( www.MaritimeCyprus.com ) Thousands of horrified onlookers witnessed Chicago’s most deadly disaster on the morning of July 24, 1915 . Warehouse workers along the Chicago River shouted, “Look out, she’s tipping!” Suddenly the fully-loaded passenger ship Eastland began her slow roll into infamy, killing 844 of the more than 2,500 passengers. It began as a leisurely boat ride to a summer picnic across the lake. The Western Electric Company of Hawthorne (now Cicero) had chartered the Eastland and four other boats to take employees to Michigan City, Indiana for a gala day of food, parades and sporting events. Josephine Polivka and her sisters wore white summer dresses as they walked toward the docks. The parents of seven-year-old Willie Novotny dressed their son in a new suit and took a streetcar to the Clark Street dock. George Halas, who would later become one of the founders of the National Football League and coach the Chicago Bears, worked at “The Western” as a summer hire and played on company sports teams. All were heading toward the Eastland, a slender steamer built for speed. The luxury steamship called ‘The Greyhound of the Lakes’ also had another reputation: one of being unstable and prone to listing from side to side. Changes in maritime law after the Titanic disaster in 1912 required the Eastland to carry more lifeboats. Steamboat inspectors were persuaded to increase passenger capacity just before the picnic, a way to perhaps make up for a dismal summer of small crowds on the excursion boat. All of this combined to make the Eastland even more top-heavy than before. In the estimation of current U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Commander Eric Christensen, “The Eastland was an accident waiting to happen.” Chicagoan Gretchen Krohn described the scene dockside: “Up the slippery wet side canvas was spread that those carrying out the bodies might bring out their gruesome freight at a dog trot and thus empty the overturned basketful of human beings more quickly. All of the bo