[The following is in regards to the sinking of the SS Eastland. Context for the disaster, courtesy of Wikipedia: “The SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. On July 24, 1915, the ship rolled over onto her side while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew were killed in what was the largest loss of life from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes.”]
The Eastland’s port gangways plunged underwater as the lean worsened. The sounds inside the boat reached an incredible volume. “There was a roar and a scream,” O’Meara recalled, “and a screeching of people.”
The noise along the dock rose as well, as onlookers joined the passengers in their collective gasps and shrieks. All traffic stopped. On the upper deck of the Roosevelt people froze in place, the band halting mid-song.
On the north side of the river, directly across from the Eastland’s berth, Chicago Daily Tribune photographer Mike Psaris stood beneath his enormous wood-and-brass dry-plate field camera, and lined up a panoramic shot of the dock. The camera’s trigger bulb gripped firmly in his right hand, Psaris prepared himself to capture the worst catastrophe in Chicago history as it occurred.
Objects plummeted into the river. Harry Miller, cowering inside a flooding gangway, saw a passenger go overboard. “A woman with a child in her arms jumped or fell off the rail into the water,” he told the New York Times. “I jumped in after her to get her. In less than a second they began dropping in all around me. There must have been hundreds of them that jumped in. The water was thick with them. One hit me on the shoulders and drove me under.”
The less fortunate found themselves trapped inside the ship as it made its final plunge.
Source:
Bonansinga, Jay R. “Chapter Seven – On the Death Stairs.” The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy. Citadel Press, 2005. 71-2. Print.
Further Reading:
No comments, yet...