The Edmund Fitzgerald......

[Sport]

30 years ago today November 11, 1975. Those 29 souls lost their lives. You are not forgotten !

Sport !

[MOP]

One of the most famous GL wrecks, its position was un known for many years. A while back I saw a special on it and the now know location, curious if anyone will try to retrieve the ore that is aboard. It was explained that due to wave type and winds the GL's whip up some very bad winter storms making them as treacherous then the Atlantic.

Phil

[roadtrip se]

this summer. It is a very sobering experience. They do have the ships bell on display, but this was brought up with the permission of the surviving families. The families visit the museum and the bell, seeing as they have no other place to go to remember their spouses and fathers.

MOP, would you want somebody digging around your grave site looking for iron ore?

This is a picture of Whitefish Bay above the Soo, where all Lake Superior traffic has to funnel through.

I've also attached a picture of Lake Superior near Au Sable Point on a good day. This lake can really rock on a bad day.

[MOP]

MOP, would you want somebody digging around your grave site looking for iron ore?

Justifiably Spanked!

[Islander]

The Edmund Fitzgerald lies in 535 ft of water. Cargo was not iron ore it was taconite pellets. Here's some info I found:

WHITEFISH POINT The last message heard from the Edmund Fitzgerald was received by the ship, the Arthur Anderson, at 7:10 p.m. on November 10, 1975. "We are holding our own," was how Captain Ernest McSorley described the ship's progress through the stormy night. Shortly afterwards, the Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared with all 29 hands aboard.

On July 4, 1995, at the request of family members, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society together with the Canadian Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard and the National Geographic Society went to see what secrets the Edmund Fitzgerald would reveal when it raised its bell to honor the dead. The bell is displayed at the Shipwreck Museum, at Whitefish Point (near Paradise) to honor not just the 29 dead from the Fitzgerald, but the 30,000 individuals who have lost their lives on shipwrecks on the Great Lakes since 1679. Lake Superior—the lake that doesn't give up its dead

"The farther you go down, the darker it gets," described Jene Quirin, a trustee with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. "(At) about 300 feet, it gets dark enough (that) you really can't see. If you set there for a while, you could start to make some things out, you could see some light, but 535 feet is dark."

Because of the depth of the wreck, most of the diving was done with a ROV (Remote Operated Vehicle) or in a submersible. "You got lights on the submarine, and you are kind of straining, just looking to see, because you know the wreck is out there and you know we are getting close and you know if you bang into it you are going to die," continued Quirin. "All of a sudden, there it is. It is just this great big, huge thing and it is almost difficult to put it into perspective when you first see it, because you don't have anything to relate it to. You just know how big it is."

When the Fitzgerald sank, it was 17 years old, 729 feet long and was carrying 26,116 tons of taconite pellets (marbles). "One of the things that makes the Fitzgerald wreck so unique is that it was only 17 years old when it sank. It was all welded, it wasn't a riveted ship," marveled Quirin. "It was a very large ship, and today, we look at the 1000 footers and we think that there is no way that a 1000 footer would ever sink, well, it could happen," said Quirin. "I can tell you, water always wins and Mother Nature wins. If it wants to take a ship down, its going to take a ship down."

"The new ships today have a lot of devices on them," said Quirin. "They have depth finders, there are stress gauges all over on the ship, and the captain knows what is going on with the structure itself all the time. In fact, in the Fitzgerald and ships at that time, you had no idea that there was water in the holds, until the water got above cargo. There is no way to know why the ship sank," he went on to say, "except we know that it filled up with water. No one will ever know for sure why it filled up with water, but we have some theories."
Theories abound

The theories about why the Fitzgerald sank are as numerous as shipwrecks that dot the Great Lakes. The majority of the theories are based on the conversations between Captain McSorley and Captain Jessie B. Cooper of the Anderson. The Anderson trailed the Fitzgerald by 10 miles for most of the day. The Shipwreck Society has their own theory. "The Fitzgerald said he had lost both his radar," said Quirin. "When we finally dove on the Fitzgerald and looked at it, both antennas were gone. Wave action probably went right over the top of the pilothouse and ripped them off with the 90-mph winds. Ships back then did not have GPS," explained Quirin. "Back when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, freighters did not even have depth finders, they all traveled by charts, and many of those charts were over 100 years old, and not very accurate. If you got lost, like the Fitzgerald might of, and lost its radar and not know exactly where he was, it was very important to know how deep the water was. We think that was a big cause in the Fitzgerald sinking," explained Quirin.

The Society believes that the ship came very close to Caribou Island and Caribou Shoals which is 37 feet underwater. The draft of the Fitzgerald was 27 feet. "We know that captains have told us on the Great Lakes that they knew they were in 500 feet of water and felt like they hit the bottom because of wave action," said Quirin. "If you reverse that, it is very possible that McSorley, hoping and knowing that he may have been close to Caribou Island, actually hit bottom and convinced himself it was wave action. We think that is what happened," said Quirin. "We think that they actually did hit bottom at Caribou Shoals and he broke open the side of the hull. The ship was loaded. We think he hit bottom mainly because he told (Cooper) that he had a list. The only way he would have a list is if the ballast tank on one side was full of water, and he couldn't get it pumped out. He said his pumps were running and he wasn't making much headway. We also know that he had a vent broken," said Quirin.

"We also know that he had a (5/8 cable) fence rail out. That fence rail, in order for it to break, something massive would have had to hit it or the ship could have hit the bottom, and it would have humped the back up, and broke the cable. We think that is probably what happened. As he sailed along, he got lower and lower in the water," he continued. "It got to the point he was zero buoyant. Obviously that means you're floating and you're not floating, you're just kind of hanging there. This big wave came up behind the Anderson, and the Anderson saw that and lived through it," described Quirin. "About the time that wave got to the Fitzgerald, we think that it picked up the stern of the Fitzgerald and it (the ship) took a nose-dive to the bottom. It happened that fast. There were five radios on that ship, three of those were battery operated. Nobody ever picked up a radio and said 'mayday'. They didn't have time to. One second they were in the pilothouse nice and dry, the next second they all underwater. So the ship starts on its way down, heads for the bottom," Quirin described. "When it hits bottom, it digs a trench in the bottom 250 feet long."

Quirin went on to outline the end of the disaster, "when it finally hit bedrock and wanted to stop, and some engineers have told us, that it could have gotten up 30 mph by the time it hit bottom and stopped. Those marbles want to go in every direction. It blew the hatch covers off. Taconite flies up into the water. The ship is disintegrating, the center of it is breaking up, the propeller is still turning. And as the propeller turns, the stern slowly turns over and falls upside down on the bottom, and the bow falls into this trench that it dug 250 feet deep." Other theories do exist, according to Quirin. "One is that there would be a huge pile of tacenate somewhere in one pile on the bottom. There isn¹t no pile of taconite down there, it¹s just spread all over the place. Besides that when you get down there and you measure the two halves of the ship, there is 200 feet of it missing. The center of the ship is gone. It disintegrated."

The legend lives on at the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Bay. The museum is open May 1 to October 31. For more information and for Fitzgerald memorabilia, visit the museum's website.

[Magicallbill]

In my humble opinion, the Fitz shouldn't have been lost.

They were in communication with the Anderson,and were getting weather reports. Even though they might not have realized the potential of the oncoming storm, they could've easily turned North out of the shipping lanes,and went to the North Shore..Say, around Thunder Bay,Isle Royale,or anywhere the wind would've been blowing offshore.
When a low pressure system slams the lakes,they ususally(as was the case with this one)track NE,and drag a cold front across the area. The wind blows SE,backs West and then NW as the system goes thru.
They couldn't have been in a worse spot on the whole lake than right off Whitefish Point when the winds went NW..No wonder there were 25-plus seas there. They had the whole fetch of the lake to build.
I am in no way equating myself with an experienced Great Lakes Captain,but I have left Lake Michigan early many times when I see a Cold Front coming. The NW winds are not far behind in most cases.
The reason the Lakes are so treacherous is the fresh water. It is less dense than salt water, causing the seas to strike faster,and be closer together. The seas make up quickly and calm down as fast.
There are an incredible amount of wreaks on the bottoms of the Lakes. The trend thankfully seems to have stopped with the advent of more modern weather forecasting, GPS,and,presumably,better-built vessels.

[Mercrewser]

Just some gee whiz information. Awhile back I learned that a Nova Marine 24 Sprint was out (for some reason) and sank in the same storm.

[joseph m. hahnl]

I saw the documentary on tv when they found her "him" it was pretty creepy. usually when you see a ship wreck it's in the salt and it gets growth and rust all over it.The Edmund Fitz> was all clean and nicley painted and her "his" name was completely legible. the special went over all the diffrent ways she could have sank in computer recreation. The one thing that they pointed out and made an impression on my mind. Was, the ship was roughly twice as long as it was deep.

It was a tragedy!!!. But not to dilute the tail any.
The worst Maritime disaster was a Russian " I think" ferry that the front
opening for the cars popped open in a high sea and it sunk in a matter of minutes killing all but a handful.

joe

[olredalert]

-------I think of the Fitzgerald every time the Anderson goes by my house. There are may retired crew off different boats all around this area and they all have different opinions off where the problem really was that night. Im not sure we will ever know the full tragic story..........Bill S

[Rootsy]

Lake Superior can be one awnry bitch... November 1995, my first trip home from MTU for Thanksgiving.. i was on M28 at Au Train... there is a large sandy beach and lake superior on one side.. few hundred yards from the road... on the other side fo the road is Au Train lake and river... there was a canadian storm coming across the lake.. and easily 20 - 30 ft waves... they were crashing up the beach and the surf was coming OVER the road and OVER my little ranger... the road was an ice skating rink... i was driving in the sand off the edge of the road...

If you want to know about the Fitz... you can get a real heaping at boatnerds.com ... there are a few theories.. but only god and the crew really know what happened...

should you ever find yourself in the UP... the museum at whitefish point and the Valley Camp in Sault St. Marie are must visits... you can see the life boats from the Fitz and the bouys placed over the wreck on the valley camp which is an old ore carrier converted into a museum... the museum at whitefish point is a very somber and sobering place...

more than once i witnessed ore carriers taking refuge from nasty storms in the Portage river at Houghton / Hancock in the Keweenaw while i was at Tech...

http://www.pasty.com/discuss/messages/1779/2326.html

http://pasty.com/pcam/albuq51