St. Joseph-Chicago Steamship Company: "Have been down town all day. Had a fine time. M.," reads the message on the front of this postcard showing the Lake Michigan excursion boat EASTLAND in the Chicago River. It is postmarked August 1907. Eight years later it was another fine summer day in Chicago when a big party of employees and their families from Western Electric boarded the EASTLAND for a company outing. It was the first voyage for the boat after retrofit that added heavy lifeboats to her upper decks in response to safety legislation that came from the TITANIC disaster. Unfortunately it made the already unstable EASTLAND deadly with a full passenger load. As the steamer cast off its lines it capsized. Hundreds were trapped and 800 men, women, and children died.