The Titanic Safety Reforms Killed 844 People in the Chicago River
The post-Titanic lifeboat mandate prompted owners of the SS Eastland to load an estimated 10-14 more tons onto a ship that had nearly capsized in 1904. On July 24, 1915 it rolled over at the dock in the Chicago River — 844 people died, more passengers than the Titanic, nineteen feet from the wharf. A federal judge threw the case out. Families litigated for twenty years; the 1935 court declared the ship seaworthy and blamed a man who had been dead for sixteen years.
You are a factory worker. It is July 24, 1915. You work at Western Electric in Hawthorne, Chicago. Today is the company picnic. You are boarding a steamship. In the Chicago River. Downtown. Three years ago, the Titanic sank. Roughly 1,500 dead. Congress passed new laws. Every passenger ship needed lifeboats for everyone aboard. The reforms would save lives. So we pulled the records. Bureau of Navigation investigation files. 1916. Three things they found. One: the Eastland had nearly capsized in 1904. Eleven years earlier. A naval architect wrote in 1913: unless structural defects are fixed, there will be a serious accident. Nobody acted. Two: in anticipation of the new law, the owners stacked three new lifeboats and six life rafts on the top deck — an estimated ten to fourteen more tons. No stability test was ever run. Historian George Hilton calculated the ship's stability margin had collapsed to about four inches. Normally it's two to four feet. On July 24th, the Eastland rolled. At the dock. In twenty feet of water. Nineteen feet from the wharf. Eight hundred and forty-four people died. More passengers than the Titanic. Three: the federal grand jury indicted six people — company officers, the captain, and chief engineer Joseph Erickson. Clarence Darrow defended him. A federal judge threw the case out before it ever reached a jury. Families litigated for twenty years. The 1935 court declared the ship seaworthy. Blamed Erickson for ballast errors. He had died in 1919. They got essentially nothing. BS. The post-Titanic lifeboat mandate — Hilton's records show — helped sink a ship that was already broken. Eight hundred and forty-four people. At a dock. In the middle of Chicago. Surrounded by lifeboats nobody ever launched.
Every claim in the film, checked against the record.
The full receipts — every claim, every source, checked against the record — are for BSKiller members. That is the whole point of the show: the receipts.