For years, Ted Wachholz had all the evidence he needed to believe that film footage of the 1915 SS Eastland disaster on the Chicago River existed, except maybe for the film itself. 
 
 The chief historian of a group dedicated to the capsizing that killed 844 people could cite newspaper clippings that refer to recording equipment and archived photos that show movie cameras on tripods. 
 
 That changed Saturday morning, when the founder of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society woke up to links on the group's Facebook page to footage posted by a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Chicago. 
 
 "I'm reasonably confident that this is the first opportunity that the public has had … to view moving picture footage from the Eastland disaster," Wachholz said. 
 
 According to Wachholz, UIC graduate student Jeff Nichols found the footage while researching his dissertation on Chicago during World War I. While looking through archived footage at the EYE Film Institute in the Netherlands, he came across clips of the SS Eastland on the Chicago River pancaked between clips of ceremonies and marching soldiers. 
 
 "Partway into the video clip … there's this amazing 55-second clip of live moving pictures of the Eastland disaster," Wachholz said. 
 
 The first clip, available at http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/news, shows police officers, volunteers and firefighters walking on the hull of the capsized ship. The footage was taken within an hour of the tragedy, Wachholz believes, because ships can be seen in the background and ordinary citizens are walking on the hull. 
 
 Grad student finds footage of 1915 ship disaster A graduate student has found the first-known film clips of the SS Eastland ship disaster that left 844 people dead in 1915. The ship was headed to a company picnic when it capsized in the Chicago River. A graduate student has found the first-known film clips of the SS Eastland ship disaster that left 844 people dead in 1915. The ship was headed to a company picnic when it capsized in the Chicago River. See more videos 
 
 "It was a free-for-all early on," Wachholz said. "Anyone who was able to help out and contribute was jumping to the scene." 
 
 Based on the angle and proximity to the hull, the cameraman was likely on a nearby raft or small boat, he added. 
 
 A second clip, 30 seconds long, was taken at least a week later when the ship was righted. Because cameras were expensive and hard to come by back then, Wachholz said, chances are that the film was taken by a professional. 
 
 What Wachholz doesn't know is how the footage ended up in the Netherlands or sandwiched between war footage. 
 
 "That's part of the intrigue, part of the mystery behind even having this footage available," Wachholz said. 
 
 Just as notable of the film's existence, he said, is the timing of its emergence, months before the 100 anniversary of the disaster. The tragedy's last known survivor, Marion Eichholz, died a few months short of her 103rd birthday last November. She was 3 years old at the time of the capsizing. 
 
 "(The footage) gives us, at least, the next best thing to having a living survivor with us," Wachholz said. 
 
 mmrodriguez@tribpub.com 
 
 Twitter @merjourn ||||| (CBS) — Nearly 100 years later, rare video of one of Chicago’s greatest tragedies has been discovered. 
 
 On Saturday, July 24, 1915 the passenger ship Eastland rolled over while tied to a dock in the Chicago River, killing at least 844 people on board. The boat was preparing for a Lake Michigan cruise to Michigan City, Indiana for a Western Electric employee picnic. 
 
 Jeffery Nichols, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Chicago, came across the footage while perusing a European website last week. He had been working on his doctoral dissertation. 
 
 “It was a ‘Holy cow’ moment. I was shocked. I was surprised,” he tells CBS 2’s Pamela Jones. 
 
 The film, from the EYE Film Instituut Nederland, includes footage of rescuers walking on the overturned hull to help survivors and a second clip shows the attempt to remove the ship from the Chicago River. 
 
 The Eastland Disaster Historical Society says the film humanizes the tragedy like never before. The organization says it’s the first time footage of the disaster has been found. 
 
 “The film footage discovered by Mr. Jeff Nichols is the single most important discovery from research over the past 100 years for those who are interested in the history of the Eastland Disaster,” Ted Wachholz, Executive Director and Chief Historian of EDHS said in a news release. “Over the past 16 years, EDHS has pursued numerous leads, driven hundreds of miles, sent emails, and made phone calls all while responding to reports of possible film footage of the Eastland Disaster. All of these previous leads have ended without any results. Late Friday, however, Mr. Nichols was gracious enough to share his discovery on our Facebook page, which was a very unselfish act. All of us at EDHS and many more who follow us have gotten chills upon viewing this incredible footage, and we know that thousands more will experience the same.” 
 
 Surviving passenger Libby Hruby was just 10 years old when the disaster happened. She returned to the Chicago River in 1995 to commemorate the 80th anniversary. 
 
 “I remember all the commotion, and the people, the sirens,” she said then. 
 
 She died in 2004. 
 
 The film clips can be viewed at www.eastlanddisaster.org/news. ||||| The sinking of the S.S. Eastland will be commemorated this July on it's 100th anniversary. But now, you can see motion pictures of the Eastland disaster for the first time, thanks to an accidental discovery by a UIC graduate student. 
 
 Jeff Nichols, a graduate student in history at UIC, was doing online research about World War I, when the 1915 newsreel he was viewing displayed a headline, and then video, from the S.S. Eastland disaster in Chicago. 
 
 On Friday night, he posted the video on the website of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, which had been looking for video of the tragedy for years. 
 
 Ted Wachholz, Executive Director of the Eastland Disaster Historical Society, said, “I got chills, I got goose bumps, from head to toe. I don't think I've ever had an experience quite like that before.” 
 
 With 2,500 people packed on board, the vessel rolled onto its side and sank in the Chicago River, just west of the Clark Street Bridge. Eight hundred and forty-four passengers and crew died. 
 
 Still photos show video photographers were on the scene, so it's always been believed that motion pictures of the disaster existed. Nichols actually found two videos in the Dutch archives he was researching. One showed the work of the first responders, the second showed efforts to raise the sunken ship a week later. 
 
 “Seeing actual firemen and policemen and other responders engaged in the rescue and recovery, seeing the movement of the Chicago River, seeing the debris floating on the river, and just seeing that actually in motion is just so much different than still pictures,” said Wachholz. 
 
 Wachholz said this discovery has special significance, not just because of the anniversary this year, but also because Marion Eichholz, the last known living survivor of the Eastland disaster, just passed away last November. ||||| Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Captain Schettino: "The ship is the custodian of all these little secrets, the trial is still unfolding all these things" 
 
 The Italian captain of the Costa Concordia ship, Francesco Schettino, has returned to the wreck for the first time as part of his manslaughter trial. 
 
 The ship hit a reef near the island of Giglio in January 2012 and capsized, with the loss of 32 lives. 
 
 Mr Schettino was taken to the wreck on board a small boat, two days after travelling back to Giglio. 
 
 He denies the charges of manslaughter and abandoning ship, which could see him jailed for up to 20 years. 
 
 He arrived on the island off the Tuscan coast on Tuesday and is said to have wept when he saw the wreck from a ferry taking him to Giglio. 
 
 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How the disaster happened 
 
 He attended a health-and-safety briefing at a hotel on Thursday morning to prepare him for the short boat trip out to the wreck, on which he was accompanied by a group of court-appointed experts. 
 
 Mr Schettino was taken out to the wreck on a small boat and was then seen standing on the ship itself. 
 
 He was being allowed on to the ship "as a defendant, not a consultant", said Judge Giovanni Puliatti. 
 
 The 290m-long vessel was righted in September 2013 in one of the largest, most complex salvage operations ever, but remains stranded after its ill-fated journey. 
 
 Memories of tragedy 
 
 The captain has been accused of leaving the luxury liner before the 4,229 people on board the ship were taken off. 
 
 "They want to show that I am weak, just like two years ago. It's not true. I want to show I'm a gentleman, not a coward," Italian media quoted him as saying. 
 
 He lambasted the media "frenzy" surrounding his return to vessel, describing those who accused him of abandoning the ship of not understanding "a bloody thing". 
 
 "There is a frenzy that is making me nervous," Mr Schettino told journalists and cameramen who surrounded him. "You have to respect civility." 
 
 Correspondents say that he grew increasingly angry on the dockside after the visit, frequently gesticulating as he nervously paced around. 
 
 He has already accepted some degree of responsibility, asking for forgiveness in a television interview last year as he talked of those who died. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Correspondents say that the technical inspection attended by the captain focussed on a lift where several of the victims died and on an emergency generator which the defence says malfunctioned 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Captain Schettino could be seen (centre without a helmet) in a blue sweater standing on the wreck of the ship 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption Captain Schettino strongly criticised the "media frenzy" surrounding his return to the stricken vessel 
 
 But he denies abandoning the ship after it hit a reef near the island. 
 
 He maintains he managed to steer the stricken vessel closer to shore so it did not sink in deep water where hundreds might have drowned. 
 
 His lawyer Domenico Pepe said the captain's former employer, Costa Crociere, had shifted the blame towards him. 
 
 "It is very, very difficult because Schettino does not have the economic resources of Costa," he said. The firm is believed to be the biggest cruise operator in Europe, 
 
 "Schettino is confronting the whole world on his own." 
 
 An Italian court convicted five others of manslaughter in July 2013. 
 
 They had all successfully entered plea bargains, whereas Mr Schettino's request for a plea bargain was denied by the prosecution. 
 
 His return to the island will undoubtedly stir memories of the tragedy among locals, says the BBC's Alan Johnston. 
 
 "Schettino's here, he cried, so what?" one woman on the island told the AFP news agency. "We're tired of this story! We want him and the boat gone." 
 
 But Giuseppe Modesti, 67, told AFP: "There's no real anger here any more. Two years have passed and it's time to make peace with what happened." 
 
 The complex operation to salvage the Costa Concordia took 18 hours and followed months of stabilisation and preparation work by a team of 500 engineers and divers. 
 
 Ports in Italy, Britain, France, Turkey and China are now bidding for the lucrative contract to dismantle it. 
 
 Image copyright AFP Image caption The wreck sits in the harbour of Giglio ||||| For 100 years, the turbid waters off the coast of Long Island had kept secret the fate of the USS San Diego. Its wreckage slept amid schools of sea bass and scurrying lobsters, 100 feet deep off the coast of Fire Island. 
 
 Tuesday, Navy researchers and oceanographers from the University of Delaware announced that the 500-foot armored cruiser was done in by a naval mine, dispensed by a German U-boat, U-156, that had lurked 8 miles off the coast. 
 
 The announcement, made at the American Geophysical Union’s fall convention in Washington, D.C., was based on years of research that culminated with four underwater visits to the shipwreck since 2017. Crew from the U.S. Coast Guard’s Fire Island station helped commemorate the 100th anniversary of the shipwreck in July, placing a wreath there. 
 
 The July 19, 1918, sinking — which was the only loss of a U.S. Navy ship in World War I — was complete just 28 minutes after the exploding mine tore into a coal-filled storage hold, sending the cruiser to the bottom southeast of the Long Island shore. 
 
 “The sinking happened in minutes, despite the precautions and the fact that underwater explosive attacks were rare at the time,” said Ken Nahshon, an engineer with the Maryland-based Naval Surface Warfare Center Carderock Division. 
 
 The sinking came as the San Diego was bound from Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to New York to join a convoy delivering troops and war material to France. The United States had declared war on Germany the previous year, on April 6. 
 
 Nahshon said the ship’s captain had taken several precautions because of the presence of German submarines in the area. He had stationed 17 seamen to watch for the telltale bubble trails left by torpedoes. He took a zig-zag course to avoid being targeted. And he ordered the ship’s water-tight doors sealed to limit the inrush of water should the ship fall victim to an attack. 
 
 But a mysterious explosion rocked the ship's port side in broad daylight, piercing its side below the 6-inch-thick steel plating meant to protect the ship from artillery fire. The inrushing sea caused the boat to list, flooding its gun decks. Hundreds of tons of sea water were able to reach deep into the ship’s interior via chutes used to feed coal to the boiler room, causing the ship to heel further over. Its fate was sealed. 
 
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 With the ship’s radio out, sailors were able to raise an alarm only after rowing a lifeboat to the Long Island hamlet Point O’Woods. 
 
 That drew a flotilla of merchant craft speeding to the rescue — despite fears that the submarine might still be lurking — and they began plucking sailors from the waters before the U.S. Navy arrived. Of the ship’s 1,100-member crew, only six perished. 
 
 A description written just days after the disaster by Capt. Harley Hannibal Christy, the San Diego’s commander, said the seas had been calm and the visibility good when the fatal blow occurred just after 11 a.m. 
 
 “The explosion felt like a dull heavy thud; it lifted the stern slightly and shook the ship moderately fore and aft ….” he wrote in a July 20, 1918 report catalogued at the National Archive. “During this time, the behavior of the ship did not convince me she was in much danger of sinking.” 
 
 But the 2,900 tons of coal that were to have fueled its trans-Atlantic passage — much of it loaded on decks above the waterline, made the San Diego top-heavy, and it soon capsized. Three coastal steamers — the Malden, Bussum and the F. P. Jones — helped rescue seamen. News reports later said nearly 400 clamored aboard the Malden — many who had clung to makeshift rafts or had been kept afloat by life vests. More than 700 found refuge aboard the Bussum, an oil tanker bound from Baltimore to Boston. 
 
 “They came to our rescue without hesitation and picked up the survivors although they ran serious risk of being torpedoed in case a submarine had been in the vicinity,” Christy wrote. 
 
 Fear quickly spread speculation across Long Island that the ship might have fallen victim to a German spy who might have buried a bomb in the coal loaded aboard. 
 
 Decades passed with no clear answer as to what had sent the 10-year-old warship to the bottom. With 3,000 Navy shipwrecks and more than 14,000 military planes then under the Navy’s purview, the San Diego did not draw much official attention by Navy researchers. 
 
 The boat was mostly left to the amusement of recreational divers drawn by its historical significance, and sportsmen who fished for sea bass and other species near the mussel-encrusted hulk. 
 
 That began to change about 20 years ago, as this year’s 100th anniversary of the end of WWI began to draw near. 
 
 Researchers under the direction of the Naval History and Heritage Command sought to determine whether the San Diego’s sinking was by sabotage, accident, enemy torpedo or enemy mine. 
 
 Using underwater robotic tools and remote instruments, researchers created a three-dimensional sonar model of the wreck, which came to rest upside down in waters within sight of the 168-foot-high Fire Island lighthouse. 
 
 They concluded that the craft had been hit with a single explosion that overwhelmed the ship’s ability to limit the inrushing waters. 
 
 “The captain did everything right,” said marine archaeologist Alexis Catsambis, one of the researchers. 
 
 “We believe U-156 sank San Diego,” Catsambis said. “And we believe it used a mine to do so.” 
 
 One researcher, a University of Delaware marine geologist whose grandfather was preparing to sail to Europe aboard a similar convoy when World War I ended, said he felt a reverence while working at the wreck site. 
 
 “I could see the shoreline of Long Island in the distance, and it was palpable to realize the war was not just �?Over There’ as people would sing -- the war was here too,” ArthurTrembanis said. 
 
 “The site is haunting and eerie, like the poppy fields of Flanders,” he said. “But on the seabed, it’s not poppies, but tentacled anemones and teeming fish that are transforming it into a living scene.”
– Ted Wachholz couldn't believe his eyes: He opened Facebook and saw film footage of the SS Eastland disaster, which claimed 844 lives on the Chicago River in 1915, the Chicago Tribune reports. "I'm reasonably confident that this is the first opportunity that the public has had" to see footage of the disaster, says Wachholz, who heads the Eastland Disaster Historical Society. One clip (here, starting at the 1:10 minute mark) shows firefighters, volunteers, and police officers walking on the capsized ship, which was about to go to Indiana for a Western Electric employee picnic when it tipped over while tied to a dock, CBS Chicago reports. "It was a free-for-all early on," says Wachholz. "Anyone who was able to help out and contribute was jumping to the scene." A second clip (here, starting at 9:10) shows the righted ship a week later. Wachholz figures the footage was taken by a professional (considering how expensive cameras were back then) from a small boat or raft floating nearby. What's more mysterious is how the footage cropped up: A US doctoral candidate found the footage, which is housed at a Netherlands film institute, while doing online research for his dissertation on Chicago during the First World War. The clips were spliced between footage of marching soldiers and ceremonies, and it's not clear how it got there. "That's part of the intrigue, part of the mystery behind even having this footage available," says Wachholz. The student then posted his find on the historical society's Facebook page. The footage itself gives him "chills" and "goose bumps," Wachholz tells MyFox Chicago. "I don't think I've ever had an experience quite like that before." (Secrets of a 1629 mutiny and massacre were recently unearthed.)