Ashes Under Water: The SS Eastland and the Shipwreck That Shook America

It was the summer that broke America's heart. In 1915, Chicago commuters were horrified to see the SS Eastland, a massive Lake Michigan steamship, flip over while tied to its dock. More than eight hundred poor factory workers and their children drowned. Twenty-two whole families perished. The nation cried out for justice. Drawing on previously unpublished evidence from the National Archives, Ashes Under Water is the untold story of a mysterious industrial atrocity and how the prosperous, guilty Eastland owners tried to shift the blame to the whistleblower and one true hero on the ship, Engineer Joseph Erickson, a working class immigrant. Against all odds, an attorney down on his luck at the time then stepped in to save him: Clarence Darrow, the future legal star.