r this photo was taken after they raised the ship and the photographer showed what they found. what we have to imagine is that stairwell, when the accident happens, it turned 90 degrees. we are now turned. here you are. i am on the ship and i need to get out here, right? do i do this? how do i've maneuver the stairwell? people are trying to get up and out. everyone bunches up. everyone blocks it. no one can get out. this becomes a chokepoint, impossible for anyone to escape. they found, when they recovered most of the bodies at the stairwell and what they found is they could tell by injuries that people had torn away the wooden walls with their hands, trying to find a way out.

when they got to cabin partitions, they got to steel and scratched their fingers bloody trying to escape. this little girl, eleanor, was the only survivor of her entire family. her entire family was killed. there were many orphans on the eastland. many children were orphaned. for me, one of the -- as i say the photo of the little girl was one that drove me. i am touched by the number of children, orphans, and eastland children who are here. this is one. 2001 when i was initially starting the research, i was fortunate to meet someone who had been on the eastland.

i had always wanted to and there was a woman named libby. she was nearly 100 in 2001. she was going to recollect being on the eastland. she was 10 at the time the ship went down and survived. i went to the talk, like this gathering, and i had hoped to interview her. i was deep in the research and wow what a great source to have. when i went to the talk, she was not talking and was not lucid enough to speak. she stood by the podium and they played an audio recording of when she was more lucid. in a nutshell, she was on the starboard side and dropped into the water. somebody, she does not even know who, pushed her up and over the side railing. she never knew who saved her.

she went on to tell the story for the rest of her life. by the time i met her she was not able to speak and i was not able to interview her. but it was important to me to connect with the story as much as possible to touch it. , i wanted to touch the living history. i went and i told her that i was sorry for whole ordeal and i reached out to shake her hand. she had the littlest, bony hand. i took it and i shook it. i thought, "i touched someone who was on the eastland." it was inspiring. a big help to me. have that desire to touch the living history. we believe the last survivor of

the eastland just died three months ago. libby would have been -- you know, there are only a handful of these people and they are all little children at this point. the desire to touch the living history isn't orphaned and that brings me to a less respectable anecdote i have. i was in a maritime research museum. i was researching eastland captains. i was making some copies at the copy machine and i looked over at the file cabinet and there was a sturdy-looking antique chair. i was drawn to it. right there, there was a sign that said, "a deck chair from the eastland." i said, "this is a cool thing to see, as someone researching this." as i was reflecting on how close

i am to it, the library and -- librarian leaves and the only other researcher in the room leaves as well. i am alone with the chair. i want to be clear -- there is no sign that says, "do not sit on the historical artifact." [laughter] i realized the coast is clear. i may never get this chance again. but then i'd say no. i'm an intellectual. i am a serious author. i am a respecter of historical preservation. next thing i know, i'm down graysgraze the seat of the chair with my pants and stand up. i never applied any full body pressure. i think if it more of a dusting

of the chair. i chalk it up to the author's zeal for research. it was a youthful indiscretion because, you know i was in my , early 40's. i have matured. i have matured. i was in chicago a few years ago and they had an exhibit with the eastland's ship wheel and a few state room keys and baggage. they had another eastland chair. this one was a folding chair and it said eastland on it in nice letters for i saw the chair and did not come into contact with the chair. i left it alone. it was folded up and affixed to the wall and it was behind glass. i think, somehow, they knew. ok. we need to get back to the river. as i said, the number of bodies

being pulled out so quickly left chicago overwhelmed. the morgue had no way to do with the embalmed and to deal with the bodies. so, i mentioned earlier, the tags with numbers on the feet. they began doing an inventory. they would say a woman appeared to be such and such in age wearing this color dress and these shoes. sometimes, there was a monogrammed handkerchief and they had letters. often, not. this is before cars. no one had a drivers license. they do not know who is who. because they were pulling the bodies out as quickly as they could they had to have a number , and some details on them.

this one, 396, was the body, child victim, that captivated the city. it was almost a week later five days after the accident, 700 bodies had been tagged with a little description of this. family members came and described the family members. there were 14 bodies left and this was one of this. the chicago newspaper started writing stories. where is the family? why are they not claiming him? everyone was saddened by this one child. it seemed inhuman, a little body with a number and no name. after a few days the authorities were able to figure out it was william navotny. that is a misspelling of his last name, by the way. there is no e on the end.

his father, mother, an older sister were all on the eastland. he was on the eastland and they got up went out, and never went home. that is why no one identified him. everyone who knew him died right there. this is one of the families. he became the face of the eastland. his funeral was a civic event. there were 13,000 people who showed up for the funeral. all four of the novotnys went through a long parade in the streets. 13,000 people show up. the mayor of chicago presides over the ceremony. at the end, he tells the crowd after a long discussion of how much travesty there had been in the city, he closed by saying three words, "the city mourns."

ok. we have to talk about what happened. how did this happen? we have not known. there have been a couple of books that did not do a good job describing it. they did not come up with anything plausible. it took more research and digging into national archives and a criminal transcript to find out what happened. let's talk about the ballast system. member i talked about the fact that inside the ship is machinery used to stabilize it and when improperly used, it can cause it to seesaw. the reason for this is, the incredible natural thing of man outdo nature and nature reminding us who is in charge. this is the harbor in michigan. the ship was built in a michigan

town and the shipyard was on the black river. the homeport was the black river. there are ominous geographical elements. if you look to the bottom-left i am looking at a nautical chart. it is what sailors use. is called a sounding chart. going back to mark twain and earlier they figure out how far the water is until you hit the bottom of the lake or the river. whatever it is. they need to know where they will run into ground. when a boat hits the bottom of the ground, it stopped. it is called running aground. you need to know where it is shallow and where it is deep. i want deep water, i don't want shallow.

if you look out here, it goes 13 feet. the eastland is so large that it normally and routinely is immersed 14 feet in the water. a ship with 12.5 feet of clearance will get stuck and it is dangerous. it can get stuck and tip and sink, like it did. when the eastland owners, the men who wanted to order the ship -- remember i talked about the five-page contract where they had many terms for speed. they cautioned the architect that, in the home harbor, it is a sand bar at the mouth of the harbor that is only about 11-12 feet and only allows 11-12 feet of clearance. our ship goes about so, you need 14. to figure out some way for the ship to rise up, get over the

sand bar, and come back down to a more comfortable and safer level. we just need to get over that thing. it is an obstacle. by the way, this is the first passenger ship ever designed by a young architect and the only passenger ship he ever made, and it was terrible. it was an abysmal design. the problem is, he developed these tanks, ballast systems. ballast is a nautical term meaning weight. they can be solid or water. in this case, water. how does it work? very simple. you put a hole in the ship, you unscrew the hole and water comes in. you are below the waterline and you put a hole in the ship and you pipe it. you have some tanks on the left and right side of the ships. you fill them up.

if you want to tip the ship this way, make it more comfortable for people to dock, you move the water from one side to the other. if you want to make it over a sand bar, you pump the water out as quickly as possible and then open it back up. it is a very clever use of water to do partial-sinking and pump it back out. very effective. it was use on cargo ships in the atlantic for years. the problem was, among other things, in the eastland, they used one water inlet. it is called a seacock. it is a little wheel that opens and in comes the rushing water from the lake. it probably needed two. one did not allow water to come

in quickly. they also needed to pump the water out more quickly. they built a system that let them let water in and did not allow them to move it around very well. and, so, what i think about, to describe it to you, is, imagine having a lasagna tray full of water and you start walking with it. all of a sudden, it starts getting to one side and you tip if the other way to compensate. this is essentially what is happening inside of the east and. it makes it impossible to have full control of the ship. luckily, we have a hero in the story. this is joseph erickson.

he is 32 years old in 1915. he is a norwegian immigrant. he is the hero of the story. and, why that was interesting for me is, because all of coverage and previous writings of the book, he was a scapegoat. he was the bad guy. it was not true. it was not true. i will explain why. he was newly-hired on the eastland. he came by the army corps of engineers and was a very skillful, adept, chief engineer. sensing the danger on the eastland, he turned the engines and propellers off.

it would have been awful if the propellers had still been turning in the water and people were spilling into it. it was one of a sequence of things he did. he only worked eight weeks on the eastland. he was a skillful mariner. he knew what he was doing and knew his way around and engineering. he did the best he could to control this. he had never encountered one in his 10-plus years where he was certified as a specialist as a top officer in an engine room that requires federal licensing. i mean, these guys are tested hard for more than one week. he knew what he was doing. the eastland was not responding to what he was asking it to do and he came to figure out why later are in -- why later. here is an important thing to know about him. when the ship capsized, a lot of the crew jumped up, ran up ladders, and got out as quickly as they could.

they left the passengers behind. that is really rotten behavior. erickson did not do that. he stayed in the engine room. as the water is rising to his hips, his chest, his neck, only when it reached his mouth, and he got out. why did he do that? there was one very important thing he needed to do. he could have just gotten out. sailors know how to get out of a sinking ship. they know just how to go. no matter which way it turns, no matter the obstacles, they know how to get out and they do. he did not. he stayed. the reason is because there are large boilers huge ovens in the hull of the ship that power the engines. they burn coal. they power the ship.

the boilers and had a history on many ships of blowing up. there was an incident on the mississippi river where cold water hit the boilers and they explode catastrophically. they find body parts miles away after this. erickson stayed on the ship. he injected water into the engine to cool it down. if and when the river water in it the engine, they would not blow up. he saved hundreds of lives. while risking his own to do so. there is more. there is more. this is where the crux of my book comes from. the day after the accident, the sunday, july 25, 1915, noon, joseph erickson is dragged from jail. after the ship sank, they

arrested everyone. they arrested deckhands. they pull erickson from jail and he is sitting with the chief of police, charles. he was a mounted policeman who worked his way up to the top by being a skillful interrogator and knew how to question witnesses well. charles had erickson in his office and he knew that erickson was in charge of the engine room and that erickson knows what happened. they have five witnesses. how do i know? i have a copy of the interview of the interrogation. it was signed by joseph erickson and the five witnesses. they talked for about an hour. in the course of the conversation, joseph erickson tells the police chief something

stunning. he says two months before, in may, joseph erickson is working on the engine and he is testing them and running them, getting them ready for the sailing season when a top executive named walter steele shows up and asked some questions about maintenance on the ship. walter is a young man about erickson's age. these are two 30-year-old men talking about the ship. walter steele says, we want to make modifications to the ballast system. what if we added another seacock? that is exactly what i told you

was a problem with the ship. he said, what if we changed the way water shifted? if we made the changes, what would that entail? erickson tells them, we could do that. it is costly and it will take time. we will not be able to sail the ship during the time. walter steele starts scratching his head and says, we are going into sailing season and i do not want to lose all that. he decides to do it after the sailing season. yeah. he decides to postpone a work that would have made the eastland stable. he asked erickson about what can be done. erickson says, yes. they decide to wait. for me, that was the death sentence for the victims. there was no way. look at walter steele. i am no fan.

here he is. i like this photo. this is about one month after the capsizing. all the victims are out. have not righted it. everyone else has been pulled out. see the big pinky ring, the big nugget. very well to do. his father was a food company executive. most of the money that walter used to buy the eastland came from his dad, a wealthy food executive in chicago. he was key in deciding to wait on the repair work and not doing it just yet. here he is, walking way from the overturned ship, literally walking way from the disaster he

caused. talking about despicable behavior, what happens on the day of the capsizing? he is in a town and news reaches him that the ship has sunk. he goes into town and there are thousands of people around the shipwrecked area, families try to get in to see if their loved ones are alive, dead, whatever. rescuers are trying to get into the chaotic scene. walter steele does not go to c what shape the ship is in or help any of the children who are drowning. he goes to a luncheon with his father at the chicago athletic association.

it is one of the ritziest restaurants in town. he and his dad sit and have a nice lunch while mayhem is unfolding that was his doing. the menu for the chicago athletic club has things like oysters, devil crab, filet ladyfingers, and they had a nice lunch. they mapped out how to defend themselves legally and how they would get out of this mess. since erickson, the chief

engineer, who risked his neck to save as many people as he could. after erickson nearly drowned and snaked his way through a porthole -- he was a diminutive man. they nicknamed him, "slim." he got rope and saved five children who were drowning and hanging onto things. honorable, admirable guy in trying circumstances. not so with walter steele. he has this nice lunch with his dad and begins to map out a legal defense, hiring the best lawyers in chicago and defends the captain, but not erickson.

erickson is left to fend for himself. he knew that erickson had told the authorities that steele had postponed the work. he is like, fine. you go deal with yours were -- you go deal with yours. we will deal with mine. he left them no legal representation. when things went wrong, he let him go. erickson does not make much money. he is newly married. what does he do? desperate and underdog, he does an amazing thing. he has the thought to go to

clarence darrow, the legal legend, a chicago attorney. darrow loves underdogs and hates corporations. he says, why don't i try clarence darrow? clarence darrow is on a street in washington at a remarkable low point of his career. just beat charges of bribing jurors. his reputation was in tatters. all of chicago's legal society shunned him. he was taking ridiculous cases. petty theft, forgery, murder just smalltime crime. he had been paid $50,000 a case for his legal worked in the early 1900s. because of the bribery charges he has no career left. he thought about quitting law.

he likes writing and fancied himself a writer. he thought he would be a speaker. understand that, in 10 years, he will represent a tennessee high school teacher who tried to teach evolution to his students, which becomes the scopes monkey trial. he is at a valley of his career and looking for a substantial case. in walks joseph erickson. he agrees to defend him. largely because he wanted to keep the owners for making erickson a scapegoat. the remaining third of my book is the trial.

the attempt by the federal authorities and federal prosecutors to try to get at these guys who did this terrible thing. these children, the ropes, the morgue, someone should be responsible, and they were there to press the case. it is winter of 1916. the captain will weep on the stand. the prosecutors and defense teams bring in competing way models and try to argue why it tipped over. darrow hires divers to saw off suspicious looking columns. the prosecutors argue over everything, including whether the chicago river, the huge river that goes through the city, technically even exists.