36 years ago today...

Dave_Snelson

Dave_Snelson

Well-Known Member
Joined
16 Oct 2001
Messages
11,618
Location
Porthmadog / Port Leucate
www.makeyourowngarments.com
The great bulk iron ore carrier the SS Edmund Fitzgerald foundered 15nm from Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior.
Fitzgeraldpic.jpg


She certainly wasn't the only ship to founder on this great lake, nor was she the greatest disaster in Great Lakes maritime history, but she was immortalised in the song written by Gordon Lightfoot.

The "Big Fitz" as she was known weighed 13,632 tons and was 729 feet long. In 1958, when it was first launched, it was the largest carrier on the Great Lakes, and remained so until 1971. The Fitzgerald was labeled "The Pride of the American Flag". In 1964 it became the first ship on the Great Lakes to carry more than a million tons of ore through the Soo Locks. On November 9, 1975 she departed from Superior, WI with approximately 26,000 tons of ore bound for Detroit MI. Shortly after leaving, the Fitzgerald made contact with the Arthur M. Anderson bound, on a similar route, for Gary IN.

The Big Fitz weas indeed large, but its the dimensions of the lake itself that are truly staggering. Superior has a surface area of 4x that of North and South Wales put together and nearly that of the Irish Sea - but much, much deeper and far greater in volumetric terms. She has an average depth of 550 feet with the deepest parts plumbing 1340 feet.

The Fitz foundered in water only 2/3rds her depth at 550 feet and all because of a couple of factors. One being a typical November storm that arrived early and tirned into a Hurrican force blast that whipped the lake up into a fury developing what was and still is known as the 3 sisters - a succesion of 3 large breaking waves that are perilous to any ship, let alone one whose hull was allegedly suspect.

Why suspect? Well majority thinking on this says that the Fitz broke in two and dissappeared almost instantly - the wreckage still lies in two pieces on the lake bed. This was confirmed at the time by the crew of the Arthur M. Anderson. Above one wave she was there and by the secong huge wave, she was gone - with all 29 hands lost.

In the song by Gordon Lightfoot there is a line that says:

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours"

And whether your boat is big or small, anyone who has been caught out in bad weather will know how this feels only too well.

May God bless all mariners.
 
The Ship, The Song, A Hurricane, a Question of Legacys

This is my first post. It is, I hope, appropriate. -- Luigi


Atlantic, Cape Hatteras, Hurricane, the waves and the song.
First. The song immediately became one of my favorites, because it so resonated with my experience in mid 1960's,
As I headed up the U. S. S. Warrington's fore-aft passage which seemed to have more water in it than was outside, I was aware Hatteras had taken an earlier Warrington in WW-2, while the steak ship she was escorting survived. I was in my first hurricane.
What they saw from the bridge on the Edmond Fitzgerald I can imagine from what I saw from the bridge of my little WW-2 tin-can "destroyer" not many miles from the SS Michalangeo Who's eight-inch thick wave shield below the bridge took a wave that put a hole in it the width of the Warrington's Beam and height.
What I saw and felt first as I dogged the bridge hatch was the bridge windows full of sea green as I felt the ship bottom and the bow fight its way up. The windows cleared, with the two mounts and the bow suddenly visible against shaggy grey cloud bottoms. Up we rode, next came that feeling I only got later on roller coasters cresting the top and beginning the plunge. Only this was slower, more labored and with the groaning of metal and the sight of endless wave tops torn white by the battering wind I could feel in my feet and the dog I held on to to keep from being thrown into the Captain's back. Then down, as the next wave eclipsed the rest and became a wall before us. Down, down, bow gone in the gray green wall. First mount gone, second mount gone, then the shake, as the windows took the advancing wall. At that moment the sea had us. No one said it, ever, but our screws and rudder were hanging behind us in the air. We felt the bottoming, felt the bow fighting up, blind. I saw the helmsman suddenly pushing the wheel, eyes glued on the compass, as the wave tried to push us sidewise and in engulfing the rudder pushed back hard on the wheel.

The Edmond Fitzgerald was longer, heaver and spanned those gigantic waves of Gitchi Gummi trying to push through them like a train at full steam, trying to cut through three mountains in a row. Only the mountains she faced were both as heavy and liquid. One liquid avalanche over the top of the bridge after another.
When I read "Captain McSorley said he did not like the action of a ship he described as a "wiggling thing" that scared him. The Fitzgerald's bow hooked to one side or the other in heavy seas without recovering and made a groaning sound not heard on other ships" quoted from Wolff, Julius F.; Holden, Thom (1990). Julius F. Wolff Jr.'s Lake Superior Shipwrecks (2nd expanded ed.) in Wikipedia, it brought back that day on the Warrington. Being smaller, every time we plunged in to that oncoming wave we all felt the deck shifting left and right. I am sure those on the bridge well forward of ours on the bow did not want to think of what was happening behind them. The depth of the troughs and the seven hundred feet of hull behind, compared to my ship's two hundred, would have left me aware that the keel could be feeling the cold air of the trough just past below it as all that weight of water just clearing their bridge's windows was now avalanching onto the long flat deck between them and the engine house aft. These men felt far worse than I felt. The sound of ripping mettle thundering, vibrating from behind and through their feet. The thing they saw next I cannot say, but only guess, the grey torn clouds, seeing the bow go skyward and the feeling of the deck sliding backwards from beneath them as the clouds disappeared in foam.
I did not appreciate until now how close death's breath was on me until now, reading your account and reading others. If the wave had won. If we had slewed sideways and the Warrington, as I think the expression is "became locked in irons," I could be with her and that other Warrington, at the bottom, off the cape. I doubt if there would have been a song for us just as there are few songs for the other 240 ships that the Whitefish Point has claimed.
They were my mates we both saw the lash of storms, only I came back to port. The changes in laws and how lives are valued on the Great Lake and elsewhere are their legacy. With it Gordon Lightfoot's song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" resonates within.

But is the legacy slipping away? Almost on the hour, the day, off Italy, we are seeing them built massively bigger again. And failing massively, again. Titanic was ten times bigger than any ship before it. Now the Costa Concordia repeats history, in calm, clear weather. The last mistake on the bridge of the Titanic was acting as if she would respond as if she were ten times smaller. Looking at the scar on the Costa Concordia, I see signs of the when the grounding started along the port side, instead of ordering a port rudder, which would have moved the aft of the ship away from the shoal, a turn to starboard was ordered, pushing the port side so far into the shoal, that a bolder was pulled out when she capsized. It is always the last decision that starts the dominoes of design errors, training errors, among so many others, dropping one at a time.
Titanic, Edmond Fitzgerald, Costa Concordia, ...?
 
Hi Luigi Writer,
Thanks for that really scary post!Well written and conveys the terrible power of nature so well.
Perhaps you will write here again and it will be greatly appreciated!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top