STEAMER WRECKED; 1,500 PERISH EXCURSION BOAT EASTLAND BECOMES TOMB OF HUNDREDS Lists and Turns on Side While at Dock in Chicago River as Start With Holiday Crowd Was About to Be Made-Heart Rending Scenes Enacted as Rescue Efforts Prove Futile CHICAGO, July 24 -- Deputy Coroner David Jones and Shire John E. Traeger of Cook County, who are directing the work of removing the bodies from the hull will reach from 1200 to 1500. Shortly after noon, more than 600 bodies had been recovered. More were rapidly being taken from the hull and others were being picked from various places along the river. OFFICERS ARRESTED The crowding of passengers to one side of the boat is supposed to have caused the tragedy, but the authorities, not satisfied with this explanation, ordered the arrest of officers of the boat. Captain Harry Pedersen and Dell Fisher, first mate, were taken to police headquarters. A panic of the worst kind struck the passengers when the boat began to turn over. Best accounts of witnesses said the steamer rolled slightly twice and then turned further, that hundreds of screaming and struggling men, women and children slid across the sloping decks, fought for room on the companionways, clutched companions, deck chairs, or any other object that came handy. Women and children by the hundreds were caught between decks and scratched faces, torn clothing, and bruised bodies of the dead bore mute evidence of the desperation with which they fought for a chance for life. TRAGEDY OVER IN FIVE MINUTES The whole tragedy occupied less than five minutes. Members of the crew shouted warnings, Capt. Pedersen ordered the lower deck ports opened and directed all passengers ashore. There was no change, however, for such measure to succeed. Some seven thousand tickets had been distributed for the excursion and five steamers were chartered by the company. The Eastland was the first to receive its quota and when its chartered capacity was reached, the federal inspectors ordered no more to be taken aboard. The boat was docked on the south side of the river when hundreds, hurrying to the boat, were turned back from it. They streamed across the Clark street bridge to the steamer Theodore Roosevelt, which was to take the second boat load. Screams of the Eastland victims halted this rush and the bridge was jammed with people until it was feared it would collapse. It was cleared by the police. Every resource of the city was turned to the rescue work. Remembering the Iroquois disaster, mercantile concerns in the vicinity hurried motor trucks to the scene laden with blankets to warm the living or cover the dead. Pulmoters by the score were sent to the dock where more than three hundred physicians treated the rescued or partially drowned. DIVERS IN SERVICE For the first two hours, attempts were made to revive every person taken from the wreck. Then as the hopelessness of resuscitating became apparent, divers were summoned to explore the depths of the boat. Equipped with ropes, they groped their way to the innermost recesses of the hull. Every other minute their assistants were signaled to "pull" and another victim was added to the numbered dead. It was the result of the divers' work that caused the coroner and police estimates to mount above 1,000. The police and fire tugs organized river craft into a rescue fleet. Boats were directed to cruise down the river and watch for bodies and the sanitary canal trustees were asked to close the dam at Lockport, Ill., thus shutting off the current of the river, in order to aid in this work. CITY IN MOURNING Rumors of disaster spread rapidly. It's full disginificance was realized when motor trucks piled high with blanketed forms, rolled through the loop district to morgues and undertaking establishments. "It's worse then the Iroquois," was the word that went about the streets and immediately the city went into mourning. The American and Federal League baseball games were called off: many theatres announced their doors will be closed tonight: churches summoned their members to pray for the dead and offer comfort to the living. Flags were lowered to half mast and mourning symbols were draped on many establishments. Gray, leaden clouds that overhung the city early in the day grew heavier toward noon and a steady drizzle turned into rain. Watchers at the wreck held their places and despite the discomforting conditions, searchers for missing persons continued their wearying rounds of the morgues. The identification of victims offered comparatively few difficulties, practically all having been drowned. Measures were taken by the police and electrical company to systematize the work of identification. These were in full operation later in the day. Investigations have been started by federal steamship inspectors, city police, county coroner, and state's attorney. The activity of this last official hints at possible submission of the results of his investigation to the grand jury. CAUSE OF ACCIDENT Few hours, inquiry caused the investigating officials to lean strongly towards the theory that the peculiar construction of the boat was responsible for the accident. The Eastland was equipped with water ballast so that it could enter the harbor of South Haven, Mich., and other shallow ports and river mouths. When approaching such entries the water would be forced from the tanks, reducing the boat's draft. The ballast would be taken on again when the vessel emerged from the harbor. It is the theory of officials that most of the ballast had been forced from the tanks in anticipation of a heavy load today. The steamer was thus rendered top heavy, it is thought, and this, if a fact, would explain why she capsized so quickly. CURRENT A FACTOR The strength of the river current is another factor that engaged attention in connection with the possibility that the keel had grounded in the mud of the river bed. Those who discussed this theory thought that the current, working against the pull of the hawsers toward the dock made a fulcrum of the keel and turned the steamer over. This theory, too, is based largely on the alleged top heavy condition of the vessel. BOAT DISASTERS OF RECENT YEARS Year Steamship Lost 1890 Steamer Shanghai, burned 300 1891 Steamer Utorsia, collision 563 1892 Steamer Nanchow, foundered 509 1893 Steamer Victoria, collision 360 1894 Steamer Horn Head, sunk by iceberg 62 1895 Steamer Chicora, vanished in Lake Michigan 26 1895 Steamer Colina, wrecked 171 1896 Steamer Copernicus, sunk 152 1897 Steamer Kapunda, foundered 300 1898 Steamer La Bourgogne, collision 540 1904 Steamer General Slocum, burned 958 1904 Steamer Norge, wrecked on reef 750 1905 Steamer Hilda, sunk 123 1906 Steamer Valencia, foundered 119 1906 Steamship Sirio, foundered 225 1906 Brazilian Cruiser Aquidaban, sunk 212 1907 Steamer Larchmont, lost 185 1907 Steamer Hong Kong, struck rock 130 1907 Steamer Berlin, wrecked 125 1907 Steamer Lakota, struck reef ??? 1907 Steamship Columbia, wrecked 70 1912 Liner Titanic, struck iceberg 1,500 1913 Liner Volturno, burned 135 1914 Liner Monroe, sunk in collision 49 1914 Empress of Ireland, sunk in collision 968 1915 Liner Lusitania, sunk by torpedo 1,259 1915 Eastland, Chicago River, turned turtle 1,500

CHICAGO, July 24 -- From five hundred to one thousand men, women and children were drowned in full view of thousands on the bridges and shore when the big steel steamer Eastland , loaded with 2,500 employees of the Western Electric company, their families and friends, on their annual holiday, turned turtle at her dock at the Clark street bridge in the Chicago river shortly before 8 o'clock this morning. For some reason not clearly explained by the owners of the Eastland, the heavily loaded lake liner began to list while still tied to the dock. As the hawsers loosened the craft rolled over on her side and floated toward the middle of the river. Officers and crew shouted warnings, but it was too late. SICKENING SCENES A moment later, amid shrieks and screams of women and children and shouting and cursing of men, the Eastland turned over on her side, rolling heavily. Then, in the middle of the Chicago river, was enacted a catastrophe that promises to exceed the Iroquois theatre horror for tragic details and bizarre setting. For in addition to the thousands of Chicago 8 o'clock business crowds streaming from the north side across Rush street, Clark street, and Wells street bridges on foot, surface cars, elevated trains, and automobiles there were grouped along both sides of the river close to ten thousand vitally interested spectators, most of them relatives, friends and acquaintances of victims who had come down either to see the people off on the big annual junket to Michigan City, or to go on one of the four other big lake steamers chartered by the Western Electric company employees. PROMPT WORK OF RESCUE For aboard the steamers Petoskey, Theodore Roosevelt, Racine, and Maywood, were thousands more of the Western Electric crowd waiting for the big Eastland to move, as the Eastland was scheduled to head the procession of five steamers across the lake to Michigan City. United States life savers, Chicago police, firemen, crews of lake boats and hundreds of volunteers with motorboats and launches joined in the rescue work. Within a few minutes, the Eastland, with its hundreds of passengers perched on her upturned side were surrounded by a flotilla of city fireboats, police boats, lifeboats, and motor boats. The steamer Theodore Roosevelt hastily cleared of its big crowd of passengers, was turned into a temporary morgue. DROWNED LIKE RATS Hundreds of women, cut and bleeding from bruises, with clothing partially gone, were dragged from the river and driven to hospitals, with men from Lake Shore Drive and other north side residence districts using their automobiles for ambulances. Several hundred women and children who had gone below decks were caught without a single chance for life. They were in the cabins and drowned or trampled to death while firemen and lake steamer men chopped holes in eevry available doorway and port hole in the steel side of the overturned steamer. The big steamer, lying on her side in midstream, presented a strange, uncanny sight. ON its curved side stood hundreds of passengers who had stood over the railings. They stood or crouched awaiting rescue. All about the sides of the steamer in the water was greatest commotion with motor boats, tugs and other small craft rescuing drowning persons from the river. From moment to moment women, some hysterical and some half insensible, with torn, wet clothing clinging to their bodies, were dragged from the water by rescuers and then taken ashore as the smaller craft filled up. Police reserves, answering disaster calls, cleared the Wells Street and Clark Street bridges of thousands and drove the crowds back one square from the river front to give the ambulance squads an opportunity to work in resuscitation and removal of victims. The screams and shrieks of those caught in state rooms, cabins and other points below the decks were maddening. Firemen, policemen, and other rescuers worked heroically and fought desperately to release those imprisoned. But the disaster was too great, too sudden, and two unexpected. PLACES DEATH LIST AT 1,000 From hour to hour, the death list grew and at 11:00, three hours after the ill-fated Eastland broker her last hawser and capsized, First Deputy Superintendent of Police Herman Schuettler made this statement: "Three hundred and fifty bodies have been recovered and I believe that 1,000 in all perished. I believe that other bodies will be recovered when the inner compartments of the boat are reached. We are recovering bodies rapidly and the list of dead is growing fast. My estimate of 1,000 dead is based on information I got from a purser of the boat who had a narrow escape."