Remembering the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior remains one of the Great Lakes' most haunting mysteries, and the story is as compelling to me now as when it happened 35 years ago.

Edmund Fitzgerald was a civic leader, community benefactor, and business man from Milwaukee. His family owned a shipyard, and his five great-uncles were Great Lakes mariners. Fitzgerald, an artillery captain during World War I and Yale graduate, worked at Milwaukee Malleable Iron Company. He joined the board of Northwestern Mutual in 1933, becoming its chairman in 1958.

Fitzgerald convinced Northwestern Mutual to finance an ore carrier. Great Lakes Engineering Works designed and built the ship, a 729-foot-long, 13,632-ton behemoth which took 1,000 men and $8.4 million to complete. Northwestern's board named it for Fitzgerald, who attended the ship's launch into the Detroit River on June 8, 1958.

The ship made 748 safe round trips from western Lake Superior to Detroit and Cleveland although it lost its bow anchor in 1974 about one mile west of Belle Isle on the Detroit River. Today the anchor is on the grounds of Detroit's Dossin Great Lakes Museum.

The Edmund Fitzgerald departed Superior, Wisconsin, on November 9, 1975, with 26,116 tons of taconite pellets bound for Zug Island on the Detroit River.

Forecasters issued gale warnings for Lake Superior within 20 minutes of the Edmund Fitzgerald's 2:20 p.m. departure, upgrading those to storm warnings by November 10. Soon, 25-foot-tall waves and 90-mile-per hour winds accompanied heavy snow over the lake.

Captain Cooper, sailing nearby with ore carrier Arthur M. Anderson, spoke frequently with the Fitzgerald's Captain McSorely during the storm.

McSorely radioed Cooper to report loss of his ship's radar, asking Cooper to provide navigational information as both headed to the safety of Whitefish Point in Michigan's Upper Peninsula.

McSorely reported "we are holding our own" at 7:10 p.m. when Cooper asked how the Fitz was faring. It was the last time anyone ever heard from the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Cooper lost sight of the Fitzgerald in a snow squall around 7:15 p.m., and the ship disappeared from Cooper's radar by 7:25 p.m. Cooper strained to see the Fitzgerald when visibility improved, but saw no trace of the ship and reported it missing to the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard, occupied with searching for other vessels, asked Cooper to venture back out from Whitefish Point to look for the Fitzgerald.

Cooper feared jeopardizing his crew, but reluctantly agreed to look for the Fitzgerald, finding a piece of the Fitzgerald's lifeboat and small debris but no other sign of the ship or crew.

A Navy plane found the Edmund Fitzgerald, broken into two large pieces, 530 feet under water, and 17 miles from Whitefish Point on November 14.

Coast along northwestern Lake Superior on a calm summer day

Coast Guard reports suggest damaged hatches led to flooding below decks, and the Fitzgerald dove into a massive wave, submarine style, to the bottom of Lake Superior. There are plenty of other theories, but no one came up with a definitive cause.

Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", suggests the crew knew their fate, but evidence suggests the wreck happened too quickly for that. There were no distress calls, no apparent attempt to launch the ship's two 50-person lifeboats, and McSorely's last communication with Cooper showed no sense of impending danger.

In 1995, Michigan State University recovered the Edmund Fitzgerald's 200-pound bronze bell, restored it, and placed it at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point at the request of the crew's families as a memorial. A replica bell engraved with the names of the 29 men replaced the original bell at the Edmund Fitzgerald as an underwater memorial.

The son and namesake of the man whose name the ship bore said that the 1958 launch was among the happiest days of his father's life, and his father felt horrible about the tragedy and loss of lives. The elder Fitzgerald rarely spoke of the shipwreck and died at the age of 90 in 1986.

The Arthur M. Anderson still sails the Great Lakes. See it in this beautiful video (below) shot in September, 2010, by IntoWisOutdoors.

This cool vintage footage below, set to Lightfoot's song and edited by Joseph Fulton, follows the Edmund Fitzgerald from its launch to its underwater resting place.

 

 

 

See Minnesota's Split Rock Lighthouse celebrates centennial year for my story of a lighthouse built in the wake of another November storm on Lake Superior, or my story, Great Lakes maritime lore lives on at Detroit's Dossin Great Lakes Museum, about the museum that is home to the Fitzgerald's lost bow anchor.

Want to learn more about the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy? Check out Mighty Fitz: The Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Michael Schumacher or The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Frederick Stonehouse, and listen to The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Gordon Lightfoot's Complete Greatest Hits.

© Dominique King

Comments

[Charlie]

Thanks for posting this.

I think about this mysterious tragedy when the fierce November storms blow through the area. Has it really been 35-years since this ship went down?

Charlie

[Dominique King]

Charlie-Hard to believe, isn't it?

I'd had this post in mind to write ever since we went to Dossin earlier this year, and I realized it was the 35th.

[Ken Stoker]

Wow! This is a very nice website! Thank You for your kind words on my Arthur M. Anderson video! Catching the Anderson was the highlight of this particular trip to the Twin Ports region!

Have you ever seen this Edmund Fitzgerald timeline before? She had a very rough life! Here is the link!
http://www.ssedmundfitzgerald.com/timeline.html

[Dominique King]

Ken-Thanks so much for stopping by!
I really did love your video, and I loved seeing such recent footage of the Arthur M. Anderson in such fine shape and still sailing.
Thanks so much for the link to the timeline. I've seen bits and pieces of it elsewhere, but I don't think I've seen such a complete account of the radio conversations from the day of the wreck. And I certainly never heard the part about the sailor aboard the Anderson who did his last will and testament! It really makes you understand the conditions that still existed that night as they looked for the Fitzgerald.