Eastland

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Image:Eastland disaster port side.jpg The Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. In 1915 the new federal "Seaman's Act" required retrofitting of a complete set of lifeboats. The new gear made the ship unstable. On July 24, 1915, the Eastland and two other cruise ships, the Theodore Roosevelt and the Petoskey, were hired to take employees from Chicago's Western Electric Company to a picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. Passengers began boarding around 6:30 AM. By 7:10, the ship had reached its capacity of 2,500 passengers. It had also developed a list to the port, which the crew attempted to stabilize by admitting water to the ballast tanks. By 7:28, the Eastland began to roll over, coming to rest on its side in 20 feet of water only 20 feet from the wharf. The Kenosha came alongside the hull to allow some passengers to leap to safety. 841 passengers and 4 crew died in the disaster. Many of the passengers on the Eastland were Czech ("Bohemian') immigrants from Cicero, Illinois.

Writer Jack Woodford witnessed the disaster and gave a first-hand account to the Chicago newspaper the Herald and Examiner. In his autobiography, Woodford writes:

"And 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 Eastland was raised in October 1915, she was sold to the Illinois Naval Reserve and recommissioned as the USS Wilmette stationed at Great Lakes Naval Base. On June 7, 1921, the Wilmette was given the task of sinking the UC-97, a German U-Boat captured during World War I. The guns of the Wilmette were manned by Gunner's Mate J.O. Sabin, who had fired the first American shell in World War I, and Gunner's Mate A.F. Anderson, the man who fired the first American torpedo in the conflict.