Great Lakes Passenger Steamer Eastland Poster

Great Lakes Passenger Steamer Eastland as photographed by the Pesha, Postcard Company, owned by the famed Great Lakes Maritime photographer, Louis Pesha. This was possibly taken after Pesha's death (1912). The SS Eastland was a passenger ship based in Chicago and used for tours. On 24 July 1915 the ship rolled over while tied to a dock in the Chicago River. A total of 844 passengers and crew were killed in what was to become the largest loss of life disaster from a single shipwreck on the Great Lakes. the Eastland and two other Great Lakes passenger steamers, the Theodore Roosevelt and the Petoskey, were chartered to take employees from Western Electric Company's Hawthorne Works in Cicero, Illinois, to a picnic in Michigan City, Indiana. There were many orphans and widows made that fateful day.