Talk:SS Eastland

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I heard that the Eastland sank because it had too many lifeboats. It had too many lifeboats because of a reactionary measure after the sinking of the Titanic. Is this true or an urban legend? - Masmith — Preceding unsigned comment added by Masmith (talk • contribs) 20:29, 24 November 2004 (UTC)


 * Partly true. The Eastland was carrying more lifeboats because of laws passed after the Titanic sank.  The lifeboats were positioned in such a way that they caused the boat to be overbalanced, which contributed to its sinking. Shsilver 16:28, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Also they overpacked the ship with passengers. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.181.250.148 (talk) 19:01, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

River vs. Lake
Clearly the sinking was in the Chicago River, so I added this to "Category:Shipwrecks in rivers", but it's also widely considered a Great Lakes disaster, so it seems appropriate to leave both even if the sinking was not actually within Lake Michigan. --Dhartung | Talk 06:40, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Why did so many die?
If it was right next to shore why did so many die? My guess is a lot of people couldn't swim back then. Anyone know? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 209.206.165.20 (talk) 04:43, 17 January 2007 (UTC).
 * I heard that there was live music below the deck so people were ther listening to the music and when the boat capsized they drowned because water went under the deck and the people could not get above the deck. I also think furniture smashed and killed people and the boat had too many people so the extra people that wern't supposed to be on the boat died.

People wore more underclothes back then as well, especially the women. The clothes got water logged and made people sink. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.237.33.234 (talk) 17:21, 30 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the entry as it exists at this moment (08 Oct 10) explains that many people were trapped inside the ship when it rolled over and they drowned when water entered and filled the now-submerged compartments, and that others were killed by heavy objects that slid accross the compartments as the ship was rolling over. However, the comment about the amount of clothing people wore 100 years ago is also relevant insofar as yards and yards of wet cloth in the long skirts of the time would have made it difficult for women to move quickly towards safety or stay afloat in partially flooded comparments or exitways. (71.22.47.232 (talk) 21:47, 8 October 2010 (UTC))

Aftermath

 * Nearly 20 years after the Eastland sank-a Judge only allowed survivors the amount of damages from the estimated value of the ships worth. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.53.145.195 (talk) 12:04, 3 November 2008 (UTC)  Note a 100 anniversary of the Disaster documentary brought out the fact that the change of venue was before a Judge who happened to be pro-business.....who explains that while the ships company was certainly negilent why the ammount of damages was given so small.....

edited out the copyright warning on the page because it makes the page completely unreadable. apparently whoever posted the copyright warning did not format it correctly and it thus compromised the usefulness and readability of the article. please correctly format the copyright warning before reposting or undoing my edit. thank you. 151.201.240.141 (talk) 23:56, 5 February 2011 (UTC)


 * This edit has been reverted and the copyright tag restored. The tag appears to be correctly formatted (please correct or point out any error you see), I agree that it makes the article look horrible but I don't see an alternative under Wikipedia policy, other than just deleting the section entirely. The only reason I didn't do that is because I wanted to give an opportunity for someone to make an argument in defense of its copyright status, though the linked source asserts copyright. If someone wants to try to rewrite the Mutiny section in their own words that would also be great, it just seems hard with nothing to go on but the bare facts from the linked source. Alereon (talk) 11:59, 6 February 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much for finding this problem and making sure that it is properly evaluated. :) Fortunately, it seems that Wikipedia is in the clear in this instance; the content was here prior to its publication there (see box above for details). --Moonriddengirl (talk) 01:20, 17 February 2011 (UTC)

Carl Sandburg article
I added a link to Carl Sandburg's 1915 article on the disaster, along with a brief quotation. The article includes three photographs. That's all public domain. His poem on the disaster was not published until 1993, so it's copyrighted. Choor monster (talk) 19:54, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Addendum: thanks for the improvements, but the poem barely refers to industrial workers. I gave a three line quote from the end of the poem, and I am wondering if it comes off as the whole poem, and not just an excerpt? Choor monster (talk) 22:18, 14 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes, I only got partway there. I like your change! Sepreece (talk) 22:52, 15 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I decided to make it 100% clear. As it is, I don't like the way the infoboxes on the right and the photos on the left crowd the article.  I don't know if more photos are warranted&mdash;the three from the ISR are strong stuff.  If the extra photographs are to be included, options would be spin-off the section into its own article, with just a one-paragraph summary here, or to include a photo gallery at the end for all photographs except the infobox. Choor monster (talk) 23:18, 15 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Another option would be to get the infoboxes to pile up to the right, in two or three columns say. Those who really want to read them would have to use a slidebar. Choor monster (talk) 15:29, 16 January 2013 (UTC)

So I was reading about this disaster today on Wikipedia having been previously unaware of it (New Englander) and I have to say I found the whole section relating to Carl Sandburg's writings about the disaster to be very disjointed and, while he's a notable journalist, excessively long. I'm going to make an edit to try to clean it up and keep the substance as best I can but if someone intimate with the details would like to give it a further effort that would be nice. JBartus (talk) 23:43, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Uploaded a set of Eastland Postcards to Commons
Found at an estate sale, published in 1915:

Hopefully these will prove useful to the article. K8 fan (talk) 07:52, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Smithsonian.com Article
On October 27, 2014, Smithsonian.com published [an article] about the Eastland disaster. Squideshi (talk) 21:39, 4 February 2015 (UTC)

Early Problems
"The ship was top-heavy along with the center of gravity being too high." Seems a trifle redundant, don't ya think? ;) JetMec (talk) 15:49, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Original Research?
The section starting: "Stephanie Riley argues in her Master’s of Arts thesis" seems to be the very definition of original research. Should it be here? Bgovern (talk) 05:04, 7 May 2015 (UTC)

Water flows up?
From the "early problems" section: "a case of overcrowding caused the Eastland to list with water flowing up one of the ship's gangplanks." This should either be explained better or deleted. Maproom (talk) 07:14, 24 July 2015 (UTC)

Needs editing work
This article is absolutely PACKED with errors in punctuation, mostly in the form of grossly excessive comma usage. Someone who actually understands the rules of comma usage, rather than someone who merely thinks they know, needs to edit this article. No, I am not going to do it. I learned long ago not to engage with amateurs and novices on Wikipedia. DesertSkies120 (talk) 06:58, 6 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I've copyedited the punctuation in this article. Hopefully it's an improvement. DesertPipeline (talk) 15:03, 21 February 2021 (UTC)

How can adding weight reduce draft?
How is this possible? "added additional weight and reduced her draft..." Was the hull modified in some way? GA-RT-22 (talk) 23:49, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I've reworded that section and added another citation with a quote that explains what was done. Some of the changes added weight, but the draft was reduced by shifting the ship's machinery around. This presumably shifted its center of mass further forward. Since the draft of Eastland was greater at the stern, shifting her weight forward could reduce her maximum draft to some extent even as her overall weight was increased. --Colin Douglas Howell (talk) 02:33, 10 March 2024 (UTC)