V. What Went Wrong
The S.S. Eastland disaster is a peculiar case because there is no
specific single cause given for the capsizing.
Even the way the court cases were handled was rather unusual. Illinois’ State and Federal prosecutors met
to discuss how they were going to handle the case on September 22, 1915. Both sides agreed to let Federal prosecutors
take action before the state would proceed.
On September 29, 1915, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis issued a Federal
bench warrant for the arrest of George T. Arnold, Charles C. Eckliff, Joseph M.
Erickson, William H. Hull, Harry Pedersen, and Robert Reid. Arnold and Hull were part of The St.
Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company.
Eckliff and Reid were both inspectors, based in Michigan. Pedersen and Erickson were the only two that
were on the Eastland during the
disaster. Even though the disaster
happened in Chicago the trial took place in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The charge brought before the groups was
“conspiracy to operate an unsafe ship.”[1] The ‘conspiracy’
the prosecutors believed, was planned in Michigan, hence the reason for the
location of the trial.
The question here is why the
crewmembers would want to put their own lives on the line for an unsafe
ship. Some have argued if these
accusations are even logical. Why would
men, who work on the ship on a daily bases want to capsize the ship, knowing
their lives and the lives of others are at risk? This proposal would seem to be more logical
if this were to happen during the week with a much smaller excursion when the
ship was carrying fruit to Chicago from Michigan. Still the question remains, why? Answers to these questions are rather simple;
the crew knows the ship better than passengers would ever know the ship. Reasoning for this is that the crew is on the
ship every day, so they know the ship.
In addition, the crew would know when something is wrong with the ship,
as compared to someone who is on the ship for the first time, with no clue
about the ship. If ‘conspiracy’ was the
case, the crew would know where to go to get off the ship the fastest. However, this was not the case; therefore,
there were no plans to capsize the ship.
Eyewitnesses believed that the ship
was over loaded, which we know today is true.
James A McCollum, who was at the dock to see a friend off, claimed that
he approached a ticket taker and stated that the boat was overcrowded but was
told that there were only 1,000 people on the Eastland. After having this
conversion, McCollum stated, “a moment later I heard the order given: ‘Get all
on this boat you can. The others will be
overcrowded and we don’t want to leave anybody.”[2] However, it was
over by one person, not the estimated 3,700 people on the ship that the New York Times reported on July 25,
1915.[3] If the Eastland did have 3,700 passengers, the
blame would fall to the United States government. This is because the United States Customs
agency was in charge of counting the people as the ship was boarded. In addition, to have 3,700 people on the Eastland, passengers would have to board
the ship at almost 93 people per minute, which is an astounding pace with only
one gangway open for boarding. The
theory of being over load is correct, but not at the numbers many think. Hard to imagine that one person over the
limit would cause such a disaster, especially since babies were counted as one
person.
Another theory points to a poorly designed ship and that
had many modifications over the course of its years of operation.[4] However, the
designer of the Eastland, Sidney C.
Jenks, declared that he designed the Eastland
to carry 500 passengers.[5] The Eastland was almost a completely
different ship during the time of the disaster, than it was after it left the
Jenks shipyard. This eliminates the idea
that it was designed poorly because Jenks designed the ship a specific way, a
way in which the ship was not used at this time. In 1914 one of the modifications was “an
elaborate renovation of the forward dining room on the cabin level.” The work consisted of ripping up the old
warped hardwood and adding two inches of concrete and new cement in the aft
gangway. This work added an additional
fifteen to twenty tons of weight. During
the aftermath of the Titanic
disaster, the Eastland’s capacity
dropped to 2,000, but the process was easy for ship owners to regain a ships
pre-Titanic capacity. In the spring of 1915, Captain Pedersen
approached the Eastland’s owner,
William Hull, about adding lifeboats to the ship to increase the capacity to
2,570. After thinking it over for a few
days Mr. Hull decided to purchase the additional lifeboats. He then consulted a government inspector for
official approval for the increase in capacity.[6] With the
approval, lifeboats were added on July 2, 1915.[7]
Another theory by Historian George
W. Hilton is that all of the renovations on the Eastland caused the metacentric height
of the ship to be negative. Metacentric
height of a ship is the measure of her transverse stability. [8] To measure this
stability one uses the metacentric, which is defined as
“the point at which a vertical line drawn through the center
of buoyancy of an upright ship intersects a vertical line drawn through the
center of buoyancy of a ship when tipped.” [9] When a ship was a metacentric height of zero,
any weight off the centerline of the ship will cause it to list in that
direction, meaning that as little as five pounds can make the ship list. In addition, the further the weight is moved
from the centerline the ship list will worsen, unless the movement is met with
the same amount of weight in the opposite direction. When the metacentric height of a ship is a
positive weight off the centerline, it has a much smaller affect and the
listing of the ship. In addition, a ship
is able to list further and still be stable in the water. The metacentric height theory of Hilton is a
valid and logical argument, especially since as stated above crewmembers were
trying to move passengers to the starboard
side of the Eastland.
The last theory is that Joseph M
Erickson, Chief Engineer, mismanaged the ballast tanks on the Eastland. Erickson had to empty the ballast tanks to
about 400 tons, half of the 800 tons in which they held, in order for the ship
to be boarded. As the ship was being
boarded, Erickson adjusted the ballast in the tanks as needed. That was until about 7:16 am when the two
starboard tanks stopped filling. During
this time, there was miscommunication between the engine room and the bridge. Pedersen claims that he never rung “Stand by”
but Erickson claims that he received the order and acted accordingly. Erickson was getting the ship ready to set
sail. The ballast tanks for some reason
were not filling, which made the metacentric height
affect on the ship even worse.
With the theories stated above, the
capsizing of the Eastland comes off
as a mix of human error and moving too far away from the original design of the
ship. The miscommunication between the
bridge and the engine is unacceptable.
Erickson should have informed Pedersen that there was a problem with the
ballast tanks. Furthermore, there is no
such record that Erickson informed Pedersen.
The imbalance of the ballast tanks made the imbalance of the metacentric height of the
ship worst. The owners of the Eastland added weight to the ship, which
threw off the metacentric height of the original design of the ship. After the changes were made to the Eastland, the owners should have had the
ship rechecked to get the right numbers on the metacentric height so that the
proper number of people would be allowed on the ship. Also, allowing the crewmembers of the ship to
have the best data to work with so that they could keep the Eastland afloat.
VI. Americas Forgotten Tragedy
It is mind boggling to think that
the disaster happened in the middle of downtown Chicago and is yet all but
forgotten today. However, other
tragedies that have happened in the middle of the ocean are more widely known. The Eastland
capsized while stilled docked, and yet very few have heard about the
disaster. To put this into perspective
the RMS Titanic sank 450 miles off
the coast of Newfoundland[10] and the RMS Lusitania
sank roughly fourteen miles off the southern coast of Ireland near Old Head of
Kinsale.[11] Without
discrediting what happened on the other ships, when thinking about the location
of where it happened in comparison, it is hard to understand how it continues
to go so widely unknown.
Jay
Bonansinga in his book The Sinking of the Eastland says that the event
is America’s forgotten tragedy:
Taking place in broad daylight on
the city’s bustling wharf side, a heartbreaking maritime disaster sorrowfully
echoed the sinking of the luxury liner Titanic
just three years earlier. Nevertheless,
the victims of this terrible mishap were not among the worlds most rich and
famous. They were everyday people who
worked hard for the right to enjoy a day’s pleasure at a company picnic. They did not know that for many aboard, this
day would be their last. The only thing
more shocking than the event that took their lives is the fact that it has been
all but forgotten.[12]
Few
people have heard of the Eastland
disaster compared to the RMS Titanic
or the RMS Lusitania. Bonansinga
believes in the average Joe theory, which when looking at what happened makes
perfect sense.
Dr. Susan Fournier from DePaul
University in Chicago, made finding out why the Eastland was forgotten a class project in 2000. She took an Introduction to Sociology course
and tried to answer this question. The
class found that two out of every three people under the age of 60 never heard
of the Eastland. However, a little over one out of two, over
the age of sixty had heard about the Eastland.[13] Some of the
causes that they come up with were World War I, the Titanic, average Joe theory, senseless tragedy, too local and
different media coverage, just to name a few.[14] One that is
missing is the Lusitania, which is
rather shocking because it happened merely 2 months before the Eastland.
Another idea is that the disaster
happened during World War I; even though the United States was not fighting in
the war just yet, they would be fighting in less than two years. The idea that the war over shadowed the
disaster is very fitting. One could
argue that the Lusitania kept the Eastland as a forgotten tragedy because
the sinking of the Lusitania in part
is one of the reasons the United States entered World War I. The Titanic
happened three years before the Eastland
and in part, the sinking of the Eastland can
be blamed on the safety measures that came out as a result of the Titanic.
Another idea that fits well is the Average Joe Theory, because the
people that perished were working class people; not one famous person was on
the ship. Whereas, the Titanic was full of prominent citizens
and the maiden voyage was a well publicize event. The Lusitania
is very well known because the German Government considers the sinking of the
ship an act of war.
The United States Navy bought the
ship. This allowed the ship to continue to be used, unlike the Titanic and the Lusitania, which both to this day, sit at the bottom of the
ocean. The Navy bought the Eastland and remodeled the ship into a
gunboat. The ship was renamed the
U.S.S. Wilmette. The Navy had plans to use the remodeled
gunboat in World War 1, but the war was over before the ship was ready for
service. The Wilmette was used as a training vessel at the Great Lakes Naval
Base located in Great Lakes, Illinois.
The Wilmette was used as a
training vessel up until February 1941, when it was decommissioned and renamed IX-29.
The ship was not used again until August 1943 when it was used for a ten-day
cruise to plan war strategies for World War II.
Notable guests on the cruise were President Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Admiral William D. Leahy, James F. Byrnes and Harry Hopkins. The cruise was the last time the Eastland was used. In October 1946, the ship was sold for
scraps. Scraping of the ship was
completed in 1947. [15] Much like the
few scraps left from the ship, the memory from the Eastland is long forgotten.
[1]
WTTW Chicago Public Media - Television and
Interactive - WTTW. WTTW - The Eastland Disaster. Sept.-Oct 2001.
http://www.wttw.com/main.taf?p=1,7,1,1,12 (accessed October 12, 2010).
[2] New York Times, “Boat Overcrowded, Many
Witnesses Say; One Tells of Order to Take Aboard All She Would Hold -- Stories
of Spectators.” July 25, 1915, pg 3.
[3] New York Times, July 25, 1915, pg 3.
[4]
WTTW Chicago Public Media “The Eastland
Disaster.”
[5] [5] New York Times, “Eastland Never Tested.; Builder of Ill-Fated
Ship Says She Was Designed to Carry 500.” January 23, 1915,
pg NA.
[6]
Hilton, Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic,
pg 76. Also cited in Bonansinga, The
Sinking of the Eastland, pg 52-53
[7] Hilton,
Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic, pg
77.
[8] Hilton, Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic, pg 27-8.
[9] Eastland
Disaster Historical Society. “Terminology.” http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/terminology.htm#Metacenter. (accessed September 14, 2010.)
[10] Eastland
Disaster Historical Society. “A Titanic Comparison.”
[11]
Jennifer Rosenberg, “Sinking of the
Lusitania.” http://history1900s.about.com/cs/worldwari/p/lusitania.htm
(accessed November 1, 2010).
[12] Bonansinga, The Sinking of the Eastland, Back cover.
[13] Dr.
Susan Fournier “The Eastland Disaster: A Case of Social Amnesia?”, http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/depaulsoc1012000.htm, Fall 2000 (accessed November 1, 2010).
[14]Dr. Susan Fournier “The Eastland
Disaster: A Case of Social Amnesia?”, http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/depaulsoc1012000-034.pdf, October 25, 2000, (accessed November 1, 2010).
[15] Hilton, Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic, pgs 222-229
No comments:
Post a Comment