The Eastland disaster killed more passengers than the Titanic and the Lusitania | Hacker News Reader

The Eastland disaster killed more passengers than the Titanic and the Lusitania

smithsonianmag.com

101 pointsanarbadalov48 comments

I will see your Eastland and raise you the even more obscure sinking of Mississippi steamboat Sultana in 1865. Loss of life between 1168 and 1547. It's the worst maritime disaster in US history (the Titanic was an British ship in international waters with an international passenger list).

The reason you've never heard of it is because Abraham Lincoln was assassinated the day before, an event that sucked up all the nations newsprint and popular attention.

There is a pretty good documentary on it on one of the big streaming services.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_maritime_disasters_in_...

Fair one but rather a lot of that list of maritime disasters has white and red ensigns (UK) next to them. We obviously haven't quite got the hang of the big blue wobbly stuff.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sultana_(steamboat) is well worth a read. It is well written in my opinion and the Talk page only has the usual nonsense "controversy" on it. This time it's whether to worry about SS as a naming prefix!

That's just what you'd expect, as in the 19th century Britain probably had more ocean going vessels than the rest of the world COMBINED.

The SS prefix "controversy" is a funny read on the talk page! Thanks.

How is there that much uncertainty about the number of people killed?

The civil war was still going on although Lee had surrendered so a lot of formalities like passenger manifests were pro forma especially for military transport. The passengers consisted mainly of released Union POWs that were trying to get back home after years of hell in Confederate camps and they were in various states of health. The Union army had commissioned the ship to take as many of these soldiers north as it could carry and it was seriously overloaded.

1865 - things were a lot more casual back then. No passenger manifests (or lifejackets..)

The Titanic is famous because of the hubris involved; it was the biggest, fastest, most luxurious ocean liner ever, that sunk basically just because its captain was trying for the Blue Riband on its maiden voyage (also, a lot of rich and famous people died). The Lusitania is famous because it was a hospital ship attacked during wartime and was used to drum up support for allies entering the war (it was a major factor in the US entering).

For whatever reason we don't really care about normal civilians dying en masse during peacetime accidents. So many people died in the General Slocum disaster that it wiped out the Little Germany neighborhood of New York:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum

That's not true. The Titanic was never competing for the Riband as it couldn't hope to compete with the Lusitania on speed. (That was made up for the movie.) The Lusitania was not a Hospital Ship, it was still a passenger ship at the time of its sinking. The Britanic, Titanic's sister ship, was a hospital ship that was sunk by a German mine in WWI. Maybe you're mixing the two up.

Besides passengers the Lusitania was also officially carrying hundreds of tons of rifle ammunition and more than a thousand cases of artillery shells. Some have asserted it had even more than that, undeclared/unofficially. From wikipedia:

> Furthermore, there was a large consignment of fur, sent from Dupont de Nemours, an explosives manufacturer, and 90 tons of butter and lard destined for the Royal Navy Weapons Testing Establishment in Essex. Although it was May, this lard and butter was not refrigerated; it was insured by the special government rate but the insurance was never claimed.[111]

That may not excuse Germany for sinking it, but even so I think operating in that capacity is a far cry from being a hospital ship.

I know someone who's grandfather saw the Lusitania being torpedoed. It was not unexpected, there was known to be a u-boat in the area and people watched from onshore

That and the Germans basically announced that it would happen.

From Wikipedia:

> The [German] embassy decided to warn passengers before her next crossing not to sail aboard Lusitania, and on 22 April placed a warning advertisement in 50 American newspapers, including those in New York:

NOTICE! TRAVELLERS intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. IMPERIAL GERMAN EMBASSY Washington, D.C. 22 April 1915

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_RMS_Lusitania

Though of course the captain could have stopped the ship overnight, and I suppose the owner would have complained but that's it.

Pretty much this — there's a large mindshare bias towards the more dramatic and relatable incidents.

My favorite party question is what the most deadly power plant accident in history was. And the predictable answer "Chernobyl" is wrong by a whole order of magnitude, which seems to surprise many: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banqiao_Dam

For even more extreme examples for drama & negativity bias, feel free to have a look at actual death causes vs. news exposure: Terrorism is overrepresented by more than three orders of magnitude, while almost nobody gets killed by a bad guy but rather by heart disease: https://ourworldindata.org/does-the-news-reflect-what-we-die...

All in all, humans are pretty pathetic at objectiveness.

It's a bit of a stretch to refer to Banqiao Dam as a "power plant accident". It was a dam failure. Sure, it was part of "a project to control flooding and provide electrical power generation" (from the wikipedia article), but AIUI the failure was nothing to do with the power plant; it was simply the dam.

That seems overly pedantic, like saying Chernobyl was a "reactor failure" that has nothing to do with the power plant.

I find it much more newsworthy to hear of civilians being purposely killed by people in pursuit of their political aims than a disease where 80% of the deaths are people over 65

The Titanic also killed many more people than the Eastland did. The headline here is intentionally deceptive, specifying that the Eastland killed more passengers.

The past is a pretty different place. These hundreds of passengers died when they couldn't swim the twenty feet to the shore. It makes you question why they wanted to have their party on a boat.

> These hundreds of passengers died when they couldn't swim the twenty feet to the shore.

Many of them were young children. Most of them were trapped below decks because the ship rolled over so quickly.

> It makes you question why they wanted to have their party on a boat.

Victim blaming here is not just disrespectful and mean but also factually wrong.

> The past is a pretty different place. These hundreds of passengers died when they couldn't swim the twenty feet to the shore. It makes you question why they wanted to have their party on a boat.

I’m not following this. Seems like a lot of people were trapped below decks, and a lot more were stuck in what amounts to a mosh pit in water while trying to look after vulnerable loved ones, which is a great way for even strong swimmers to drown in a hurry.

> mosh pit in water

In fresh water, which is far less buoyant than salty ocean water.

> These hundreds of passengers died when they couldn't swim the twenty feet to the shore. It makes you question why they wanted to have their party on a boat.

I mean, should I be required to be able to flap my arms and fly to hop on an airliner?

I must have missed the part of my own comment where I suggested that the strange part of this was that those people were allowed onto a boat.

The strange part is that they wanted to be there. If you can't swim, this is a self-evidently bad idea. People are still afraid of boats, just as people are afraid of airplanes. Those people are correct -- occupying a vehicle whose failure will instantly kill you is something you should be frightened of.

But since you mention requirements, I'll note that my parents would not allow me on a boat -- any boat -- before I could swim. Unlike the ability to fly, the ability to swim is not all that difficult to learn. And while it won't save you if you get dumped into the middle of the sea, it will save you if you get dumped twenty feet from shore.

It’s not clear to me that most of the drownings were related to inability to swim. If you dump a few hundred strong swimmers in water, unexpectedly and all very close together and panicking, then add that a bunch of them are kids (many of which may well hav been able to swim, ordinarily) then I’d expect a bunch of them to drown. Ever accidentally get in a little knot of people in the water? Makes it harder to swim. Now put some people under you and others trying to swim past you and wait where the hell is my ten-year-old and everyone’s screaming and tugging and pushing and your suit is wet and heavy... I don’t see how a large percentage of the passengers being unable to swim is necessary for a whole lot of them to drown.

[edit] more to the point, do you believe crowd-crush deaths occur because those crushed foolishly never learned to walk?

Yes, people should learn to swim if only for safety reasons. I went to a school that required you to pass a swim test (or take a swimming class) to graduate. I approve with whatever reasonable exceptions are appropriate.

But it's not obvious to me that large boats should particularly be avoided if you have otherwise never learned to swim for whatever reasons. And it's not clear that being able to swim would necessarily save many of the people who have died in major ferry, etc. accidents.

> And it's not clear that being able to swim would necessarily save many of the people who have died in major ferry, etc. accidents.

The ability to get off the ship and into the water seems like the trickiest bit to me, particularly if you're below deck sleeping when the accident occurs. Once you're in the water, I think the temperature of the water is likely the biggest factor. If the water is cold then you likely have minutes to survive no matter how strong a swimmer you are. If the water is warm, people could float for days before succumbing to the elements. The USS Indianapolis survivors were in the water for four days and were in pretty bad shape, but I think in the modern era a more timely rescue is likely.

> If you can't swim, this is a self-evidently bad idea.

Except it's not really. You'd generally trust these things to be safe and in reality they kind of are. Now much more than then, but even back then the risk was low enough for most people to take, I assume.

The same thing (albeit with a lower risk) is true of planes today.

And, of course, compared to the sinkings with the largest loss of lives, neither the Eastland nor the Titanic seems particularly -hm, for want of a better word - impressive.

The Wilhelm Gustloff, sunk in the Baltic Sea in the closing months of WW2 - 10,000 lives lost. The Goya, sunk in the same waters in April 1945, cost approx. 7,000 lives.

The worst peacetime accident was in the mid-eighties, when the Philippine ferry Doña Paz capsized, killing more than 4,000 people.

Something that makes the Eastland quite horrifying is that it didn't take place far out at sea: it took place in the Chicago River. I don't know if you've spent any time in Chicago, but the river goes through the heart of the city. You're walking to the market and you hear some hubbub by the river. You turn the corner, and boom, suddenly you see a few thousand people get flipped into the water and start drowning. Even if "only" 800 of them actually drown, it's still a horrifying thing to see.

Willhelm Gustloff is a crazy story. The captain who sunk it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Marinesko. He was reprimanded for being a drunk and for gambling and was facing court martial. Then only later after his death awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union award (the highest award) and had streets and museums named after him.

And then compare to the current pandemic, that a lot of people are trying to downplay.

The headline is playing a trick for clicks. More people died on the Titanic, but the Eastland has more deaths if you only count passengers and now crew.

As an engineer (ok software engineer but still) terrible engineering is always interesting: why would anyone build a ship like this without a keel, and why would anyone put 2000+ people into a ship designed for 500? Also why would anyone put massive top heavy weight on a ship with no keel and not do any calculations? And why did someone buy a ship like this because it was cheap and not ask why?

Engineering disasters always have lessons you hope someone learned before it's you in or on it.

I once won a cruise ship shipbuilding contest (use any materials you can find, it has to hold a two sixpacks of beer for 30 seconds) with a little raft that had both a tall keel and full water bottles for stability. I learned all this from engineering disaster shows.

> why would anyone build a ship like this without a keel

Because you want a shallow draft in a riverboat. [0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverboat#Design_differences

> because it was cheap and not ask why?

"Because it was cheap" answers all your questions.

How about designing a RORO ferry with no watertight compartments that allows the bow doors to be open while underway (and having no indicator lights on the bridge) and then sailing into the open sea at speed:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Herald_of_Free_Enterprise

(oh and not having waterproof emergency lighting).

Lots of lessons were learned from those 193 deaths.

> why would anyone put 2000+ people into a ship designed for 500?

Money, and it seems like it paid off - the owners were not found to be liable for much.

The article briefly mentions the writer/journalist Carl Sandburg, but doesn't mention that he wrote a particularly brutal poem about the event. Here's a link to a copy:

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/30232/...

Thank you, that’s a fascinating read. Sandburg was right: we pay attention to flashy disasters, while slow-rolling ones are barely newsworthy.

If you're interested in light retrospectives this is ok for a modern day ferry disaster -

What Went Wrong in the South Korean Ferry Disaster? (28 mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_A8dq2fA5o

The MS Estonia also has doco's on Youtube

I learned about this recently at the Chicago Maritime Museum (a fascinating small museum that I hope will survive the pandemic).

One of the most interesting things they have on display is a dive suit that was used in search and rescue efforts for the Eastland disaster.

It was sad, but not as sad as the similarly named Easthill mining disaster.

http://www.ovff.org/pegasus/songs/mining-disaster.html

Hmm, designed for 500 people, modified several times to up the passengers to 2000+, modified again to add lifeboats and vests. Sounds a bit like the 737-Max.

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