Customer Reviews

Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Outstanding documentary of the events leading up to the disaster of the Great Lakes steamer in 1915. Author provides solid documentation tying the loss the Titanic three years previous and the consequences it had on regulations of lifeboats and rafts. Great explanation in layman's terms on shipboard stability. Good illustrations throughout the book. Organization of story chronologically superb. I got this book off the library shelf becuase my grandmother was a survivor of the Eastland disaster. Hilton has, after 80 years, told the story correctly erasing myths concerning the actual reasons leading up to the disaster. Great detail concerning the lives of the people involved.

Hilton has researched this subject extensively. If you are looking for flowery personal stories of the disaster, you won't find them here. What you will find is a massive source of information about the ship's construction, a detached account of the disaster, and an account of the legal proceedings and investigations following the disaster. The amount of researched facts in this book is unmatched and this amount of information about the EASTLAND cannot be found in any other source.

The two stars are for the amount of information in this book. The fact that it only gets two is because most of the book is blatantly spun to try and support Mr. Hilton's economic beliefs and dislike of the LaFollette Act.

There are a number of places in the book where it appears that Mr. Hilton deliberately twists or conceals the facts. For example, he states in the prologue that the president of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company announced that his company would be going out business immediately after the application of the requirements of the LaFollette Act in 1915, which he uses as evidence that the Act destroyed American shipping across the Pacific. What he DOESN'T mention is that the company did NOT go out of business and was bought out by another American company, and was still in operation as late as 1949.

Everything in the book is spun to support his theory that the Eastland capsized because of its added lifeboats, and that the lifeboats were added because of the LaFollette Act. In order to do this he ignores other theories and information that he must have known because they occur in sources he quotes for other information. For instance, he insists that the Eastland wasn't overloaded with people based on the testimony of the dock agents (who have an obvious motive for lying.) He fails to address a statement in a book by Dwight Boyer which he quotes elsewhere that the dock agents actually let on quite a few more people than the Eastland's capacity because of how passengers were counted based on ticketing.

I feel there are several other omissions and distortions of this type in the book. Let the reader beware, and don't rely on this book for information about the Eastland sinking unless you've read a number of other books and articles on the subject.

The EASTLAND incident offers a great deal to students of history as well as mariners. George Hilton's account will satisfy most readers, with its fascinating story, remarkable research and good technical descriptions. He has wrung more from the historical record than any previous writer on this subject, while managing to give the reader some human perspective on the tragedy. Helpful drawings and photographs add to the value of this book.

George Hilton was the first to publish a book about the little-known tragedy of the capsizing of the Eastland at its dock on the Chicago River. As an historian who has extensively researched this disaster from primary sources for years before it ever became more commonly known, I find his treatise to be well researched in part, but of dubious quality because of Hilton's blatant political bias against the regulation of business. His conclusions about the capsizing having occurred because of the addition of lifeboats and other safety features mandated by progressive Republican Senator Robert La Follette's "Seaman's Act" are factually incorrect according to contemporary accounts including the official report concerning the disaster. While his account of the event itself is basically accurate, his conclusions are politically driven, and wrong in the light of his bias.

At the time of the disaster, the Seaman's Act was facing repeal by Congress because of the pressure of the steamship industry against the expenses incurred by them to bring their ships into compliance. The act had been passed because of a series of shipping disasters, most of them freight ships, on the Great Lakes. Other disasters, notably the burning of the General Slocum, contributed to public support for reform of a very corrupt federal inspection system. The act was primarily passed because of the demands of the seamen who worked on these ships. The truth was it was a general practice in the shipping industry, both freight and passenger, to overload ships and equip them with only the absolute minimum in safety equipment, thereby maximizing profit and minimizing cost. It was equally true those who had oversight powers rarely, if ever, exercised them because of corruption with the shipping industry. Once the Eastland tragedy struck, all talk of repeal of the act ended and the steamship industry slowly became adequately regulated. As a result, there have been far fewer ship disasters since that time.

It has been a long-standing mantra of Republicans, Libertarians and business that regulations only harm American business and destroy profitability, thereby causing the collapse of those businesses and the loss of jobs. Hilton recognized this disaster, which took the lives of at least 822 mostly poor, working class people, as an opportunity to show "concrete" evidence proving this hypothesis. The problem is, the facts do not in any way support Hilton's conclusions. Long before the safety upgrades to the Eastland, the seamen who worked on her knew her to be an exceptionally unstable ship. The Eastland had numerous documented problems and complaints for years prior to her capsizing. The primary problems appeared to be a poorly designed keel and a horrible ballast system that could not adequately balance the ship. The primary causes of the disaster were the intense overcrowding of the ship and the preexisting design problems. After the offical report on the "sinking", it was established beyond doubt there were significantly more aboard than the allowable 1400 for which the ship was rated. Contemporary experts concluded at least 2400 people had boarded with or without tickets. Hilton actually does a good job at disproving his own hypothesis if you bother to research further.

In its time, steamship travel was often used for more than seeing the sights. They were often a venue for the poor for secret sexual liasons and other activities frowned upon in this post-Victorian era. In just a few years the automobile changed all this and motels and motor excursions became the preferred way to exercise these freedoms. Short-trip steamship excursions lost popularity not because of regulation, but because of the competion of the automotive industry and nothing else. No significant damage was done to the freight business at all. Lately the shipping industry has seen a huge passenger resurgence in the current cruise ships, a newer poorly-regulated industry. Many of these ships are also quite top-heavy and I sometimes wonder if we will come full circle to see another ship "turn turtle" in our time.

Read the book, but borrow it, don't buy it. Then read the other two on the subject, which are far more accurate and honest. And if you really want to know about the disaster, go to Chicago and see the museum exhibit dedicated to this tragedy of greed.

Good coverage of the Eastland disaster. Discusses stability problems that the ship had long before the disaster, and problems that occured after the navy modified her into the USS Wilmette. Dispells the myth of everyone running to one side of the ship.

In the year 1915 in the good ol' days as hollywood and others would have it there were three horrible disasters caused by political corruption, corporate greed, and a dishonest judiciary in the City of Chicago. The worst theatre fire in American history the legendary fire at the Iroquios theatre the explosion of the hydrogen airship "Wingfoot Express" ala the "Hindenburg" over a part of the downtown area and the loss of over 800 people in the 15 foot deep Chicago river just north of the downtown area in the capsizing of the tippy excursion steamer "Eastland" the third worst maritime disaster in US history the second worst disaster in US history was explosion of the sidewheel paddle steamboat "Sultana" in 1865 the worst was the burning of the sidewheeler "General Slocum" on the east river of New York City oddly enough this general supervised the arson leveling of the City of Atlanta during the Civil War.The author George W. Hilton, explains through testimony, engineering equipment diagrams, mathematical graphs, a computer designed lines plan of the hull of "Eastland" how this ship sank with such a high loss of life I have been interested in the "Eastland" for years but due to political influence being used not much information was in print this book will probably be the best work on the "Eastland" disaster ever written.

I'm going to cheat. I'm going to write one review and use it on three separate books. No doubt I'll offend the review gods at Amazon, but this subject merits it. Even though I live only 4 hours away from Chicago, I had never heard of the Eastland until I was searching for something entirely different and found a Western Electric website mentioning it. This is an utterly incredible story. I promptly ordered "The Sinking of the Eastland." The book goes into a fair amount of detail about the tragedy itself, yet its primary purpose is to describe the people involved and how they were affected. The author never claims to be a technical authority and instead makes reference several times to another book "Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic." I promptly ordered that one as well and while searching for additional information I learned of a third book "The Eastland Disaster (Images of America)." That one was ordered as well. Since you have read this far, you are obviously interested in my opinions and in my opinion, all three are required reading to grasp what happened. "The Eastland Disaster" is primarily a collection of relevant photographs which augment the other two books. Many more photographs of the events surrounding the ship, the sinking and the aftermath. And finally, "Eastland: Legacy of the Titanic" is much more technically oriented including the naval architecture concepts concerning the ship itself. I found this book to be especially good as it attempts to provide as much of a balanced view as possible, including several contemporary naval experts analyzing the court testimony of a leading architect of the day. Absolutely fascinating stuff. Not only that, but it is interesting to learn our concern for American jobs being lost to China is not a new thing. Ninety years ago people were worried about the same thing as a result of new regulations coming from the Titanic sinking. All three books solidly contribute to gaining knowledge about the disaster.

This book is not about the Titanic, but about the S.S. Eastland. This ship, due to the Titanic, required her to have more life boats causing her to be top heavy. The book is about the history of the ship and the sinking.