THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD

29 comments

Posted on 18th February 2013 by Administrator in Economy |Politics |Social Issues

29 Comments

  1. Eddie says:

    Great song. Interesting wreck,much studied and written about.Dangerous job, merchant seaman. That is not the way I’d want to go. May they RIP.

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    18th February 2013 at 8:02 pm

  2. taxSlave says:

    Good music tonight Admin – I needed it. Excellent tribute. Thanks.

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    18th February 2013 at 8:25 pm

  3. KaD says:

    People who haven’t seen the great lakes before don’t understand the size-you can’t even see the other side. It’s like an inland ocean. Even Lake Erie can whip up 40 foot waves in minutes.

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    18th February 2013 at 8:53 pm

  4. sangell says:

    The stench from the sea made it plain as could be
    The Carnival Triumph would soon be arriving
    It was way overdue when it came into view
    The passengers barely surviving.

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    18th February 2013 at 9:21 pm

  5. BiggTmofo says:

    Thanks for this post. Our local PBS station had an hour long show which I recorded on great lakes shipping. It showed the journey of oar from Deluth to Gary and points in between. Hard work and can be dangerous.
    Since I live in the C-town area I get to see these things quite a bit unloading stone and ore. Very cool but there are dangers. I am amazed at how little folks outside the Great Lakes region know about the lakes and the economic importance of them. As KaD said Lake Erie is the most dangerous because it’s the most shallow and can shoot high waves very quickly. Any how great song and let’s remember the risk of shipping even in the lakes.

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    18th February 2013 at 9:39 pm

  6. SSS says:

    Admin

    This is starting to get spooky. Why did you post this, or, more importantly, what prompted you to post this?

    I was quite young when Gordon Lightfoot came out with this song and didn’t think much about it at the time, except for the fact that it was about a ship that sunk in Lake Superior. Then, when I was about your age some 20 years later, I ran across some information about the Edmund Fitzgerald and really got into the story.

    About the “November Witches” (low pressure storms) that hit Lake Superior in late Fall. About the monster waves and high winds, up to 100 mph, they produce. And about the perfect storm that hit the Edmund Fitzgerald and MAY, repeat may, have sent it down in less than a minute, perhaps seconds. As that particularly theory goes, it would have hit the water almost like an arrow and shot to its grave. Survival would have been impossible. If I ever see an article about the Edmund Fitzgerald, I’ll read it without fail. I find it fascinating.

    What the hell made you bring this sad saga to your blog? Happenstance? Or just looking for interesting stuff to post? Or …………. ?

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    18th February 2013 at 11:59 pm

  7. Llpoh says:

    SSS – general consensus is it went down very fast indeed as there was no mayday call, but you probably know that. A lot of theories on why it went down – rogue waves, swamped, broke up suddenly, etc. . i personally like the broke up theory, given the way it and its contents were strewn over the lake bed. Hitting the submerged and uncharted reef also sounds pretty good.

    The great lakes can be very dangerous.

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    18th February 2013 at 12:37 am

  8. Novista says:

    The only thing I know about Lake Erie is the event that influenced the classic Pogo line.

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    18th February 2013 at 1:40 am

  9. Administrator says:

    SSS

    I wanted to keep a nautical theme going for the day.

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    18th February 2013 at 9:11 am

  10. flash says:

    When I was a kid, this song was a staple on our local rock radio station…along with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOOs-MqDOI0.
    It’s amazing what passes for rock in the 70′s versus today.

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    18th February 2013 at 9:29 am

  11. flash says:

    Two more sailor songs form the seventies..

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-tRXewCAmU

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPK_IV-J3Co

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    18th February 2013 at 9:37 am

  12. flash says:

    Son Of A Son Of A Sailor
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5goPnvZZnLo

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    18th February 2013 at 9:40 am

  13. Stucky says:

    Goddammit flash, when you post a link add a little more info you lazy fuck. That way peopple can decide if they want to click on it.

    The 2 sailor songs lazyFlash posted are Brandy and Southern Cross.

    How fuckin’ hard was that? Eh, punk?

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    18th February 2013 at 9:49 am

  14. Stucky says:

    In the US, this song was held out of the #1 spot by Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s The Night.”

    .
    The song was nominated for the Song Of The Year Grammy, but it was beaten by Barry Manilow’s “I Write The Songs.”

    .
    An initial investigation suggested that the crew was partly to blame for the disaster by not securing the ship’s hatches. Lightfoot’s song reflected the original findings in the verse, “…at 7 p.m. a main hatchway gave in.” However, in 2010 a Canadian documentary claimed to have proven the crew of the ship was not responsible for the tragedy. It concluded that there is little evidence that failure to secure the ship’s hatches caused the sinking. Lightfoot said he intended to change it to reflect the new findings. “I’m sincerely grateful to yap films and their program The Dive Detectives for putting together compelling evidence that the tragedy was not a result of crew error,” he said in a release. “This finally vindicates, and honours, not only all of the crew who lost their lives, but also the family members who survived them.”

    One other slight inaccuracy ……. the Fitz was indeed leaving with iron ore pellets from Superior, Wisconsin, it was headed to Detroit, not Cleveland

    .
    In 1970, baseball commissioner Bud Selig’s co-founding partner in the Brewers was fellow Milwaukee businessman Edmund B. Fitzgerald, the son of a family that owned Great Lakes shipyards. In 1958, the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald was named for Edmund B.’s father. Fitzgerald later became a professor at Vanderbilt University

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    18th February 2013 at 10:17 am

  15. flash says:

    Stucky says:

    Goddammit flash, when you post a link add a little more info you lazy fuck. That way peopple can decide if they want to click on it.

    Suckie, It’s the surprise that makes the gift so special.

    33760901.jpg

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    18th February 2013 at 10:58 am

  16. varnelius says:

    It’s Duluth, not Deluth. Pronounced DOO LUTH, not DUL LUTH as the robocall for when the VP was coming to town last year. Made me think of Dulles International.

    Also not surprised Superior isn’t remembered, we’re always the forgotten town.

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    18th February 2013 at 1:02 pm

  17. SSS says:

    Nice post on additional background of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Stuck. You are now authorized to conclude your comments with ……

    Stucky
    TBP Professor Emeritus
    Department of History

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    18th February 2013 at 6:09 pm

  18. llpoh says:

    SSS – phththth. I know WAY more about the EF than Stuck. He is a wannabe – he only knows about the song. Me – I know about the accident. Damn people trying to pass off what they learn or hear in a song as actual knowledge. He should be horsewhipped for such shallow research.

    This is the track of the EF on the day it went down. Note the way it goes close to that island. That is why I like the #2 option I posted above – that it may have scraped a reef. It did indeed begin taking on water, but whether that caused it to sink/flounder/whatever is not 100% established. It was known that the EF flexed like a bastard in rough weather, and it may simply have suffered metal fatigue and tore in two suddenly – I think that is very likely given it was found in 2 pieces, and the pieces were quite a ways apart, and EF’s load was distributed even further than that.

    route.gif

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    18th February 2013 at 6:30 pm

  19. llpoh says:

    edmund-fitzgerald-wreck-map.jpg

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    18th February 2013 at 6:33 pm

  20. llpoh says:

    Wreck_Of_The_Edmund_Fitzgerald.png

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    18th February 2013 at 6:37 pm

  21. llpoh says:

    Ooops.

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    18th February 2013 at 6:37 pm

  22. SSS says:

    llpoh

    Your new title …..

    llpoh
    TBP Professor Emeritus and Overlord of Stucky
    Department of History

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    18th February 2013 at 6:38 pm

  23. llpoh says:

    I have family that lives not far from the wreck. It has long been an interest of mine.

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    18th February 2013 at 6:44 pm

  24. llpoh says:

    A few theories of the cause of the wreck:

    ” A wave engulfed the ship, pushing the front of the ship underwater. The ship then hit ground, and broke in two…this may be why the two portions of the ship are so close.

    Waves lifted both ends of the ship (bow and stern), but the center of the ship containing the cargo was not held by a wave, so the overload forced the center downward, sinking and/or breaking the ship in two.

    Bottoming out/grounding. This could have very well happened near Six Fathom Shoal.

    Faulty hatch covers *this theory has been disproven by research and expeditions

    Previous structural damage may have caused the sinking.

    Huge waves swamped the ship and it sank. Many people call these huge waves (so big they are detected by radar) the Three Sisters.

    A huge wave rode up between two swells and the ship snapped in half.”

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    18th February 2013 at 6:47 pm

  25. llpoh says:

    “Lightfoot’s hit 1976 song about the sinking, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, includes the verse: “At 7 p.m. a main hatchway caved in, He said, “Fellas, it’s been good to know ya.’”

    But for the last couple of weeks in concert in the U.S., and again on Thursday night during his Canadian tour launch at Casino Rama, Lightfoot has been singing: “At 7 p.m., it grew dark, it was then he said, ‘Fellas it’s been good to know ya.”"

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    18th February 2013 at 6:52 pm

  26. sangell says:

    I believe in the ‘hogging’ theory, caught between two big swells that breaks the ships in back. It would only require a second for a fully loaded ship to lose bouyant support for its steel structure to fail and its engines to drive the broken hull underwater. No need to flood, just have the bow bend up as the center of the ship pitches down and the engines just drive it all below the surface.

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    18th February 2013 at 8:06 pm

  27. Eddie says:

    Boats are plenty dangerous without loading them with a zillion tons of ore. I’ve read a number of stories about the Edmund Fitzgerald, and that seemed to be the consensus opinion (what you said, sangell), although the other possibilities llpoh mentioned are all possibles.

    Lake Superior is a nasty place to be in a blow, from what I’ve read. If I drown, I’d prefer the warmer waters of the Caribbean, thank you very much. Drowning is bad enough without freezing to death at the same time.

    Didn’t they recover the ships bell?

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    18th February 2013 at 8:16 pm

  28. SSS says:

    “just have the bow bend up as the center of the ship pitches down and the engines just drive it all below the surface.”
    —-sangell

    Exactly. I agree. Fun to theorize on what really happened, isn’t it? The Edmund Fitzgerald is “somewhat” similar to the Battle of Little Bighorn. No witnesses in the first instance, and a one-sided story in the second.

    This is why I love history. There are SO many interesting, real life stories out there.

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    18th February 2013 at 8:28 pm

  29. Zarathustra says:

    Llpoh writes, “Waves lifted both ends of the ship (bow and stern), but the center of the ship containing the cargo was not held by a wave, so the overload forced the center downward, sinking and/or breaking the ship in two.”

    This is the explanation that makes the most sense and it wouldn’t be the first time a ship was broken in two by this circumstance. Keep in mind that as the waves progressed, next the wave would move to the center of the ship leaving the bow and stern unsupported, completing the breakup.

    I have seen underwater video of the EF as it looks today. Due to lying in cold fresh water, there is virtually no deterioration of the wreck. The paint is intact and there is little sign of rust.

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    18th February 2013 at 8:38 pm

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