844 Drown in Chicago Boat Accident- Bohemian National Cemetery Memorial
- Wendy Moxley Roe
- 4 days ago
- 12 min read
NOTE: Below are graphic images of the recovery of bodies after the Eastland Disaster, these may be upsetting to some! Please proceed with caution.
July 24, 1915, the SS Eastland passenger steamship was docked on the south bank of the Chicago River, between Clark and LaSalle Streets. Around 2500 passengers and crew were on board awaiting its departure.
Most of the passengers were employees of the Western Electric Company. Four ships had been hired by the company to take them to a company picnic in Michigan City, Indiana.
The ship never left the dock. At 7:28 am the ship lurched sharply to port and then rolled completely onto her port side, away from the dock, coming to rest on the river bottom, just 20 feet below the surface. Many people had already descended to the lower levels of the ship and were trapped underneath the water when the ship turned. It was only half submerged, but 844 lives were lost that day including 22 entire families. It is the greatest loss of life on the Great lakes.
Writer Jack Woodford witnessed the disaster and wrote a first-hand account that appeared in local newspapers shortly after the accident. Woodford wrote:
“Then movement caught my eye. I looked across the river. As I watched in disoriented stupefaction a steamer large as an ocean liner slowly turned over on its side as though it were a whale going to take a nap. I didn't believe a huge steamer had done this before my eyes, lashed to a dock, in perfectly calm water, in excellent weather, with no explosion, no fire, nothing. I thought I had gone crazy.”
After the accident a grand jury indicted the president and three officers of the steamship company that owned the Eastland for manslaughter, and the ship's captain and engineer for criminal carelessness. They had found that the disaster was caused by conditions of instability caused by overloading of passengers, mishandling of water ballast and the ship's faulty construction.
Hearings to extradite the men to Illinois for trial didn’t provide enough evidence and the extradition was denied. Case closed.
The ship itself was not new to trouble. Ordered by the Michigan Steamship Company in 1902 and built by the Jenks Ship Building Company of Michigan the ship was named Eastland in May 1903.
On her maiden voyage in August of 1903, six crewman refused orders by the captain because they had not gotten their potatoes at dinner. The captain arrested them at gunpoint and when they reached port, he had them arrested and charged with mutiny.
Over the next decade the Eastland would have multiple serious listing incidents during loading and unloading. In July 1904 she nearly capsized due to being over weight capacity.
The aftermath of the disaster was even more horrifying than the accident itself. Temporary morgues were set up throughout the city with bodies covered in sheets laid out in rows awaiting family or friends to identify them. Photo Right is inside the 2nd Regiment Armory
The victims of the Eastland are buried in almost every Chicago cemetery and a few beyond. Bohemian National Cemetery has the largest group of around 150.
As an interesting side note, a 20-year-old football player named George Halas was scheduled to be on the Eastland that day! He would later go on to be the coach and owner of the Chicago Bears and a founding member of the National Football League. Halas had family members that worked for the Western Electric company and was supposed to be on the first ship leaving for the picnic. That morning, he was delayed leaving for the dock which caused him to arrive at the dock after the ship had overturned. Halas's name was mistakenly listed on the list of deceased in newspapers but was later corrected.
A list of the identified deceased dated July 25, 1915 can be seen here:
After the Eastland ship was raised in August of 1915, she was sold and converted to a gunboat. She was renamed the USS Wilmette on 20 February 1918 and would go on to serve the country for the next 3 decades until she was scrapped in 1947.
On July 12, 2015, just days before the 100th anniversary of the Eastland Disaster, the Bohemian National Cemetery held a dedication ceremony at the newly installed, beautiful memorial in section 16, near where many Eastland victims are buried. Their headstones are easily identifiable by the death date - July 24, 1915, or an inscription that simply reads “victim of the Eastland.”
The above photos of a Headstone inside Bohemian National Cemetery marking the grave of a couple killed in the Eastland Disaster. Emilie Samek supported her sick father, mother and two sisters with her job at Western Electric as a switchboard operator. She was with her fiancé William Sherry on the Eastland that day. Both perished in the accident and are buried together in the pictured lot. Photos by Author Wendy Moxley Roe 2015
For over Twenty years George Sindelar was a foreman at Western Electric. The day of the Eastland he had taken with him his wife Josie, his five children- Adela, 15, Sylvia, 13, George, 10, Albert, 8, Willie, 5 and his sister-in-law Regina. All eight perished in the accident.
Four days later on a somber, gray, rainy day, the family was laid to rest in Bohemian National Cemetery section 16 beside Josie and Reginas father, who had passed years earlier.
Right photo: The Sindelar headstone in Bohemian National Cemetery
Below: The Sindelar family arriving in white caskets at the gravesite in Bohemian National Cemetery on July 28, 1915
Both photos courtesy of The Friends of Bohemian National Cemetery
Please visit the link below to a page dedicated to the Eastland Burials and memorial in Bohemian National Cemetery. There are many more photos of the headstones there, information on the burials and photos of the memorial dedication ceremony!
Chuck Michalek began the task of creating and installing the Eastland Memorial around 2011. He knew that the 100th anniversary was a few years away and wanted to do something to commemorate and memorialize the tragic event and those who perished in it.
When Michalek was young his father was intent on him learning to swim. He would tell the child that he needed to learn to swim so that he did not end up like those on the Eastland. Many drowned only twenty feet from the riverbank because they did not know how to swim.
The memorial is a large granite slab with “SS Eastland” inscribed on the front and ripples of water carved across the surface. On top, a steamship’s steering wheel juts out of the slab to illustrate the sinking and then raising of the ship. A black granite upright stone behind the memorial describes the disaster on the front featuring two large oval porcelain portraits of the Eastland. One in her prime, standing tall and the other on her side after she tipped that day in 1915. On the back details of the graves of Eastland victims in Lot #16. In front of the slab, Bricks inscribed with names of those who have donated are nicely laid out on the ground. A bench sits in front of the memorial for anyone to sit and reflect.
Above photos by Author Wendy Moxley Roe
The back of the upright stone text reads:
Eastland Burials at Bohemian National Cemetery
You are standing in Section 16, where you will see the largest number of gravestones of Eastland victims. It had been opened just months earlier, and lots in this section sold quickly to families grieving lost loved ones.
As you read the inscriptions in Section 16, as well as in other areas of Bohemian National Cemetery, you can identify those of Eastland victims by the death date, July 24, 1915. On Czech-language stones, you might see the date written as "24. července 1915" with the month at times abbreviated as červ'ce or čer'ce. Also, some grave markers are inscribed "obět' Eastlandu" (victim of the Eastland) or "na lodi Eastlandu" (on the ship Eastland).
The porcelain photographs mounted on some of the gravestones are poignant reminders of the human loss. Many of the Eastland passengers were families and groups of friends looking forward to a summer outing with co-workers and neighbors. Sadly, most of those who died in the disaster were young adults and children.
Shall we meet when we land, I wonder?
I hope so, my friend, bye and bye;
You were swallowed up in the struggle,
I was grasped when ready to die.
Noble heroes, you men who, undaunted,
Risked life some one of us to save,
White lips will pray for you and bless you
Until they are hushed in the grave.
Dear bereaved, take heart in your sorrow;
Though the load is heavy to-day,
You will meet again some to-morrow –
They have gone just over the way.
May our lives be nobler and better
For this dark, bitter hour of pain;
Take heart, my dear friend, in the dawning
We shall meet our loved ones again!Excerpted from "In Memoriam" Written in 1915 by Ida O. Anderson, Survivor of the Eastland Disaster
The afternoon of July 24, 2015, the centennial anniversary of the Eastland disaster, we took a tour of Bohemian National Cemetery with Author Marian Cheatham. Cheatham wrote a fictional novel around the Eastland Disaster titled simply “Eastland”. She also has done extensive research on the disaster and burials.
In the evening a memorial concert was held in the Cemetery Columbarium. Michael Esposito of Phantom Airwaves and his band performed music written by them that had AMAZING underwater EVP’s taken at the Eastland disaster site by Esposito himself interwoven into the songs.
Photos above by Author Wendy Moxley Roe July 24, 2015
A small group of us left the concert a bit early and in the dark made our way to the newly unveiled Eastland memorial. We conducted an impromptu spirit box session in wh. My friend Deb was quietly listening to the voices coming through for something to connect with. At onepoint she started thinking about how tired she was after a brutal week at work and even though she was sitting in a dark cemetery she felt comfortable enough that could fall asleep. A few min later she nodded off. Just as she dozed the many voices stopped and a male voice said loud and clear “someone needs to go to bed”!
I have not heard or located any stories of hauntings at Bohemian but did read and interesting story that gives a bit of insight into the chaos that went on with trying to identify everyone pulled from the river that day.
21-year-old Emma Meyer left her home on Hamlin Ave in Chicago for the doomed ship early that morning in July. After the accident Emma could not be located either alive or deceased. The search for her continued for days. The bodies recovered were all claimed one by one during this time until only one remained. Passenger #571 was the only body unclaimed. #571 bore a striking resemblance to Emma Meyer but her family was insistent that it was not her. Emma had a scar on her forehead and a mole on her left shoulder blade. #571 did not have these markings and was a different physical build than Emma.
Nearly a months' time passed and the need for them to bury the body even though it had not been claimed was pressing. Officials wanted to put the unknown Eastland victim to rest but the coroner was hesitant and determined to identify the young woman first.
Just as he was about to acquiesce the request, he thought that he might find something in the personal possessions of the recovered victims. They had been removed and placed in envelopes labeled with their names a large number of which had not been claimed by families of the deceased. Envelope #571 offered no clues to the identity of the young woman its content had come from. In a subsequent search of the other left-over envelopes, one was labeled with the name Emma Schroll. This Emma had been buried with her husband and two sisters who had also drowned on the Eastland. In the Schroll envelope they found a scroll bracelet with the initials EM. This was enough to cause serious suspicions that there had been an identity mix up. The body buried as Emma Shroll was exhumed and identified by family to be Emma Meyer by the two body markings and a dentist confirming her identity through dental records. Body #571, now known to be Emma Shroll was then buried in the lot with her husband and sisters. Emma Meyers body was returned to her family and buried in Oak Ridge Cemetery in Chicago.
A link to a podcast that details the identity mix up of the two Emma's drowned in the Eastland Disaster:
The site of the Eastland disaster is said to be notoriously haunted. Chicago native Tony Szabelski has been a haunted tour guide for many years and in those years has visited the Eastland disaster site many times. In a news article with CBS news, Szabelski says of the location:
“A lot of people report to this day that from the restaurants along the river, or looking down from the Clark Street Bridge, they'll still see images – faces of people floating in the water, or hands reaching up for safety.”
Police reports have even come in of people seeing someone drowning in the river when they looked into the water from the riverfront at night. Of course, when police arrive there is nothing to be found.
In related hauntings the buildings near the Eastland site that were used as the temporary morgues have had reports of strange goings on for years.
The Reid, Murdoch & Co. Building at 325 N. LaSalle St., was one of these buildings. Employees working in the Reid Murdoch building, especially after hours have reported seeing shadow figures moving down the hallways, sounds coming from rooms above them where nobody should be, lights flickering on and off, doors slowing creaking open and slamming shut are all common occurrences here.
Szabelski has often led a nighttime walking ghost tour where guests would sit on steps facing the building. As he would speak about the phenomena of lights flickering in the windows the lights would appear in sync with Szabelski’s talk as if on cue!
The main building used as a temporary morgue was the Second Regiment Armory in the West Loop. This building would eventually become Harpo Studios; home of the Oprah Winfrey Show between 1990 and 2011. Winfrey has said she had no idea of the building's history in the beginning but later after learning about the Eastland did a couple of shows in memoriam and remembrance of the horrible accident.
Winfrey and her staff have spoken often and openly about the experiences they had while inside the studio.
Sounds of ghostly children playing up and down the hallways and a women's restroom where a sobbing woman could be heard but not seen. Loud crashing noises heard but never any evidence found of a cause and a ghostly image of a woman in old time dress that Winfrey dubbed the grey lady caught on security cameras. After the Oprah show ended in 2011 the building sat empty until it was demolished in 2016 to make way for McDonalds Corporate headquarters.
One hundred years after the accident and very close to the exact anniversary in 2015, Dutch Newsreels of the Eastland disaster were accidentally discovered by graduate student, Jeff Nichols. It was the first time actual video footage had been seen of the disaster. A short clip uploaded to YouTube can be viewed here:
The Eastland is one of those disasters that struck the very heart of our nation. The massive loss of lives has been called Chicago’s Titanic. It is a story that is still told on tours and in memorials pieces such as this blog. Para enthusiasts can still be seen with equipment to investigate the disaster site and the locations that were used as temporary morgues. A Historical plaque marks the location of the tragedy at the corner ow Whacker Dr. and Lasalle street. The memorial was originally placed in 1990 but at some point it went missing. It was replaced in 2003 at its current location pictured right.
It reads:
While still partially tied to its dock at the river’s edge, the excursion steamer Eastland rolled over on the morning of July 24, 1915. The result was one of the worst maritime disasters in American history. More than eight hundred people lost their lives within a few feet of the shore. The Eastland was filled to overflowing with picnic-bound Western Electric Company employees and their families when the tragedy occurred. Investigations following the disaster raised questions about the ship’s seaworthiness and inspection of Great Lakes steamers in general.
Erected 2000 by The Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy, The Eastland Disaster Historical Society, The City of Chicago, and the Illinois State Historical Society.
Note: Marker is in Chicago, Illinois, Cook County. It is in The Loop District at the intersection of West Wacker Drive and North LaSalle Street on West Wacker Drive. The marker stands on the Chicago Riverwalk. Marker is at or near this postal address: 144 West Wacker Drive, Chicago IL 60601. Photo and info shared from here: The Eastland Disaster Historical Marker
More links to Eastland disaster media!
Eastland books:
Clicking on the photo will
take you to a page where
you can buy that book:
Articles:
Podcasts:
My friend's Pat and Rebecca of Ghostly Podcast talk about the Eastland disaster with Haunted Chicago Tour Guide Tony Szabelski!
Commentaires