Description
In 1915, Chicago commuters were horrified to see the SS Eastland, an important Lake Michigan steamship, flip over whilst 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 Drawing on prior to now unpublished evidence from the National Archives, Ashes Under Water is the untold story of a mysterious industrial atrocity and how the prosperous, guilty Eastland owners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 on the time then stepped in to avoid wasting him: Clarence Darrow, the future legal star. A national tragedy, Chicago politics, corrupt businessmen, a courtroom drama-all woven into one
spellbinding narrative. Writer Michael McCarthy takes us back one hundred years to the gritty streets of Chicago and the throaty blast of steamship whistles, unveiling the full story of the tragedy–and its unbelievable aftermath–for the first time.