CHICAGO (AP) – Film clips have surfaced of a 1915 disaster that left 844 people dead when a ship headed to a company picnic capsized in the Chicago River.
The first-known footage of the Eastland disaster was spotted by Jeff Nichols, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois at Chicago who was looking through seemingly unrelated material on World War I.
Nichols said he found the clips in Dutch newsreels. Title cards describing what happened precede them.
“It’s as easily recognizable to someone who cares about Chicago history as the Titanic, so I knew what I had right away,” Nichols, who has lived in Chicago for 20 years, told the Chicago Tribune. “I knew folks would go, ‘Wow,’ even if they had seen the clip before.”
The SS Eastland, which was carrying 2,500 people, turned onto its side in the Chicago River in July 1915. It was one of five boats chartered that day to take Western Electric workers and their families and friends across Lake Michigan to a park in Michigan City, Indiana.