Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America

In 1915, the SS Eastland capsized while tied to its dock in the Chicago River. Over 800 people died.

Michael McCarthy hypothesizes that virtually no one in America today has heard of this disaster. I certainly hadn't, and my first reaction upon learning of it was to think that Chicago saw more than its share of bizarre disasters in the early twentieth century. But, I digress.

Ashes Under Water is the story of the Lake Michigan steamships, and of one in particular - the Eastland - that was beset by trouble from its earliest days. Although McCarthy focuses on other aspects of the story, I was most stunned by the fact that someone who had never built a boat before built one big enough to hold 2,500 people...and it took more than a decade for anything truly terrible to happen.

The second half of the book focuses on the trial that followed, and how the clearly guilty owners tried to pin the blame on the most competent and least guilty man on the boat, Chief Engineer Joseph Erickson. Erickson was defended by none other than the wily Clarence Darrow, he of later Monkey fame.

All told, I found the first half of Ashes Under Water, which covered the Lake Michigan steamship business, Erickson's biography, and the Eastland accident itself, more interesting than the second half, which focused on the trial. From beginning to end, though, McCarthy is detailed and thorough and offers a remarkable reconstruction of a disaster that has otherwise long been forgotten.