The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/2869650,CST-NWS-ship06.article

Deep 'graveyard' mystery

EDMUND FITZGERALD | Greatest disaster in Great Lakes history unexplained 35 years later

November 6, 2010

BY KAREN ALLEN

Thirty-five years ago this month, the gales came early to the "Graveyard of Ships," a treacherous 80-mile stretch of Lake Superior that lies between Whitefish Bay, Mich., and Munising, Mich.

On Nov. 10, 1975, with its own guiding radar system and the Coast Guard radio beacon at Whitefish Point both knocked out by a raging storm, the mighty Edmund Fitzgerald -- traveling from Superior, Wis. to a steel mill near Detroit -- vanished into the snow and wind without warning or a distress call.

The 729-foot ship and its cargo of 26,116 tons of taconite pellets shot to the bottom of the lake, unseen and unheard, 17 miles northwest of Whitefish Point. All 29 crew members died, making the sinking the greatest disaster in the history of the Great Lakes.

Immortalized by folk singer Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 ballad, it is one of the most famous of the more than 6,000 shipwrecks in the region -- and one of the most mysterious.

[blue sky at night]

1. never forget that year of 1975....

soon after we lost much more when my Grandfather passed and in December three young friends were killed. Gordon's song haunts me, I love it....but it brings it all back whenever I hear it. Thanks for remembering and posting something not related to politics!

[Turbineguy]

9. Delete

[blue sky at night]

11. i guess you had something crappy to say...

personal attack or do you object to my friends and relatives dying?

[Turbineguy]

12. You can guess what you like.

But I removed it.

[blue sky at night]

15. thank you for your honesty...

i have been getting attacked of late.

[NNN0LHI]

13. Turbineguy did not post anything bad or snarky to or about you. I promise

I seen it before he deleted it.

I think he just replied to the wrong post perhaps? I do that all the time too.

Take care and see you later.

:hi:

Don

[blue sky at night]

16. thanks...

been getting it lately, I appreciate the comeback!

[hlthe2b]

2. Tough time for the aging relatives to travel up north... indeed...

I found it interesting that despite some who felt Lightfoot's song might be exploitative, that the families never felt that way. I certainly agree that the song makes for a lasting tribute. Having such a well known folk ballad depicting the tragedy assures those 29 will not be forgotten.

[JNelson6563]

5. Yes, the song is quite haunting

And I feel a sense of somber respect whenever I hear it.

Julie--proud Michigander

[Dennis Donovan]

3. It's still a mystery...

The speculation is she was swallowed by a gigantic wave (or she broke in two between two waves while spanning the trough of them). Incidentally, the last ship she was in contact with, the SS Arthur M Anderson still plies the same waters.

[dixiegrrrrl]

10. ty for that pic!!!!

All these years of knowing that song, had no idea what the ship looked like.
I thought it was a freighter, the bulky squarish type.

[Stinky The Clown]

17. She was a bulk carrier built in the style of the great Great Lakes ships.

Superstructure and wheelhouse forward, crew quarters and propulsion aft. Actually, without the forward superstructure, they're not unlike a supertanker.

For a time, she was the largest ship on the Lakes.

The ship lies in two main pieces on the bottom. How she broke remains unclear. She could have broken her back in the trough between two short, steep waves. Some theorize she broke after a hatch failed, causing her to list badly and break on the crest of a wave. Others say she broke when she hit the bottom. The third theory is not impossible, but is widely held as the least likely.

It is fact that her master, Captain McSorley, a very experienced and skilled Lakes sailor, reported topside damage shortly before the sinking, a hatch being part of his problems. He was also heard, over radio, yelling to a crewman to not go on deck. To some, this indicates the crewman was intent on re-securing a hatch cover.

The wreck has been dived upon many times since she sank and the cause remains a mystery to this day.

"When the winds of November come early . . ."

[petronius]

23. Hasn't there also been speculation that she scraped some rock miles earlier,

pushed a bit too far north off course while navigating without radar? I feel like I remember seeing a simulation where a slow loss of buoyancy from a hull tear would lead to a very sudden sinking, and the breaking in half occurred as the ship basically dove into the bottom (standing on her bow, essentially)...

[Stinky The Clown]

25. That has been speculated . . . .

. . . but is unsupported by any hard evidence.

The ship's radars had failed. The Anderson, which had been navigating for her and reporting posits by radio, lost the Fitz in a nasty rain squall, which is not at all unusual. It was in that rain squall when the Fitz went down. Since no one knows what happened in that squall, and no one knows for sure her final route, the notion of hitting some rocks is pure speculation. As with hitting a bottom collision causing her breakup, this is a less likely scenario. Not impossible by any means, just not held up as likely. Since her bottom can't be seen because of how she lies, there's no way to know if her bottom was holed.

[blondeatlast]

18. +1. Beautiful ship; I never knew what it really looked like. nt

[knitter4democracy]

20. I've always gone with the two wave theory.

The hatch failure theory makes sense, too, but with the waves the lake can make in a vicious storm, the two wave theory makes sense to me.

May their memories be ever eternal.

[Stinky The Clown]

21. Lake waves tend to be more damaging than ocean waves of the same size because they're steeper.

That would make either wave theory plausible - breaking on a wave crest of folding while bridging a trough.

[InvisibleTouch]

32. Rogue wave on Lake Superior? n/t

[alcibiades_mystery]

4. Decent beer, too

http://www.greatlakesbrewing.com/beer/an-exceptional-family-of-beers/year-round/edmund-fitzgerald-porter

[Dennis Donovan]

6. Now THAT'S exploitive...

:(

[Stinky The Clown]

7. The storm that went through up there a few weeks ago put me in mind of the Fitzgerald

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=389&topic_id=9389454

[BrklynLiberal]

8. Haunting is the perfect word for the song..and the mystery of the ship

[de novo]

19. My dad used to sing it to my brother and I to put us to sleep.

I think he did it because the song is so long and somber. But, for that reason I have always appreciated the song.

[Liberal In Texas]

14. If one is ever up in that area there is a very nice Shipwreck Museum

at Whitefish Point.

http://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/

They have a major exhibit about the Fitz including the ship's bell.

[Scout]

31. been there, i agree it's very nice place n/t

[Brickbat]

37. Went there last year. One of the museum guides was on the Anderson that night.

He talked about the decision to go back out and look for the Fitz that night. Chilling.

I live near Split Rock Lighthouse, which holds a remembrance every November. They light the lighthouse, read the names, and toll a bell.

One of the lunch ladies at my kids' school lost her father on the Fitz.

[cyberswede]

40. Thanks for this!

When I was a kid, we visited cousins in Silver Bay every summer. I love Split Rock lighthouse (a photo of it, taken by my cousin, hangs in my bathroom, in fact).

I never knew about the the memorial they hold for the EF.

"The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald."

I still get misty when I hear the song...

[Brickbat]

41. Split Rock is indeed gorgeous. I haven't been to the memorial, which is a damn shame -- what a

treat it must be to see the lighthouse lit! It is well-attended every year. We don't forget up here. :)

Do you still make it up the shore at all?

ETA: The song makes me verklempt every time I hear it, too.

[cyberswede]

42. Haven't been up there in ages...

...the relatives all moved to Duluth. :)

We've been up around Bemidji the last couple years - maybe we'll take to kids over to see the light house next summer!

[postulater]

22. Greatest disaster in Great Lakes history - Not True

The Lady Elgin went down in 1860 returning home from Chicago to Milwaukee.

302 people lost.

"The last voyage of the Lady Elgin was, in essence, a fund-raiser gone terribly awry. Most of its passengers were affiliated with the Union Guards, an Irish militia company based in Milwaukee's Third Ward. The unit's commander was Garrett Barry, a West Point graduate who was also active in Democratic politics; local voters made Barry their county treasurer in 1859.

Wisconsin was a hotbed of anti-slavery sentiment at the time, particularly under Gov. Alexander Randall, a "fire-breathing" abolitionist. The Wisconsin Supreme Court went so far as to declare the Fugitive Slave Act, a federal law safeguarding the rights of slave owners, unconstitutional. No other state took a stand so courageous - or so potentially seditious."

...

"A stiff wind was already blowing when the Elgin left Chicago that night, and it quickly developed into a gale - not an unusual occurrence on the Great Lakes in autumn. The ship kept its northerly course, and some of the hardier revelers kept dancing on the upper deck.

Then, shortly after 2 a.m. on Sept. 8, disaster struck. A Chicago-bound lumber schooner, the Augusta, was on a collision course with the Lady Elgin. The ships' crews could see barely see each other in the heavy seas and driving rain, and neither vessel could take evasive action until it was too late. The Augusta hit the Elgin amidships - "T-boned her," modern sailors might say - leaving a hole that one passenger later described as so big "you could drive a team of horses through it."



http://www.jsonline.com/news/opinion/104189029.html

[Withywindle]

24. I wondered about that too.

I have a map of shipwrecks of the Great Lakes and it lists quite a few with more lives lost than the Edmund Fitzgerald. (Not that that matters to the families, of course.)

The one it calls the worst is the wreck of the Eastland in 1915--835 people were killed, before what was supposed to be a pleasure cruise. Just three years after the Titanic and three months after the Lusitania!


That actually happened on the Chicago River, so maybe it's out on a "technicality."

http://www.eastlanddisaster.org/default.htm

[Stinky The Clown]

26. It is always mentioned in any Lakes shipwreck discussion but is treated as a footnote.

So yes, it misses being counted on a technicality.

[postulater]

27. Was that the one that was docked and just plain tipped over sideways?

Too many people shifted to one side, I think.

[Withywindle]

29. Yeah. It never even left the pier.

[Stinky The Clown]

28. That was the greatest loss of life . . . .

. . . . and by that measure should be the greatest wreck in history. The Fitz was the greatest loss of property, and that seems to be the criteria to which historians ascribe more import. Kinda typical, huh?

[postulater]

33. Great song still.

I turn it up every time I hear it.

[Withywindle]

35. Sadly typical, yes.

"...with a load of iron ore, 26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty..."

Was that a factor? Was she overloaded?

[Stinky The Clown]

36. No, that was a normal load

She was carrying taconite pellets (a sort of refined iron ore that ships not unlike any bulk cargo) in her holds. The holds were, by all accounts, properly loaded. The theory is that she took on water, probably by way of a badly secured hatch cover, that made her overweight, caused her to list, and then suffer a catastrophe.

[Gaedel]

38. Taconite pellets are less dense than unrefined iron ore

You should not be able to overload a "laker" with Taconite. The "ore jennies" used by the iron ore hauling railroads have had their sides extended up since they "cubed out" with Taconite instead of weighing out.

[SpiralHawk]

30. Great saga

the k and the r

[TexasObserver]

34. One of the most perfectly written and performed songs of all time.

[Rebubula]

39. Me and my father

When I was growing up, I would listen to the radio with my father. Our favorite song was The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

When he was dying of lung cancer, the chemo had robbed him of life and appetite and the anti-Nausea pills would get puked as soon as they went down. I brought him a bag of marijuana to help him. We rolled a couple of joints and sat in his study; smoking weed and listening to The Wreck of the EF OVER AND OVER. That night, he ate a dinner of steak and crab legs (The most he had eaten in weeks)and we had a lovely meal.

He died three weeks later.

I always cry when I hear that song.

Seem to be tearing up a little now...better go roll a joint and break out my Gordon Lightfoot album.

[Withywindle]

43. I"m so sorry for your loss.

:hug:


Music is always such a powerful reminder. And that's such an elegant and somber song.

[lovemydog]

44. Gordon Lightfoot cut the song

almost immediately after it happened. Then he went away on a rafting trip and didn't know he had a number one song in the midwest until he returned a couple of weeks later. That's what I recall reading in a Detroit Free Press article at the time. It's such a beautiful and haunting reminder of that terrible tragedy. It was one of the first songs I downloaded from itunes. Interestingly, it isn't on either of my two Lightfoot cd compilations. I think that's because he cut it for some small indie label, maybe to get it released quickly. Interesting comments here. I've learned a lot, and it's great to see the photo of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I'm wondering, were any improvements made to these types of boats after the accident, or was it just one of those unavoidable kinds of tragedies? Rest in peace. We'll never forget you.