Making an historic discovery on Europeana 1914-1918
The following blog has been contributed by Jeff Nichols, doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
Earlier this month, Jeff Nichols, a PhD student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, was browsing through Europeana1914-1918, researching his dissertation. While watching Dutch news reels from the EYE Film Institute, which came to Europeana via the European Film Gateway, he made an historic discovery. Amidst news of the ongoing conflict in Europe, he chanced upon previously unseen footage of the Eastland Disaster in Chicago, a seemingly unrelated event. He knew at once what an important find he had made, and shared it immediately with the Eastland Disaster Historical Society. Here, Jeff tells us about the footage's significance for historians of the period, and why Europeana as a research tool was intrumental to the discovery.
A still from 'Latest World Cinema Posts', EYE Film Institute. Free access - rights reserved.
I had first gone looking on Europeana1914-1918 for correspondence sent from Chicago to relatives in Europe. I am in the process of writing a doctoral dissertation on war mobilization in Chicago. Stuck on a particular chapter, I went through search results for films, as I am always on the lookout for footage of the city. While I was sitting on the couch with my dog, I discovered lost footage of the aftermath of the deadliest disaster in the history of Chicago.
On July 24, 1915, the SS Eastland had been chartered by the Western Electric Company to take employees and their families on an annual picnic across Lake Michigan. A set of design flaws had made the Eastland a top-heavy ship. In reaction to the Titanic disaster, recent federal laws had required passenger vessels to carry a complete set of lifeboats. The retrofitting of lifesaving devices, in all likelihood, put its passengers in grave danger. Still tied to the dock in the Chicago River, the packed ship full of happy families suddenly rolled over into water six meters deep. The current of the Chicago River is very slow, but hundreds of passengers were trapped in the submerged hull. Despite the quick heroism of rescuers, a total of 844 passengers lost their lives that day.
Perhaps unique among maritime disasters of such a large scale, the capsizing in the Eastland occurred in a crowded city center. Cameramen were on the banks of the river shooting recovery efforts within a relatively short space of time. Because a large number of still photographs taken by photojournalists and amateurs have survived, the sight of the Eastland was instantly recognizable. I suspected that I might have stumbled on two lost films, as I had never seen footage of the Eastland before. I did not realize that there had been an extensive but futile search for footage of the disaster. One very promising lead in Indiana, as I have been told, turned out to be a reel whose frames had fused together as solidly as a block of cement.
A still from 'Latest World Cinema Posts', EYE Film Institute. Free access - rights reserved.
In hindsight, there is little mystery as to how footage of a ship disaster in Chicago ended up in a Dutch archive. Despite the endless suffering in Europe in the summer of 1915, the Eastland still made international news. We know that films showing the Eastland were widely distributed—and periodically suppressed by movie censors—around the United States. Yet as the useless reel from Indiana demonstrates, it is remarkably easy for film stock from the period to degrade. The storage of large amounts of nitrate film was, due to its flammability, a liability. The large majority of reels showing the Eastland were probably purposefully destroyed not long after the summer of 1915.
The footage found on Europeana1914-1918 came from the Jean Desmet Collection, held by EYE Institute Netherlands. Desmet, an early film distributer and an inveterate packrat, saved over 900 reels of nitrate film. As a large number of these films are unique copies, UNESCO has included the collection as part of its Memory of the World Register. Of course, I knew nothing about Desmet until after my find. Those looking for footage of the Eastland could not have been faulted for not sending enquiries to Dutch archives asking if they have film of a capsized ship in Chicago. Likewise, a film archive in Amsterdam cannot be blamed for not realizing that the descendants of the disaster and Chicago historians alike had been searching for this footage for years.
Europeana1914-1918 made this find possible. EYE Institute Netherlands obviously put a great deal of painstaking work and resources into preserving, digitizing, and cataloguing the newsreels. But like the lion’s share of material on Europeana1914-1918, I seriously doubt that anyone would have found the films of the Eastland using Google. Europeana1914-1918 brings together an enormous collection of archival material from the war, whereas search engines like Google deposit anything and everything related to the search terms you use, possibly to the exclusion of thousands of artifacts that have been recently digitized. These letters, these photos, and these films should not be buried in archival vaults or submerged under thousands of web hits. They should be made available to all looking to understand the nature of a great tragedy.
Jeff’s discovery understandably captured the attention of the world’s media, and was picked up by numerous news outlets such as ABC News, The Washington Post and the Daily Mail in the United Kingdom. In the video below, Jeff talks to CBS about the “Holy Cow” moment when he discovered the footage on the Europeana 1914-1918 website.
The original footage of the disaster is available on Europeana 1914-1918 here and here.