SS Eastland: the Ship That Rolled Over at Dock

On 24 July 1915, thousands of Western Electric employees and their families gathered along the Chicago River for a company picnic excursion. The steamship SS Eastland was waiting at the dock, ready to carry them across the water for a day of leisure.She never left the river.Before the voyage began, Eastland began to list. Within minutes, she rolled onto her side while still tied to the wharf. Passengers on deck scrambled for safety, while hundreds trapped inside the vessel were caught in a nightmare of tilted corridors, blocked exits, rising water, and steel walls that rescuers could not open quickly enough.At least 844 people died.SS Eastland: The Ship That Rolled Over at the Dock tells the story of one of America's deadliest maritime disasters: the unstable vessel, the working-class picnic crowd, the post-Titanic safety reforms that added weight high on the ship, the sudden roll, the desperate rescue, the search for blame, and the long struggle to remember a disaster overshadowed by more famous shipwrecks.This was not an ocean catastrophe. There was no iceberg, torpedo, storm horizon, or distant sea. Eastland killed in the middle of a city, within sight of land and help. That closeness made the disaster more shocking, not less.Written in a serious, accessible narrative style, this book examines how public trust, shallow compliance, commercial pressure, unstable design, and incomplete safety reform combined to turn a company picnic into mass death.For readers of maritime history, Great Lakes disasters, Chicago history, industrial America, and shipwreck nonfiction, SS Eastland is a powerful account of a vessel that failed before the journey began, and of the ordinary people who paid the price.

Pages: 264, Paperback, Independently published