Yee Haw lets go

The Edmund Fitzgerald was a gigantic freighter ship launched in 1958. At the time it was the largest ship on the Great Lakes and continues to be the largest ever ship sunk on them.

In 1975, she was carrying a load of ore to an island off the coast of Detroit from Wisconsin. She had to travel Lake Superior to get there.

The thing about the Great Lakes is that they’re lakes only by name. In every other aspect, they’re seas. They’re gigantic and angry and if I were to plop you down on the beach in front of one you would think you were facing an ocean.

Superior is the ‘angriest’. It’s the largest and deepest of the lakes. There’s legends about this lake that go back to the Chippewa and Ojibwe tribes about just how ruthless it is. “It never gives up her dead” is a common quote, made even more famous by the Gordon Lightfoot song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”.

Anyway. November 10th, 1975. The Edmund Fitzgerald was trying to make Whitefish Bay when a storm struck the area. The winter months are especially cruel on the Great Lakes, considering they’re often subjected to the polar vortex.

Early November is a little early in the season for such a harsh storm to occur so it sort of took the ship by surprise. This particular storm had hurricane force winds and 35ft waves.

The thing was, the ship wasn’t alone, it was briefly in contact with the SS Arthur M. Anderson, another ship setting for Gary, Indiana. Throughout the afternoon the storm pummeled the Fitzgerald, while the Anderson couldn’t do much more but listen to their calls over the radio before, at around 7pm, they went completely dark. 

The Fitzgerald never sent any maydays, technically, but the captain did report over the radio that “I have a bad list, lost both radars. And am taking heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I’ve ever been in”. Note, this was a gigantic ship, the crew were very experienced, and hearing that from Cpt. Ernest M. McSorley, a man with over 40 years experience, is troubling. His last message to the Anderson was “We’re holding our own”. 

Her entire crew of 29 perished, and no bodies were recovered. The exact cause of the sinking remains unknown, though many books, studies, and expeditions have examined it. They may have been swamped, suffered structural failure or topside damage, experienced wave shoaling, or a combo. The disaster is one of the best-known in the history of the Great Lakes. The ship currently rests in two pieces at the bottom of Lake Superior, 530ft deep.

The thing is, if it had just gone 15 more miles, something that would have taken less than an hour at the ship’s speed, it would have made Whitefish Bay. It wouldn’t have sunk. 

It’s a story I grew up hearing every year as a Michigander. Our school played documentaries every year. In the vast world history of shipwrecks, it’s not much. It wasn’t a Titanic level sinking by any means, but every kid knows the story. Every year, the Mariners’ Church in Detroit rings its bell 29 times.

Here’s the song by Gordon Lightfoot, which includes footage of the ship, the people who were killed, and news reports of the incident.