Green Bay Press Gazette - Maybe it’s because no one knows for sure exactly what happened. Maybe it’s because so many lives were lost in an instant. Or maybe it’s because of the song. It was 35 years ago today when the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. A generation has passed. Memories fade. But interest in the “Fitz” still is keen.
“We can’t touch the Fitz exhibit without people getting upset about it. We still get a lot of questions about it.” said Thom Holden, director of the Lake Superior Maritime Museum in Duluth, Minn. Holden said the haunting 1976 Gordon Lightfoot ballad about the wreck is a big part of the intrigue.
The 729-foot freighter left Superior on Nov. 9 with a full load of 26,000 tons of Minnesota-made taconite iron ore pellets just before a huge storm engulfed the region. The ore carrier was on its way to a steel mill at Zug Island near Detroit but sunk in waves that some call the largest they’d ever seen on Lake Superior. All 29 crew members on board perished. Late on the afternoon of the 10th, the captain of the Fitzgerald, Ernest M. McSorely, made radio contact with another ship, the Avafor, and reported that the Fitz was listing badly to one side, had lost both radars, and was taking heavy seas over the deck in one of the “worst seas” he had ever been in. Northwest winds were blowing near 60 mph with higher gusts. At about 4 p.m. an estimated 86 mph hurricane-force northwest wind gust struck the ore carrier Arthur M. Anderson. At 7 p.m. the Anderson, trailing the Fitzgerald by about 10 miles, was struck by two waves estimated at 25 feet or higher. The last radio contact from the Fitzgerald to the Anderson was: “We are holding our own,” about 7:10 p.m. But the Fitz’s lights faded from sight in a snow squall and then disappeared from the Anderson’s radar screen minutes later. No distress signal was sent.
The wreck was found in two pieces 530 feet below the surface just 17 miles outside Whitefish Point and the relative safety and calmer waters of Whitefish Bay.
A Coast Guard investigation ruled the probable cause of the sinking was that the deck hatches failed and water filled the ore-filled cargo holds. This report suggests that the Fitzgerald was taking on water due to earlier damage from the storm and that around 7:15 p.m. it plunged headfirst into a large wave and sank abruptly But findings by the National Transportation Safety Board and the Great Lakes Carriers Association weren’t as sure. Another theory says the ship, unknown to the crew, bottomed out in huge waves on a shoal near Caribou Island, gashing the hull and causing buckling on deck. Other theories include structural deficiencies, overloading, hatches that weren’t properly secured, or just freak wind and wave conditions that doomed the ship.
The men who died in the wreck ranged in age from 21 to 63 and came from seven states. The church bell did chime at the Maritime Church in Detroit for the victims, as Lightfoot immortalized in song, but they also are remembered at Whitefish Point, where surviving family and friends gather each year on the anniversary.
Heart is heavy today. Be sure to listen to Gordon Lightfoot honor the boys and pour some out tonight for the 29 men who lost their lives that fateful night in November 35 years ago today. I'm off to the bar to drink away my sorrows.
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