[The following is took place during the rescue efforts following 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 horrors assailed members of Coroner Hoffman’s jury, faced with the grim task of viewing the dead and tabulating the human cost. They shouldered their way through the throngs in front of the Reid-Murdoch building, trying to remain objective, but sorrow spread like a virus. One member of the jury had to excuse himself and flee to his home in order to avoid a full-blown breakdown in front of his peers. The signs of fracturing resolve were everywhere, even among the stony ranks of the city divers.
They had been recovering bodies for hours. Bone tired, Charles Gunderson resorted to using pike poles to remove many of the victims he discovered wedged in the wreckage below-decks. “Four were women,” observed a reported. “The fifth, a boy of eight, in a bedraggled Indian suit – killed by criminal paleface negligence.” Gunderson found the boy’s mother only inches away, dressed in a white corded suit, white stockings, white slippers and pearl earrings. The sight of her did something beyond articulation to the veteran diver’s spirit.
The Eastland’s two bartenders, Ed Barlett and LeRoy Bennett, were found next. The former boxers and fast friends had died together in the bowels of the ship. One of the divers found the men with their arms around each other’s shoulders, an eternal bond of friendship that began twenty years earlier when they fought each other to a draw at Kerwin’s saloon.
The discovery of the boxers tore through the divers’ hearts. They had no more whiskey to staunch the sadness. It was time for a shift change. Iver and Walter Johnson knew it. Gunderson knew it. Even George A. Saunders, Sr., a later arrival among the dive team, knew it was time to change divers. And when Harry Halvorsen emerged finally from the black depths, dripping with slime, one of the firemen knocked on the top of his helmet, which was how the surface team had been communicating throughout the day with the divers.
The fireman cupped his hands around the top of Halvorsen’s bell and yelled that it was time to quit and bring in a fresh team for the evening.
Halvorsen did not argue.
Source:
Bonansinga, Jay R. “Chapter Fourteen – Sackcloth and Ashes.” The Sinking of the Eastland: America's Forgotten Tragedy. Citadel Press, 2005. 164-65. Print.
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