| shaynezucker.com |
| Contact Info: rshayne@sbcglobal.net |
 |
| The Wreck Of the Edmund Fitzgerald Tribute Page |
 |
 |
| "The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee" Gitche Gumee translates roughly to "Shining Big-Sea-Water". "The lake it is said never gives up her dead when the skies of november turn gloomy" To put it rather bluntly, the reason so few bodies are recovered from off shore drownings in Lake Superior is because the bodies first tend to sink (or are still on board a vessel) but because of the depth and frigid temperatures, the victims do not naturally decompose. Because of the lack of oxygen producing organisms, the bodies remain on the bottom. "With a load of iron ore 26,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty" When empty, the Fitzgerald weighed 8,686 net tons. The hold was filled with 26,013 tons of iron ore pellets called taconite, used mainly for automobile production. "That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of november came early" Lake superior is on average 533 feet deep with an extreme depth of 1333 feet. It is 400 miles long which, when the wind blows across it's length, the waves can build to greater heights than found on less dense sea water, even in hurricane winds. "The ship was the pride of the american side" The Fitz was named after a Milwaukee banker and was launched into the River Rouge basin in June 1958. The owner was Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee and operated by Oglebay Norton. "Comin' back from some mill in Wisconsin" Superior, Wisconsin. "As the big freighters go it was bigger than most" The ship was 729 feet long, 75 feet wide, 39 feet deep. She was the largest Great Lakes steamer when launched in 1958, its size limited only by the largest lock on Sault St, Marie. Larger 1000 ft. boats were possible after the construction of the Poe lock in 1969. "With a crew and good captain well seasoned" Captain Ernest R. McSorley, 62 years old, started sailing as a deckhand on ocean vessels when he was 18 years old. After transferring to freshwater freighters, he made his way through the ranks, eventually becoming the youngest to make captain. "Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms when they left fully loaded for Cleveland" The Fitzgerald was "downbound" to unload its cargo in Detroit and then continue on to Cleveland to dock for the winter months. "And later that night when the ship's bell rang could it be the north wind they'd bin feelin'" The Fitzgerald and the Anderson, a second freighter following close behind, knew of the gale warnings posted by the National Weather Service. They decided to alter their course and head towards the North shore of Superior for shelter against the heart of the storm. "The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound and a wave broke over the railing" The two boats (great lake sailors prefer "boat" to "ship"), followed the Canadian shore to the Caribou Island near "Six Fathom Shoals." The Anderson's captain Jesse "Bernie" Cooper, remarks how close the Fitz is to the shoals. Crossing the lake in an attempt to harbor the storm, the two make a course for Whitefish Bay Michigan. In heavy seas, the Fitzgerald sustains topside damage and radios the Anderson, "Anderson, this is the Fitzgerald. I have sustained some topside damage. I have a fence rail laid down, two vents lost or damaged, and a list. I'm checking down. Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish?" "And every man knew as the captain did too, 'twas the witch of november come stealin'" The Fitzgerald has two radar sets but both use a common antenna. The Fitzgerald calls on the radio to the Arthur M. Anderson. "Anderson, this is the Fitzgerald. I have lost both radars. Can you provide me with radar plots till we reach Whitefish Bay?" "Charlie on that, Fitzgerald. We'll keep you advised of your position." "The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait when the gales of november came slashin'" Winds were 40 to 45 knots with waves to 20 ft. "When afternoon came it was freezin' rain in the face of a hurricane west wind" The Sault St, Marie Locks report winds of seventy knots, gusts up to eighty-two, about ninety-five mph! " When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin' "fellas it's too rough to feed ya" Ironically, the "old" cook was suffering from bleeding ulcers and was unable to make the last voyage. He is considered by some as "the sole survivor of the Fitzgerald". "At seven p.m. a main hatchway caved in he said "fellas it's been good to know ya" The Anderson reports being hit by two huge waves which go over the pilot house, 35 feet above the water line. "The captain wired in he had water comin' in and the good ship and crew was in peril" Although McSorley told the Anderson he had developed a list and was, infact, taking on water, his main concern was that because of the loss of radar and new reports of the Whitefish Bay Lighthouse being broken down, the Fitzgerald was sailing blind and due to the list, the Fitzgerald was pulling to the left. They had to rely on the Anderson for guidance. When the Anderson radioed back later to ask how they were doing with their problem, McSorley replied "We are holding our own". That was the last thing heard from the Fitzgerald. "And later that night when 'is lights went out of sight came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" The tremendous waves on Lake Superior kept interfering with the Anderson's radar, showing the Fitzgerald some 10 miles ahead of her. As the Anderson would dip with a large wave, the Fitzgerald and all other boats in the area would disappear, showing up again as the Anderson would crest. At 7:10 the Anderson rose above a wave and the radar showed three blips, saltwater ships, the Navafors, the Avafors, and the Benfri about 20 miles downbound. But no Fitzgerald. In the span of just a few seconds, with no distress call, the Fitzgerald was gone. "Does anyone know where the love of god goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours" The Anderson contacted the Coast Guard in Sault St. Marie. "Soo Control, this is the Anderson. I am very concerned about the welfare of the steamer Edmund Fitzgerald. He was right in front of us, experiencing a little difficulty. He was taking on a small amount of water and none of the upbound ships have passed him. I can see no lights as before and I don't have him on radar. I just hope he didn't take a nose dive!" The air temperature at the time was 49 degrees and the water temperature was 40 degrees. Under these conditions a man would go into shock in 30 minutes. "The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay if they'd put fifteen more miles behind 'er" A floating debris field was found the next morning and a 1000 yard long oil slick about 13 miles from Whitefish Point. On later days, small objects were found near the Canadian shore, lifevests and rings, bottles, splintered wood, the largest object being a crumpled raft with the Fitzgerald's name. "They might have split up or they might have capsized they may have broke deep and took water" The wreckage is in two major pieces. The bow section is 276 feet long and upright. The stern section is 253 feet long and upside down. The sections are 170 feet apart. About 200 feet of the midsection is disintegrated. Although there is no conclusive evidence pointing to what the cause was, the most popular therory is that because the Fitz was taking on water, the taconite cargo shifted toward the bow making it unbalanced, heavy to the front. When the Fitz plunged into the valley between two large waves, she submarined to the bottom, striking the lake's floor with enough force to break her in two. "And all that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters" There has been no attempt by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, which had made several exploratory expeditions down to the werckage, to recover the crew. "Lake Huron rolls Superior sings, in the rooms of her ice water mansion Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams, the islands and bays are for sportsmen and farther below Lake Ontario. takes in what Lake Erie can send her and the Iron boats go as the mariners all know, with the gales of november remembered" There is estimated to be more than 6000 commercial shipwrecks in the Great Lakes, and fewer than half of these have been located. "In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed, in the maritime sailors' cathedral the church bell chimed 'til it rang 29 times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald" The ship went down in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975 with 29 men on board. "The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down, of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee Superior they said never gives up her dead, when the gales of november come early" Taken from the "Gordon Lightfoot Tribute Page", posted by SirFlyalot |
| The fateful voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald By Jenny Nolan / The Detroit News Fierce autumn storms on the Great Lakes have claimed their victims for centuries. Thousands of vessels have sunk and countless lives have been lost. Native Americans and the French voyageurs in turn mourned their dead. The first recorded tragedy was the sinking of the Le Griffin, belonging to the explorer LaSalle, with a load of furs in autumn of 1680. Perhaps the most famous of the lakes' tragedies was immortalized by singer Gordon Lightfoot: On Nov. 8, 1975, in the Oklahoma panhandle, the beginnings of a storm stirred the air. Picking up force, the storm moved through Iowa and Wisconsin. On Nov. 9, gale warnings were issued for Lake Superior. By 2:15 p.m. on Nov. 9th, a giant lakes freighter had filled her cargo hold with 26,116 tons of taconite pellets in Superior, Wis., and was on her way south to Detroit, as an uneventful shipping season ran down. That vessel was the Edmund Fitzgerald. The route the Edmund Fitzgerald was to take on its last voyage. The Edmund Fitzgerald was christened June 8,1958 and launched (sideways) June 17 into the Detroit River. It was named after the new board chairman of Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, whose grandfather and five great uncles had been ship captains. The company had commissioned her to be built by Great Lakes Engineering Works in River Rouge, which took on 1,000 men for the job. Mrs. Edmund Fitzgerald cracked the champagne bottle across the ship's bow at the christening. Airliners, military craft, two helicopters passed overhead at the launch while yachts, sailboats, fishing boats, tugs, scows and 17 freighters assembled on the river. At 729 feet long, she was at that time the largest freighter on the great lakes. With a 75-foot beam and a depth of 39 feet, she had a load capacity of almost 30,000 tons. The vessel weighed 13,632 tons and cost $8.4 million. The furnishings and design of the staterooms and dining room were the height of nautical fashion, with a down-cushioned sofa sectional and linen draperies across panoramic windows in the lounge. The windows overlooked nearly two city blocks of cargo hatches to the stern. The massive propeller offers a sense of the scale of the big ship. By 1975, the Fitzgerald was showing an average amount of wear for a ship on the Great Lakes. She had passed a rigorous two-month inspection (required yearly) in the spring of 1975, and had passed the Coast Guard out-of-water inspection (necessary every five years) in the spring of 1974. She was certified as seaworthy and safe for operation. An Oct. 31 inspection uncovered routine seasonal damage to the cargo hatches, but the Fitzgerald was granted permission to operate as long as the repairs were complete before the 1976 season. There were 29 men aboard on that November day, captained by Ernest McSorley, 63, of Toledo. High water in the lakes since 1969 had prompted the U.S. Coast Guard to allow owners to load their ships to a greater depth and the Fitzgerald was no exception. She was loaded three feet deeper than had been considered safe in 1969, making her deck three feet closer to the water line. The Fitzgerald came within 20 miles of the vessel Arthur Anderson, under the helm of Captain Jessie B. Cooper, near Two Harbors, Minnesota. The Anderson was also loaded with taconite pellets. The captains commiserated by radio over the storm's increasing intensity, and at 2:am Monday, the morning of the 10th, they decided to change course and take the northern route along Superior's north shore. This would put them in the lee of the Canadian shoreline, which hopefully would protect them from the gale force winds which were whipping up the seas. At 7 a.m. Captain McSorley contacted his company to report that weather would delay his arrival at the Soo Locks. The Anderson was following the Fitzgerald at a distance of nearly 16 miles and keeping in contact. Winds were high, and getting worse. Waves were eight to 10 feet in the early afternoon and increasing in power and size as the day wore on. The Arthur M. Anderson was guiding the Fitzgerald after the doomed ship's radar went down. As heavy snow began to fall, visibility became nil and the Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared from the Anderson's view. Waves reached 12 to 16 feet, whipped by winds gusting up to 90 miles per hour at the Soo Locks, which were shut down. The Coast Guard issued an emergency warning: all ships were to find safe harbor. By 6 p.m. the crashing waves were 25 feet high. By Captain Cooper's reckoning, the Fitzgerald passed closer to the Caribou Island Six Fathom Shoal than he would have taken his own vessel. McSorley's radar went out so he slowed his ship to allow the Anderson to catch up and guide him. He was unable to pick up the Whitefish Point radio beacon or see its light. The Fitzgerald also had two vents damaged, he reported, and was listing. At 7:10 p.m. the Anderson radioed the Fitzgerald to warn of another vessel nine miles ahead, but they assured McSorley that on present course the ship would pass by to the west. The first mate of the Arthur Anderson signed off by asking, "How are you making out with your problem?" The Fitzgerald replied: "We are holding our own." It was the last contact with the ship. The snow was letting up and the Anderson crew began sighting other ships. None were the Fitzgerald. The 729-foot mammoth was missing. The Anderson recovered this piece of a lifeboat from the Fitzgerald. A search was launched. Aircraft and patrol boats crisscrossed the area. The Arthur Anderson had turned around to search and the William Clay Ford and the Hilda Marjanne joined in. The latter had to turn back because of dangerous seas. The Anderson discovered a piece of one of Fitzgerald's lifeboats. A life preserver was found. Another lifeboat, a raft, a stepladder. There were no bodies found, hardly any trace of the huge ore carrier. The search continued for three days. Down in Detroit on Tuesday morning, the bell at Mariner's Church tolled 29 times, once for each of the lost crew. On November 14 a Navy plane located the wreck. It was just 17 miles from its safe harbor destination of Whitefish Point, 530 feet down on the bottom of Lake Superior. The vessel was in two huge sections on the lake's floor, the metal torn and twisted from the force of the impact. There was never a definitive report on the cause of the Fitzgerald wreck. A Coast Guard report suggesting that the hatches had not been closed properly was rejected. Popular speculation held that in passing so close to the Caribou Island shoal, the extra three foot's depth load allowed the hull to scrape the shoals whose depth was misreported on navigational charts at the time. Some believe that the towering rolling waves caused the steamer to break in two. The Edmund Fitzgerald will never be raised, nor its crew recovered. It remains an underwater monument not only to its crew but to all those who sail the Great Lakes, a monument to courage and the spirt of adventure that leads men to the sea. |
| The Crew: Ernest M. McSorley, 63, Captain, Toledo Ohio John H. McCarthy, 62, Mate, Bay Village, Ohio James A. Pratt, 44, second mate, Lakewood, Ohio Michael E. Armagost, 37, third mate, Iron River, Wisconsin Thomas Bentsen, 23, oiler, St. Joseph, Michigan Thomas D. Borgeson, 4l, maintenance man, Duluth, Minnesota John D. Simmons, 60, wheelsman, Ashland, Wisconsin Eugene W. O'Brien, 50, wheelsman, Toledo, Ohio John J. Poviatch, 59, wheelsman, Bradenton, Florida Ranson E. Cundy, 53, watchman, Superior, Wisconsin William J. Spengler, 59, watchman, Toledo, Ohio Karl A. Peckol, 20, watchman, Ashtabula, Ohio Mark A. Thomas, 2l, deck hand, Richmond Heights, Ohio Paul M. Rippa, 22, deck hand, Ashtabula, Ohio Bruce L. Hudson, 22, deck hand, North Olmsted, Ohio David E. Weiss, 22, cadet, Agoura, California Robert C. Rafferty, 62, steward, Toledo, Ohio Allen G. Kalmon, 43, second cook, Washburn, Wisconsin Frederick J. Beetcher, 56, porter, Superior, Wisconsin Nolan F. Church, 55, porter, Silver Bay, Minnesota George Holl, 60, chief engineer, Cabot, Pennsylvania Edward F. Bindon, 47, first assistant engineer, Fairport Harbor, Ohio Thomas E. Edwards, 50, second assistant engineer, Oregon, Ohio Russell G. Haskell, 40, second assistant engineer, Millbury, Ohio Oliver J. Champeau, 4l, third assistant engineer, Milwaukee, Wisconsin Blaine H. Wilhelm, 52, oiler, Moguah, Wisconsin Ralph G. Walton, 58, oiler, Fremont, Ohio Joseph W. Mazes, 59, special maintenance man, Ashland, Wisconsin Gordon F. MacLellan, 30, wiper, Clearwater, Florida |
 |