Bob Barney – Very sad story, like the Titanic haunts me every time I think of it…. The Plain Truth Today Remembers….
On the night of November 10, 1975, the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald and her crew of 29 men sailed into a terrifying winter storm – and vanished. There were no witnesses, no survivors and over 30 years later, still no answers. Her sinking remains one of the world’s greatest maritime mysteries.
What Sank the Edmund Fitzgerald? Three Theories
All 29 aboard were killed in the 1975 tragedy.
Christopher Klein
On the brilliant fall afternoon of November 9, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald glided out of Superior, Wisconsin, loaded with 26,000 tons of taconite pellets bound for Detroit. The vast expanse of Lake Superior—larger than Ireland—lay placid before the massive 729-foot ore freighter.
Captain Ernest McSorley, a seasoned mariner with 45 years sailing the Great Lakes, knew better than to trust the lake’s deceptive calm. Its glassy surface masked a mercurial nature that could quickly turn deadly.
The “Mighty Fitz,” once the largest ship on the lakes, was making its last run of the season. Retirement awaited the 63-year-old McSorley and five others at journey’s end. The captain boasted a sterling reputation for transporting his cargo safely and quickly, come hell or high water. Just 24 hours later, the Edmund Fitzgerald encountered both.
Amid a monstrous storm, the Edmund Fitzgerald vanished without a trace. There was no distress call, no survivors. Lake Superior swallowed the freighter and all 29 men aboard. Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” immortalized the tragedy, but the mystery of what caused the modern maritime calamity endures.
Storm of the Century’ Strikes the Great Lakes
Named for the president of the insurance company that commissioned it, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest carrier on the Great Lakes when launched in 1958. A workhorse of the inland seas, the freighter hauled taconite pellets mined in Minnesota to Midwestern steel towns. By 1975, it had logged over a million miles, equivalent to 44 trips around the world.
At its helm stood McSorley, who began his nautical career at age 18 and became the youngest captain on the Great Lakes less than two decades later. McSorley weathered his share of storms during his career, but nothing like the tempest that erupted on the afternoon of November 10, 1975, when a fast-moving arctic front and a warm, wet storm system barreling from the southwest collided over Lake Superior.
McSorley knew the gale warning posted for his final voyage was no trivial matter. Over the previous century, the Great Lakes averaged roughly one shipwreck a week. As many as 25,000 ships rested on the lakes’ murky bottoms, nearly half of them lost in November, when the weather was at its most merciless. “You could be fishing in the morning and fighting for your life by lunch,” says John U. Bacon, author of The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The normally aggressive McSorley proceeded cautiously and followed a more northerly course, where the Canadian highlands dampened the wind. As the ship crossed a treacherous stretch toward the sheltered waters of Michigan’s Whitefish Bay, the storm grew ferocious. The Edmund Fitzgerald, Bacon writes, “found itself at the worst possible place, at the worst possible time.”
Tempest Dooms the ‘Edmund Fitzgerald’
Hurricane-force gusts upwards of 100 miles per hour churned 25-foot waves that battered the ore carrier’s broadside for hours. McSorley struggled to see in near-whiteout conditions as the ship sustained significant damage. “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,” the captain reported over radio. Requiring navigation assistance from the freighter Arthur M. Anderson following behind, the Edmund Fitzgerald slowed down, unwittingly putting itself in the storm’s epicenter.
When the Anderson’s mate radioed the wounded ship around 7 p.m., McSorley replied, “We are holding our own.” “Okay, fine. I’ll be talking to you later,” answered the mate.
He would not.