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The rest of the story On May 7th of 1915, the British steamship Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine off the coast of Ireland. The ship sank. Nearly 1200 lives were lost and you've heard about that, about the Lusitania. But history, with her inclination to focus on events of international significance, seems to have overlooked the sinking of the Eastland. For on July 24, 1915, just two and a half months after the assault on the Lusitania, the United States passenger ship Eastland went to the bottom, taking a third of her passengers with her. And you've not heard of the Eastland disaster until now. Why? There was absolutely no excuse for her to have gone down. That is the rest of the story. The SS Eastland is no cabin cruiser now you understand. Her capacity was nearly 3,000 people and though accounts vary slightly, we're sure that there were at least 2,500 passengers on board when she went down. 2,500. Not including the crew of 72. What was it like the morning of July 24, 1915? Well, by 7am the overcast had not yet cleared. The air was laden with half mist, half drizzle. The water was calm. Even at that hour, most of the passengers were wide awake, up and about. A good number of them were on the top deck. One survivor recalled the captain expressing concern over the pitch of the ship. Side to side, it was leaning more to one side than to the other in the water. Precariously, he thought, well, he was right. A few minutes later the ship's bell rang out. If it had been a warning bell, it was too late. In one awesome rolling movement, the ship turned over. I mean, in seconds, the SS Eastland is upside down, her hull glistening above the surface like the belly of a dead whale. Most on the top deck were thrown free of the ship. These astonished clung to anything and anyone afloat. Many were less fortunate. The ones trapped in their staterooms, the ones crushed by flying furniture, the ones buried under an avalanche of fellow passengers. For some, death was mercifully instantaneous. Others, stranded in air pocketed compartments, were forced to die an inch at a time as the water slowly seeped in around a rescue party arrived in record time. In fact, had it not been for their promptness, the Eastland disaster might well have been the greatest tragedy of its kind for all time. As it was, the loss of 812 lives ranked the SS Eastland number six on an infamous worldwide list of of watery mass death. The Titanic. The Lusitania. The Empress of Ireland. The General Slocum, The Begonia. The Eastland. And you know, the Eastland rescue mission must have been as harrowing as the sinking itself. Acetylene torches were able to burn through the hull, freeing the few who were able to stay alive in large pockets of trapped air. One diver, horrified by the gruesome underwater still life, lost his mind. And long after the survivors were safe in their own homes, the investigation dragged on. For you see, there was absolutely no excuse whatever for the sinking of the Eastland. There was no iceberg, there was no torpedo, no tidal wave, merely too many passengers and a basically faulty ship's design. Or did I mention that this, the sixth ranking sea disaster did not occur at sea, but on the way to Lake Michigan in the Chicago river in 18ft of water while the near 3,000 capacity SS Eastland was moored to the dock. And now you know the rest of the story.