[The following is took place during 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 surface of the river was black with struggling, crying, frightened, drowning humanity,” Babcock recalled. “Wee infants floated about like corks. Shrieks and cries of ‘Help!’ from those in the water filled the air. Many sank instantly and were seen no more. Others tore off their clothing in the water as best they could and tried to swim to safety. Some succeeded. Others turned white, imploring faces toward the panic-stricken crowd on the bridges and piers, but before help could reach them sank to watery graves.”
”I couldn’t stand to watch,” a secretary stationed at the nearby Chicago and South Haven office remembered. “I felt as if I were going to faint, and I ran away.” Others gazed down in horror from the windows of neighboring buildings. David Durand, an employee of the H. F. Watson Company warehouse on the north side of the river, gawked at the horrors from his third-floor office. “God, the screaming was terrible, it’s ringing in my ears yet,” Durand told the Tribune. “The river was dotted with men and women shrieking and waving their arms for help as they were carried down with the current.”
Durand’s gaze fixed on one woman who had fallen from the Eastland’s hurricane deck. She went under for a moment, and Durand through that she was gone. Then it appeared that she bobbed to the surface, but it was only the woman’s big white hat that had torn loose in the chaos. “I saw her white hat float down the river,” Durant called. “And that was all. I said, ‘That’s the end of her.’”
Source:
Bonansinga, Jay R. “Chapter Eight – Down and Down.” The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy. Citadel Press, 2005. 85-6. Print.
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Events like this is why college admissions required prospective students to be able to float for fifteen minutes. One ship sinks and you could lose a large percentage of students.