Newly Discovered Footage Shows Sinking Of SS Eastland

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

To the 19-teens now - a hundred years ago - to a time rife with high-profile maritime disasters. Remember the Lusitania, a passenger liner struck by a German U-boat in the early days of World War I - the Titanic a few years before that. What about the SS Eastland? That tragedy happened while the ship was docked just feet from shore in the middle of the city of Chicago in July 1915. More than 800 people died when the Eastland capsized, mostly women and children who were inside the cabins and were trapped underwater. Now for the first time, footage of that disaster has been found, and it's available for anyone to watch online. It was discovered by Jeff Nichols, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, while researching his dissertation in history. Jeff Nichols, welcome to the program.

JEFF NICHOLS: Oh, thank you.

SIEGEL: And first we should say that your area of study is not shipwrecks. So how did you come across this footage?

NICHOLS: Well, my dissertation is on Chicago in the First World War. And what I was doing was looking for letters, correspondence back and forth from Chicago to Europe that seemed maybe there's some correspondents that would talk a little bit about the mood in Chicago before America entered the war.

SIEGEL: But what you also found was a digitized version of a Dutch newsreel from the 19-teens, which includes footage of the SS Eastland in Chicago.

NICHOLS: Right, and I clicked on a couple links and watched the reels and then there's the unmistakable scene of the Eastland.

SIEGEL: It's very odd, this collection of stories, in the Dutch newsreel. It includes a bicycle race in Paddington - in England. It's a regatta. There's a wonderful shot of wounded British soldiers going to the Palladium Theater in London to see the stage magician Chung Ling Soo, who was actually William Ellsworth Robinson of New York. And then there happens to be this one item about the Eastland, this horrible disaster in - is it in the Chicago River that this happened?

NICHOLS: It's in the Chicago River, yes. It's in between Clark LaSalle, so it was in some ways a very, very well documented maritime disaster because usually with these sorts of catastrophes they're out in the middle of the ocean or in the middle of a lake. This was within walking distance of the major newspapers in Chicago. I've seen diary entries of individuals who've gone to see the capsized Eastland because they could just take the train to see it.

SIEGEL: Well, has this accidental find of yours - has it in any way added the Eastland disaster to subjects of scholarly interest for you? Or are you going to keep to the straight and narrow of your dissertation topic for the time being?

NICHOLS: I have to finish (laughter) my dissertation. I could take a little break from my dissertation, but in the next couple days I have to get back to formatting footnotes.

SIEGEL: OK (laughter) well, we wish you - we wish you well on your dissertation, and thanks for introducing us to this footage of the SS Eastland.

NICHOLS: Oh, thank you. Thank you so much.

SIEGEL: That's Jeff Nichols, graduate student at the University of Illinois in Chicago, talking with us about the film he found that's actually now a video, taken back in 1915 when the SS Eastland capsized in the Chicago River. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.