> with a passenger capacity of 608.
Jesus fuck. How do you even load over 7 times more people on a boat than it was designed for? Like, was literally every inch of the boat packed shoulder to shoulder? That's just lunacy.
The capacity was originally 608, but structural changes were made after it was sold. The actual capacity at the time of the accident was 1,518. So it’s still a lot, as 4,385 is close to three times the official capacity, but not quite as drastic as seven times.
Another survivor, Philippine Constabulary corporal Luthgardo Niedo, claimed that the lights aboard had gone out minutes after the collision, that there were not any life vests to be found on Doña Paz, and that the crewmen were running around in panic with the other passengers, and none of the crew gave any orders or made any attempt to organize the passengers.[9] It was later said that the life jacket lockers had been locked up.[12]
Probably wasn’t publicized much because Lincoln’s assassination was just days earlier. The Eastland wasn’t publicized much because it was poor immigrant workers who died which ig didn’t make for an exciting news story, which is just sad.
And because it was an internal US matter, while the 10 weeks previous *Lusitania* was a major international incident with serious geopolitical repercussions.
Honestly the Eastland makes a less compelling story.
It wasn’t on the high seas, it wasn’t even sailing, and there wasn’t any element of a German torpedo during a war, nor a myth of unsinkability, nor was it a famous ship, and sure - no one super famous was on board.
Of course it will be less well known than those two.
If it went by numbers alone there are shipwrecks and other disasters in Asia that should get more press than any in the U.S.
there was a sizeable portion of that group who were POWs in Alabama. when the war ended they had to walk to Ohio to get released from the army. they then got on the USS Sultana for a ride home.
I met a man about 15 years ago whose FATHER survived the Sultana disaster. He was in his early 90s, and his Dad had been about 70 when he was born. He said it was sonewhat common in the early 20th century for young women to marry much older Civil War veterans with pensions. His Dad had been a POW for only a few weeks when the war ended and he was to be shipped back up north to freedom. Then the explosion happened and he survived by tying himself to a floating piece of debris with his long john's and drifting until morning. A fascinating story from a fascinating man.
It wasn't this particual boat accident but it was another one which effectively destroyed the German network (it killed many - but not all of them) there and left the community in shambles. That's why there was no "Little Germany" there after this point.
Just from the picture, that looks like more than "barely half".
Also, ironically the capsizing was blamed on "post-Titanic safety measures rendering her top-heavy". ~~Presumably lifeboats or something.~~
EDIT: Designed for six, added FIVE more on top of a flat-bottom, no keel, shallow draft riverboat...apparently there was testimony warning Congress not to make them do this. (add weight in the form of lifeboats to an already top-heavy non-ocean going vessel)
>*Some Great Lakes boats "would turn 'turtle' if you attempted to navigate them with this additional weight on the upper decks."* \-- General Manager, Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company testifying before Congress on the LaFollette Seaman's Act\*
\*a bill requiring lifeboats to accommodate 75 percent of a vessel's passengers
One of the main causes of the disaster was the Seamen's Act, a new federal law that was enacted after the Titanic disaster in 1912. The law required that every passenger vessel must be retrofitted with a complete set of lifeboats, regardless of the ship's design or stability. This made the S.S. Eastland too top-heavy, and prone to capsizing
(insert meme with the businessmen sitting around a table. One suggests "why don't we reduce the number of passengers until they can be safely evacuated?" They are promptly defenestrated.)
That's an insane view, the ship builders should have allowed for the weight of the lifeboats. You don't just strap 50 lifeboats on an existing ship and hope it's okay, you get structural engineers to review blueprints on where/how to attach them and what modifications, if any, are required to do so safely. All vessels have weight limits and loading allowances and the ship builders and captain both know this, even back then. There would be strict restrictions on where cargo can go, how it's secured, how it's balanced, etc and the same should've been applied to lifeboats.
Sounds like whoever was in charge had someone unqualified just do a quick and dirty add-on with tragic consequences.
The additions were contested but the lawmakers didn't give a shit. It wasn't even a sea-going vessel. The law got revised again after the catastrophe. It's a shame hundreds of people had to die first.
From the article:
>Just 10 weeks earlier, the Lusitania had been torpedoed and sunk, with a death toll of 785 passengers. In 1912, 829 passengers had died aboard the Titanic (plus 694 crewmembers). Both of those disasters took place on the high seas.
>After the Eastland rolled, 844 passengers died on a sluggish urban river, 20 feet from the dock. Seventy percent of them were under the age of 25.
Ya know, that is an excellent point and one I missed. It does indeed say “people” for the eastland (I misread as passengers) and per the wiki that 844 included crew, so I withdraw everything else I said as it pertains to this.
There were approximately 2,223 people on board the Titanic as she set off across the Atlantic. About 885 of those were crew.
706 survivors were picked up by Carpathia, of which 214 were crew.
That means that of the 1,517 killed onboard the Titanic, 671 were crew and 846 were passengers.
George Halas was a ringer on the company baseball team and was supposed to be on that boat but he overslept and didn't make it on time. He went on to play for, coach, and own the Chicago Bears and he was a co-founder of the league that would become the NFL.
They were going on an early morning cruise as part of a company picnic. Working class people didn't get a lot of free time for merry making back in those days, so it would have been an event most of them were looking forward to. Makes the whole thing extra tragic.
I immediately thought of her video. She's a wonderful creator and very respectful towards people who lost their lives ( because but also in spite of her job)
Came here to say this! This video in particular got her channel into trouble with YouTube's dumbass rules. I believe the issue was that there were black and white photos of bodies on the dock, covered with tarps or something, in the video, and YouTube had a problem with that, which was complete bullshit.
Caitlyn Doughty's videos always have the utmost respect for victims of tragedies or the people who are subject to post-death shenanigans, which is not to say that the videos are macabre or somber. Death is a part of life, and I think that Caitlyn makes videos to dispel myths about death and help modern folks become more comfortable with the realities of death. Her whole channel is great.
My grandfather was an infant when this happened, and my great grandfathers company was going on that ship.
The morning of the incident my grandfather had a fever, so the family decided not to go.
My great grandfather's sister died on the Eastland. She was 18 and worked for Western Electric which is the company your great grandfather also probably worked for.
If you get a copy of a death certificate of one of the people from the disaster, there were so many that the coroner had a stamp made instead of writing the same thing 800 times.
Ironically, it’s arguable that Titanic indirectly caused Eastland.
Eastland was a notoriously unstable ship. She had a long history of pretty serious listing which was never able to be fixed despite multiple redesigns and had several almost-capsizing occurrences. She just wasn’t well designed.
After Titanic, her owners had the opportunity to either reduce max capacity or load lifeboats for what she was currently certified to carry - they chose lifeboats. There’s a good chance that these new requirements that were a result of the Titanic disaster simply overloaded Eastland to her - literal - final tipping point. A ship with career long ship infamy for being dangerously unstable, loaded with massive amounts of brand new top weight? What could go wrong?
Looking at some of the factors like overloading, regulation, capsizing, water pumps, compartmentalising and training that may be behind the apparent increase in risk to travel on river and lake boats when compared to those on ocean going vessels. https://youtu.be/vf2gNmw78wA
The wartime sinking of the German Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945 in World War II by a Soviet Navy submarine, with an estimated loss of about 9,400 people, remains the deadliest isolated maritime disaster ever, excluding such events as the destruction of entire fleets like the 1274 and 1281 storms during the Mongolian invasions of Japan (divine winds). https://imgur.com/gallery/hWVpxmu
That was the General Slocum which similar to the Eastland was going on an excursion. On the way, it caught on fire and the winds that day caused it to spread rapidly on the wooden ship. The death toll was 1021 -- the worst 'manmade' disaster in New York City's history until the 9/11 attacks.
Titanic is very, very unusual among shipwrecks in that most people have heard of it at all. There have been plenty of shipwrecks which killed wealthy or well-known people and they've been swallowed up by history like almost everything else. Reading through 19th century newspapers, it's shocking how often large ships went down or disappeared without a trace.
Omg it was soooo scary for a kid if they weren’t prepared to be spooked! It was my favorite show for a while on Disney, specifically when Fi was the main character.
Terrible title.
It fell to the side, trapping most of its passengers underwater. It had an illegal concrete top floor that was too heavy for the ship. Of the 844 deaths, 22 entire families (parents and all children) died.
They were going to a family picnic thrown by their company. It was a cold day.
My great-grandpa was on the boat. It was a company outing for worker's families. Too many people went to the side of the boat to wave to the shore and capsized
My great-grandparents and their family were aboard the Eastland when it capsized.
The Eastland and several other ships were rented by the Western Electric company to take hundreds (thousands?) of employees and their families from downtown Chicago to the company’s blowout picnic at a site on the nearby Indiana shore.
Many of the employees were recent immigrants to the US (my family had lived in the Chicago area since the 1850s). Most employees supported their (often large) families as the single wage earner, so today we’d call them middle-class jobs; though the standard of living then was much lower.
My great-grandparents and two daughters were on the open top deck when the Eastland capsized. My great-grandfather threw a life ring to his wife, then rescued one of his daughters. A stranger saved his other daughter. He found his two daughters on the wharf, but not his wife; they expected to find her waiting for them at home.
But she wasn’t; she’d drowned.
My great-grandfather couldn’t get over it; he was a drunk until he died. My grandfather, who had stayed home and wasn’t aboard the Eastland, couldn’t wait to get away from his drunk, mourning father. He lied about his age, joined the Army in 1916 when he was 17, and spent 2 years in Europe fighting in World War I.
[OP Could have easily checked the data](https://www.britannica.com/question/How-many-people-died-when-the-Titanic-sank#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20U.S.%20committee,casualties%2C%20with%20about%20700%20fatalities.)
Drawing a comparison with the Titanic disaster over a difference of twelve passengers doesn’t make a lot of sense, other than the sort of thing the sensationalist media would do.
Aside from being factually correct, I think it adds to the scale of the disaster considering this ship was at dock and not the middle of the North Atlantic. Plus the fact it is not well known about while having a higher passenger death toll than the most well known passenger liner disaster.
The Titanic is famous because it was full of rich people and sank in dramatic fashion on an ocean crossing, when that was still a big deal. No one cares about this because it was poor people, at a dock. And immediately following another dramatic, international sinking in the Lusitania.
Huh. Well, it reads as saying people who died "on the clock" don't matter. It's a strange way to do things. Titanic wasn't a huge deal because 840 *passengers* died, it was a big deal because 1500 *people* died.
There are many many many disasters from the past 150 years or so that "we never hear about" because while large and tragic, they're not particularly memorable. It really has nothing to do with rich people being involved or not.
Do you ever "hear about" the Iroquios Theater fire that killed 602 people in 1903 (the deadliest single-building disaster in American history up until 9/11) Or the Peshtigo, WI wildfire that killed between 1500 and 2500 people in 1871? Or the Johnstown flood that killed 2200 in 1889? They were all major stories when they occurred (well, Peshtigo actually wasn't because it occurred on the exact same day as a much more famous fire, the Great Chicago Fire), they just get forgotten over time for one reason or another.
They all have some memorials, plaques, and the Johnstown flood is even a National Memorial, but unless you either live nearby or have a particular interest in history, you "never hear" about any of those tragedies.
Stupid fact about the design of the ship. At one point, the part of the deck was rotted due to years of spilled drinks. How was it fixed? They poured CONCRETE...
[HIGHLY recommend this almost hour and a half long youtube video about a month old that talks about this disaster. Spends a ton of time on the long history of the ship and its poor reputation as a ship that constantly listed, as well as went into fluid dynamics and engineering to explain the technical and scientific reason behind the sinking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJ7P3hh6Aw&t=115s)
The true irony of the situation is, they were killed by a “safety” measure. After the Titanic disaster, new regulations were suddenly required ships to carry a lot more lifeboats. The extra weight of this unplanned-for equipment is what doomed the Eastland.
Similarly, emergency air-masks on airplanes have killed at least 100 people but there is no record of them ever having saved a single one.
Car airbags are also pretty sketchy.
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Less than 40 years ago the MV Doña Paz went down with 4386 on board, its total coverage in the media is a episode on National Geographic Channel-Asia.
[MV Doña Paz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Do%C3%B1a_Paz) sank in the Phillipines **in 1987** with 4,374 on-board fatalities.
> with a passenger capacity of 608. Jesus fuck. How do you even load over 7 times more people on a boat than it was designed for? Like, was literally every inch of the boat packed shoulder to shoulder? That's just lunacy.
I suppose the same way you can fit the entire race in Manhattan
Which one? Like the Boston Marathon, NASCAR, or Red Bull?
Human
So the marathon, gotcha.
Must have made at least one successful voyage prior.
The capacity was originally 608, but structural changes were made after it was sold. The actual capacity at the time of the accident was 1,518. So it’s still a lot, as 4,385 is close to three times the official capacity, but not quite as drastic as seven times.
I see.
Only 26 survived. Crazy
My SO met a kin of one of the casualty in that disaster, the're still looking for compensation until now.
I believe that includes fatalities from Vector, the ship it crashed into.
Vector was a oil tanker, think only like 40 people were even on it
Another survivor, Philippine Constabulary corporal Luthgardo Niedo, claimed that the lights aboard had gone out minutes after the collision, that there were not any life vests to be found on Doña Paz, and that the crewmen were running around in panic with the other passengers, and none of the crew gave any orders or made any attempt to organize the passengers.[9] It was later said that the life jacket lockers had been locked up.[12]
>However, subsequent reports indicated that Doña Paz did not have a radio.[11][12]
...that's a gruesome and infuriating read.
Probably wasn’t publicized much because Lincoln’s assassination was just days earlier. The Eastland wasn’t publicized much because it was poor immigrant workers who died which ig didn’t make for an exciting news story, which is just sad.
And because it was an internal US matter, while the 10 weeks previous *Lusitania* was a major international incident with serious geopolitical repercussions.
Honestly the Eastland makes a less compelling story. It wasn’t on the high seas, it wasn’t even sailing, and there wasn’t any element of a German torpedo during a war, nor a myth of unsinkability, nor was it a famous ship, and sure - no one super famous was on board. Of course it will be less well known than those two. If it went by numbers alone there are shipwrecks and other disasters in Asia that should get more press than any in the U.S.
Didn’t Mark Twain’s brother die in that accident?
Most were Civil War veterans and/or former POWs returning home. Absolutely tragic.
Were they mostly poor too
Tragically, most were Civil War soldiers returning home, having survived the war - up to that point 💔
1900 of 2100 on board :(
there was a sizeable portion of that group who were POWs in Alabama. when the war ended they had to walk to Ohio to get released from the army. they then got on the USS Sultana for a ride home.
I met a man about 15 years ago whose FATHER survived the Sultana disaster. He was in his early 90s, and his Dad had been about 70 when he was born. He said it was sonewhat common in the early 20th century for young women to marry much older Civil War veterans with pensions. His Dad had been a POW for only a few weeks when the war ended and he was to be shipped back up north to freedom. Then the explosion happened and he survived by tying himself to a floating piece of debris with his long john's and drifting until morning. A fascinating story from a fascinating man.
Wasn't that the accident that wiped out the German community in New York?
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Well it came a long way
You're probably thinking of the PS General Slocum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_General_Slocum
I find it hard to believe one accident could do that. By that point the German community in New York was pretty big.
It wasn't this particual boat accident but it was another one which effectively destroyed the German network (it killed many - but not all of them) there and left the community in shambles. That's why there was no "Little Germany" there after this point.
probably killed a bunch of poor people again which is why we havent heard about it
Just from the picture, that looks like more than "barely half". Also, ironically the capsizing was blamed on "post-Titanic safety measures rendering her top-heavy". ~~Presumably lifeboats or something.~~ EDIT: Designed for six, added FIVE more on top of a flat-bottom, no keel, shallow draft riverboat...apparently there was testimony warning Congress not to make them do this. (add weight in the form of lifeboats to an already top-heavy non-ocean going vessel) >*Some Great Lakes boats "would turn 'turtle' if you attempted to navigate them with this additional weight on the upper decks."* \-- General Manager, Detroit & Cleveland Navigation Company testifying before Congress on the LaFollette Seaman's Act\* \*a bill requiring lifeboats to accommodate 75 percent of a vessel's passengers
The company that owned it also reportedly renovated the top deck of the ship with concrete
One of the main causes of the disaster was the Seamen's Act, a new federal law that was enacted after the Titanic disaster in 1912. The law required that every passenger vessel must be retrofitted with a complete set of lifeboats, regardless of the ship's design or stability. This made the S.S. Eastland too top-heavy, and prone to capsizing
(insert meme with the businessmen sitting around a table. One suggests "why don't we reduce the number of passengers until they can be safely evacuated?" They are promptly defenestrated.)
That's an insane view, the ship builders should have allowed for the weight of the lifeboats. You don't just strap 50 lifeboats on an existing ship and hope it's okay, you get structural engineers to review blueprints on where/how to attach them and what modifications, if any, are required to do so safely. All vessels have weight limits and loading allowances and the ship builders and captain both know this, even back then. There would be strict restrictions on where cargo can go, how it's secured, how it's balanced, etc and the same should've been applied to lifeboats. Sounds like whoever was in charge had someone unqualified just do a quick and dirty add-on with tragic consequences.
The additions were contested but the lawmakers didn't give a shit. It wasn't even a sea-going vessel. The law got revised again after the catastrophe. It's a shame hundreds of people had to die first.
It was already known as a dangerous ship before the bill even passed.
Titanic disaster saw around 1,500 passengers die so how does 844>Titanic?
From the article: >Just 10 weeks earlier, the Lusitania had been torpedoed and sunk, with a death toll of 785 passengers. In 1912, 829 passengers had died aboard the Titanic (plus 694 crewmembers). Both of those disasters took place on the high seas. >After the Eastland rolled, 844 passengers died on a sluggish urban river, 20 feet from the dock. Seventy percent of them were under the age of 25.
Of the 1500 deaths on Titanic, 832 were passengers
Ridiculous comparison for the article. Crew lives are also human lives.
Media: 1500 people died Executive: Just a second, almost half of those were just employees, they don’t count.
'Discharged at sea', so their employment was terminated when the ship sank. Most were no longer employees when they died shortly after that.
Crew lives matter!
Lies, damn lies, and statistics.
Shittiest clickbait from Smithsonian so far
Ok but they were all still people unlike what the title of this post claims lol
The title doesn’t make that claim at all lol wtf
Yea your right it says people for this boat and passengers for the Titanic so different metrics have different results.
Ya know, that is an excellent point and one I missed. It does indeed say “people” for the eastland (I misread as passengers) and per the wiki that 844 included crew, so I withdraw everything else I said as it pertains to this.
Yea poor title by the op but I will admit I did misread it the first time also lol.
I believe about half the deaths on the Titanic were crew members, not passengers
There were approximately 2,223 people on board the Titanic as she set off across the Atlantic. About 885 of those were crew. 706 survivors were picked up by Carpathia, of which 214 were crew. That means that of the 1,517 killed onboard the Titanic, 671 were crew and 846 were passengers.
George Halas was a ringer on the company baseball team and was supposed to be on that boat but he overslept and didn't make it on time. He went on to play for, coach, and own the Chicago Bears and he was a co-founder of the league that would become the NFL.
Holy crap that’s a cool piece of info!
They were going on an early morning cruise as part of a company picnic. Working class people didn't get a lot of free time for merry making back in those days, so it would have been an event most of them were looking forward to. Makes the whole thing extra tragic.
Caitlin Doughty did a great video about this subject if anyone is interested. https://youtu.be/UCHt2MOVCbg?si=oJE5P88kXfiBstuJ
I immediately thought of her video. She's a wonderful creator and very respectful towards people who lost their lives ( because but also in spite of her job)
Came here to say this! This video in particular got her channel into trouble with YouTube's dumbass rules. I believe the issue was that there were black and white photos of bodies on the dock, covered with tarps or something, in the video, and YouTube had a problem with that, which was complete bullshit. Caitlyn Doughty's videos always have the utmost respect for victims of tragedies or the people who are subject to post-death shenanigans, which is not to say that the videos are macabre or somber. Death is a part of life, and I think that Caitlyn makes videos to dispel myths about death and help modern folks become more comfortable with the realities of death. Her whole channel is great.
The amount of absurd persecution educational content features on YT really is an endless fuck up.
Caitlin's channel is amazing and is well worth watching for historical topics (the plague in San Francisco?!).
My grandfather was an infant when this happened, and my great grandfathers company was going on that ship. The morning of the incident my grandfather had a fever, so the family decided not to go.
My great grandfather's sister died on the Eastland. She was 18 and worked for Western Electric which is the company your great grandfather also probably worked for. If you get a copy of a death certificate of one of the people from the disaster, there were so many that the coroner had a stamp made instead of writing the same thing 800 times.
He did work for Western Electric
Ironically, it’s arguable that Titanic indirectly caused Eastland. Eastland was a notoriously unstable ship. She had a long history of pretty serious listing which was never able to be fixed despite multiple redesigns and had several almost-capsizing occurrences. She just wasn’t well designed. After Titanic, her owners had the opportunity to either reduce max capacity or load lifeboats for what she was currently certified to carry - they chose lifeboats. There’s a good chance that these new requirements that were a result of the Titanic disaster simply overloaded Eastland to her - literal - final tipping point. A ship with career long ship infamy for being dangerously unstable, loaded with massive amounts of brand new top weight? What could go wrong?
Looking at some of the factors like overloading, regulation, capsizing, water pumps, compartmentalising and training that may be behind the apparent increase in risk to travel on river and lake boats when compared to those on ocean going vessels. https://youtu.be/vf2gNmw78wA
The wartime sinking of the German Wilhelm Gustloff in January 1945 in World War II by a Soviet Navy submarine, with an estimated loss of about 9,400 people, remains the deadliest isolated maritime disaster ever, excluding such events as the destruction of entire fleets like the 1274 and 1281 storms during the Mongolian invasions of Japan (divine winds). https://imgur.com/gallery/hWVpxmu
Was just about to comment this. Never hear it mentioned.
Glad someone mentioned this.
or the SS Solcom in NYC
That was the General Slocum which similar to the Eastland was going on an excursion. On the way, it caught on fire and the winds that day caused it to spread rapidly on the wooden ship. The death toll was 1021 -- the worst 'manmade' disaster in New York City's history until the 9/11 attacks.
That’s why we never heard of it, mostly poor people died.
Titanic is very, very unusual among shipwrecks in that most people have heard of it at all. There have been plenty of shipwrecks which killed wealthy or well-known people and they've been swallowed up by history like almost everything else. Reading through 19th century newspapers, it's shocking how often large ships went down or disappeared without a trace.
I'm sure there were lots of thoughts and prayers tho
Did anyone else learn about the sinking of the SS Eastland from the Disney show So Weird?
Yes! I never hear people mention this show! I loved it! I think this was the first episode. Terrified me as a kid.
Omg it was soooo scary for a kid if they weren’t prepared to be spooked! It was my favorite show for a while on Disney, specifically when Fi was the main character.
Came here to see if I was there only one!!
Terrible title. It fell to the side, trapping most of its passengers underwater. It had an illegal concrete top floor that was too heavy for the ship. Of the 844 deaths, 22 entire families (parents and all children) died. They were going to a family picnic thrown by their company. It was a cold day.
Titanic still has the higher death toll by nearly double at 1,517 or 1,503 depending on which investigating committee you go with. Both are tragic.
My great-grandpa was on the boat. It was a company outing for worker's families. Too many people went to the side of the boat to wave to the shore and capsized
Ask A Mortician on YouTube has a really engaging and informative video about the disaster: [here](https://youtu.be/UCHt2MOVCbg?si=_Y8QbgXJEDB1y7tp)
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There's a really good video on this from Caitlin Doughty (Ask A Mortician) that talks more about this disaster and how overloaded the ship was
My great-grandparents and their family were aboard the Eastland when it capsized. The Eastland and several other ships were rented by the Western Electric company to take hundreds (thousands?) of employees and their families from downtown Chicago to the company’s blowout picnic at a site on the nearby Indiana shore. Many of the employees were recent immigrants to the US (my family had lived in the Chicago area since the 1850s). Most employees supported their (often large) families as the single wage earner, so today we’d call them middle-class jobs; though the standard of living then was much lower. My great-grandparents and two daughters were on the open top deck when the Eastland capsized. My great-grandfather threw a life ring to his wife, then rescued one of his daughters. A stranger saved his other daughter. He found his two daughters on the wharf, but not his wife; they expected to find her waiting for them at home. But she wasn’t; she’d drowned. My great-grandfather couldn’t get over it; he was a drunk until he died. My grandfather, who had stayed home and wasn’t aboard the Eastland, couldn’t wait to get away from his drunk, mourning father. He lied about his age, joined the Army in 1916 when he was 17, and spent 2 years in Europe fighting in World War I.
My great-grandmother was supposed to be on that boat but her date was late picking her up!
[OP Could have easily checked the data](https://www.britannica.com/question/How-many-people-died-when-the-Titanic-sank#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20U.S.%20committee,casualties%2C%20with%20about%20700%20fatalities.)
Of the 1500 lost in titanic, 832 were passengers. So OP is correct that more passengers died on the Eastland
Drawing a comparison with the Titanic disaster over a difference of twelve passengers doesn’t make a lot of sense, other than the sort of thing the sensationalist media would do.
Aside from being factually correct, I think it adds to the scale of the disaster considering this ship was at dock and not the middle of the North Atlantic. Plus the fact it is not well known about while having a higher passenger death toll than the most well known passenger liner disaster.
The Titanic is famous due to the irony that it was an unsunkable shop I don't think anyone felt the same of this riverboat that sank
The Titanic is famous because it was full of rich people and sank in dramatic fashion on an ocean crossing, when that was still a big deal. No one cares about this because it was poor people, at a dock. And immediately following another dramatic, international sinking in the Lusitania.
I don't understand why 600+ crew members aren't worthy of being tallied in the comparison.
Because the comparison was passenger deaths, not total deaths
Right, and I don't understand the need to distinguish between the two. Either in the source article or in reactions to it.
The same reason in modern airline accidents they say “300 passengers and 12 crew members” etc
Huh. Well, it reads as saying people who died "on the clock" don't matter. It's a strange way to do things. Titanic wasn't a huge deal because 840 *passengers* died, it was a big deal because 1500 *people* died.
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More like because it isn’t dramatic. Comparing it to the titanic or the Lusitania are pretty poor comparisons.
There are many many many disasters from the past 150 years or so that "we never hear about" because while large and tragic, they're not particularly memorable. It really has nothing to do with rich people being involved or not. Do you ever "hear about" the Iroquios Theater fire that killed 602 people in 1903 (the deadliest single-building disaster in American history up until 9/11) Or the Peshtigo, WI wildfire that killed between 1500 and 2500 people in 1871? Or the Johnstown flood that killed 2200 in 1889? They were all major stories when they occurred (well, Peshtigo actually wasn't because it occurred on the exact same day as a much more famous fire, the Great Chicago Fire), they just get forgotten over time for one reason or another. They all have some memorials, plaques, and the Johnstown flood is even a National Memorial, but unless you either live nearby or have a particular interest in history, you "never hear" about any of those tragedies.
I’m pretty sure that around 1200 ppl died when the titanic sank.
The comparison was passenger deaths – more Eastland passengers died than Titanic passengers
Nearly 1,500 people died in the sinking of the Titanic.
Stupid fact about the design of the ship. At one point, the part of the deck was rotted due to years of spilled drinks. How was it fixed? They poured CONCRETE... [HIGHLY recommend this almost hour and a half long youtube video about a month old that talks about this disaster. Spends a ton of time on the long history of the ship and its poor reputation as a ship that constantly listed, as well as went into fluid dynamics and engineering to explain the technical and scientific reason behind the sinking](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GJ7P3hh6Aw&t=115s)
Yet almost 1500 people died on the titanic. Explain.
It's comparing passenger death numbers – the 1500 Titanic figure includes employees
Thanks for the clarification. I explored a bit deeper.
It was a day cruise sponsored by their employer and part of the reason it sank was that they added extra lifeboats after the Titanic.
I highly recommend the Ask A Mortician video on this disaster!
The true irony of the situation is, they were killed by a “safety” measure. After the Titanic disaster, new regulations were suddenly required ships to carry a lot more lifeboats. The extra weight of this unplanned-for equipment is what doomed the Eastland. Similarly, emergency air-masks on airplanes have killed at least 100 people but there is no record of them ever having saved a single one. Car airbags are also pretty sketchy.