
shallow lake harbors; so many inves-
tigators are working on theory that
the ballast tanks were not filled and
that the rushing of passengers to one
side of the decks caused 1t to roll
over
Under misty skies 1000 men, wom-
en- and children went to the Clark
Street dock early on the morning of
auly "a to fill five large lake steam
ers with holiday mirth in a trip to
Michigan City The steamer Eastland
was the first to be loaded
Rain began to fall as the wharf SUI
perintendents lifted the gang planks
from the Eastland. declaring that the
government limit of $500 passengers
had been reached.
The passengers swarmed to the left
side of the ship as the other steamer !
drew up the river toward the wharf
A tug was hitehed to the Eastland,
ropes we're ordered cast off and the