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.

joseph erickson never should have gone to jail. unfortunately, the others who were complicit in the disaster got off. questioner: [indiscernible] host: yeah, so, one week after the disaster, there was a grandmother who located him in the morgue. i do not know why it took so long. she said, this is my grandson and it was a horrible scene. plowing through frozen corpses on the ground. she did the newspapers a photo of him and we have a picture of him. on the gangways, they are square openings used on all ships. they will put a plank to run passengers aboard or cargo. this means the ship carried. the ship had a tendency to tip. the gangways are above the waterline. it was another problem with the design of the ship. it is meant to elevate and drop. if he gets too close, the water is going to gush in. and then, you are lost. you cannot recover. questioner: another thing, the ballast, when they pump it, they have a little oil. i was in cleveland and have the ocean liners with ballasts and they pump out oil. a sailor went out to have a s

chief engineer joseph erickson in charge of the engine room. there are 2500 passengers on the ship. less than the 3000 we saw before. not the full capacity for the ship. most of them are factory employees. many of them are immigrants. they are working for the same company. there is a company picnic that western electric. they make telephones. they were the only company in the entire country making telephones. 1915. and they all got a day off to go on this picnic. i'm going to read you from my account just how the setup was here. "captain peterson flicked the ashes from his cigar. he had just finished breakfast. the captain expected a foggy day and began to study his charts. he wanted to acquaint himself with the course to michigan city. in indiana, not a usual destination for the eastland. peterson had just passed ericsson who was hurrying to the mess room. they had a full day in front of them. the busy summer season was half over. it was a saturday. and the eastland set off the dock near the clark street bridge, not their usual one on the chicago river. they were about to board 250