Ashes Under Water

The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America

By: Michael McCarthy

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Hardcover | 1 October 2014

At a Glance

Hardcover
320 Pages

Dimensions(cm)
24.13 x 15.88 x 3.18

Hardcover

$57.75

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The untold story of the worst disaster on the Great Lakes in U.S. History. On July 24th, 1915, Chicago commuters were horrified as they watched the SS Eastland, a tourism boat taking passengers across Lake Michigan, flip over while tied to the dock and drown 835 passengers, including 21 entire families. Rockefeller, Morgan, and Carnegie had bought into the ship business in the Midwest, creating a boom market and a demand for ships that were bigger, longer, faster. The pressure-filled and greedy climate that resulted would be directly responsible for the Eastland disaster and others. As dramatic as the disaster was, the subsequent trial was even more so. The public demanded justice. When the immigrant engineer who was being scapegoated for the accident was left out to dry by the ship's owners, penniless and down-on-his-luck Clarence Darrow decided to take his case. The defense he mounted, which he was too ashamed to even mention in his memoirs, would be even more shocking.

Industry Reviews

After more than a decade of research, journalist and Chicago resident Michael McCarthy shares a heartbreaking history in Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck that Shook America. McCarthy gives this little-known Lake Michigan tragedy a thorough and compassionate telling and covers the media frenzy and indictments that followed...Plentiful notes and a lengthy bibliography provide opportunity for further study for those interested. Ashes Under Water is carefully researched yet compelling told and combines the appeal of famous historical figures and places with everyday men and women struggling to survive. In this thoughtful treatment, the Eastland's story will deservedly capture the sympathy and imagination of diverse readers. Foreword Reviews "This is a tour-de-force from an enormously gifted writer. In quickly sketched chapters McCarthy depicts a mysterious early-twentieth-century shipping disaster-the weather, the moguls, the greed, the ads, the hundreds of working people setting out for a picnic who ended in a makeshift morgue. The second half of the book brilliantly tracks the legal maneuvering and the murky trial that ultimately exonerated the crew, government inspectors, and the owners. Ashes Under Water is prodigiously researched and richly imagined. McCarthy's vivid images kept bringing me back to our own contemporary society with its increasing disparity between the middle class and the powerful rich."-Jeanne Murray Walker, author of The Geography of Memory

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