November 10, 1975

[Guns N Rotors]

I remember November 10, 1975.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iquCHSkmUek

[HITMAN 149]

HOOOOOOOOO-RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

[Rocky]

HOOOOOOOOO-RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Happy Birthday Brother. 

[Spartan]

I remember it as the same day as my mom's birthday.

I remember driving with my parents out to lake michigan that evening in 75 and seeing how bad that lake was stirred up. It was pretty bad and I have out there in 8-10 ft waves before, nothing as bad as those conditions.

My uncle knew the captain since he worked the tugs out of Chicago and said it he couldn't save it, there was nothing that could have been done.

[Guns N Rotors]

HOOOOOOOOO-RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Happy Birthday Brother. 

Unna, fellas, the event I posted and what you think I posted are separated
by 200 years.

Anyhoo, happy birthday Devil Dogs!
Carry on!

[daytonalo]

God rest their souls !!!! And the love ones they left behind !!!

Larry

[SnoPro440]

ooooohhhh rhhhhaaaahhh   Devil Dogs!!!

[sixty8charger]

1775!  OOH RAH!  5 yrs in and 15 to go!

[bull]

HOOOOOOOOO-RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Happy Birthday Brother. 

Unna, fellas, the event I posted and what you think I posted are separated
by 200 years.

Anyhoo, happy birthday Devil Dogs!
Carry on!

So you posted a picture of the Edmund Fitzgerald, linked a song to Gordon Lightfoot singing "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" and we're supposed to think of the Continental Marines?

[Mike DC]

 
The Edmund Fitzgerald incident carries weight in my family. 


My grandfather was president of the shipping company that owned/operated the 'Fitz when this happened.  I'm too young to know much of the details about what all went on that night, but the whole thing has rarely been talked about in my family since.


There have been a few investigations over the years but they don't really know what happened even today.  The Fitz's captain was on the radio saying he was taking on water but he wasn't in serious trouble, and then 20 minutes later the Fitz literally just blips off everyone's radar without a sound.  They later found the ship broken completely in half on the bottom.   

[TruckDriver]

I've seen a tv show where they used computer animation as to what they think happened. They think the boat got straddled on each end by two waves, and broke in the middle with nuthing supporting it there. Or it was ridding a wave, and it came down nose first straight to the bottom of the lake. They said either way, the crew would of never had time to react.

[TUFCAT]

Thanks for posting this story.  I did some google research and was amazed how much is known about the wreck. I remembered this as a kid (I was eight)    .

[Mike DC]

It was probably a combination of things. 

The unfastened deck plate theory was the main one for years, but my grandfather & father never really bought it.  Too small of a threat for too large of a ship.  And it all happened way too fast.  (My dad said the idea sounded a lot better on paper than it did when you're actually standing on the deck of the ship looking at the cargo lids.)

Pops & GF thought it more likely that the Fitz ran aground & tore the hull during the storm.  (The underside of the hull gets crunched, the ship is taking on water because of it, and then finally it hits a pair of huge waves to straddle.  Could break the hull very abruptly.)  The theory is that the violent storm may have kept the crew from realizing that the ship had run aground. 

It also bears remembering that those ships have some designed-in flex already.  That may have made the crew much slower getting concerned if they saw evidence of the ship flexing too much in the minutes before it broke.     

   

[bull]

According to other experts though they say it's nearly impossible for the ship to have broken in half on the surface because the two halves were found so close together at the bottom of the lake. Typically when they find a ship that broke apart on the surface the two halves are hundreds of yards and even miles away from each other. I think the two halves were less than 200 feet apart when found.

[Mike DC]

That's true, but it's more true in the open ocean than on the Lakes. 

In the case of the Fitz, we're talking about a 700-foot ship going to the bottom of a lake that's probably only 400-600 feet deep in that area.   It doesn't have the kind of long gradual voyage to the bottom that oceangoing ships do.   

The two halves of the Titanic drifted through way over a mile of downtravel, and they still ended up practically within sight of each other on the bottom.  I don't think the pieces being close together on the bottom rules out a surface break for the Fitz.   

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SOMETHING took the Fitz down pretty damn fast.  The crew was very competent and it was probably the most modern ship of its kind on the lakes at the time.  There were plenty of potential radio listeners within just a few dozen miles in several different directions.  20 minutes before it disappeared off the radar, the captain was on the radio and he didn't indicate any serious trouble. 

   

[Charger_Fan]

The most I've known of the wreck was from the Gordon Lightfoot song. I guess shipwrecks weren't anything I put much interest in. I remember being surprised when I learned that it happened in 1975, I had thought it had happened in the 30's sometime.

Anyway, that's an interesting video. The water blowing over the side sure looks cold!

[TUFCAT]

Mike, how could it run aground in a lake SO big, and SO deep as Superior?

[Mike DC]

 
In the process of trying to shield themselves from the worst of the storm that night, the ship passed pretty close to Caribou Island.  There are shoals in that area.  An accidental grounding there would make sense.


There were also some serious waves out there that night.  (Legend holds that some of the waves were actually causing radar blips.)  That may have been the straw that broke the camel's back for the Fitz once it was taking on water.  Another ore boat was nearby and it got hit pretty badly around the same time the Fitz sank.

[TruckDriver]

Another ore boat was nearby and it got hit pretty badly around the same time the Fitz sank.

Really, I don't think I heard that before.

[Lowprofile]

It was those damn Nazi's I tell ya! 

[derailed]

Thanks for posting this. Sometimes we get held at the drawbridge in Delson Que. for those ore ships to pass under and I think of the Fitz. Its amazing to think of one going down when you look at the size of them. Theres an interesting program on the history channel on this event.

[bull]

That's true, but it's more true in the open ocean than on the Lakes. 

In the case of the Fitz, we're talking about a 700-foot ship going to the bottom of a lake that's probably only 400-600 feet deep in that area.   It doesn't have the kind of long gradual voyage to the bottom that oceangoing ships do.   

The two halves of the Titanic drifted through way over a mile of downtravel, and they still ended up practically within sight of each other on the bottom.  I don't think the pieces being close together on the bottom rules out a surface break for the Fitz.   
   

That's a good point. The Fitz was actually 729-feet so the depth in which it sank sank in shallower than the ship was long. I think I read that the depth was 530-feet at the crash sight. It's odd to think that there would be about 200 feet of the ship sticking up out of the water if the stern were against the bottom of the lake.

[694spdRT]

Another ore boat was nearby and it got hit pretty badly around the same time the Fitz sank.

Really, I don't think I heard that before.

My wife and I visited Whitefish Point in Michigan's Upper Peninsula a couple years ago where the Shipwreck Museum is. They have the ship's bell that was rose back in the 90's. The Arthur Anderson was following behind and was actually a little bigger than the Edmund Fitzgerald. I think it was hit by two 30' waves right before the Fitz disappeared. After they finally reached safety the captain went back out in the storm to search for the missing ship. The Arthur Anderson has since been renamed but I believe it is still in use today. One of my friend's saw it docked up on Lake Superior about 5 years ago.

[Mike DC]

Yeah, the Anderson is still in service.

The Fitz would undoubtedly still be in service today too if it hadn't sank.  Freshwater lake boats don't get serviced & retired at the same rates that their ocean-going equivalents do.  Much less corrosion and generally less weather damage over time.   

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The Fitz was just in the wrong place at the wrong time that night. 

In 1975 nobody was really even mentally conditioned to think that a 700-foot taconite ore hauler could potentially be sunk at all anymore, let alone doing it fast enough to rate as a tragic sinking.  The general feeling in the air was that these ships were just too big & modern to really be susceptible to anything more than hull damage & spills.  Especially ships that were "only" sailing the great lakes, and not even the open ocean.



Once again I'm too young for the details and they rarely ever talked about it later, but I know that my grandfather & relatives were just in shock at the whole thing. 

I know GF was up long into that night personally trying to raise the 29 families on the phone.  He wanted them to at least find out right away as soon as Oglebay-Norton knew before they saw it on the news or something the next day.  I think he also personally attended all the funerals later.  He didn't really know what else to do for them; it was just a freak accident and there weren't any human-error factors to blame. 


   

[TUFCAT]

Intersting about the Arthur Anderson. I thought The EF was the most modern and largest of the Great Lakes - - at the time.  I wonder what has changed in the past 30+ years regarding navigating the November gails. I guess they still do, considering the need to move product before winter idles most of the ships.  Gottta keep that ore moving I guess ?