Episode 89 - The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

0:01 Hi everybody, I am Vincent and you're listening to The Lighthouse Lowdown. Welcome to the show, episode 89. As you might have heard, Emily was not in the introduction. Today is a solo episode from me. So, Emily's going through quite a bit right now. We are planning the wedding, living with family. Thinking about a honeymoon. We're looking at financials. Thinking about buying a house. Today is the day of her bridal shower. So congratulations to Emily. And there's a lot going on. So I thought I might give her a break and record a solo episode today. I say all this because our listeners, many of you have reached out in different capacities and shown an interest and shown support for us. And I want you to know that we appreciate that, both Emily and I. So today you're going to hear me talking. Today you're going to hear me sipping coffee. Cue now.

1:10 I've got some double shot of espresso with some honey in it. You're going to hear me swatting away flies. You're going to hear me sipping water, whatever happens. I've got no coverage, so it's you and me. Welcome to episode 89, and we'll just dive in. So no history buoy today because the episode itself is not specifically a lighthouse. There is a lighthouse involved in this story. A couple, if you were to read a little deeper, but today we're talking about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. So I'm going to read this first. I'm going to read a couple of things. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a song written, composed and performed by Canadian singer songwriter, Gordon Lightfoot. to commemorate the sinking of the bulk carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior on November 10th, 1975. Lightfoot drew his inspiration from Newsweek's article on the event, The Cruelest Month, which it published on November 24th of 1975. Lightfoot considers the song to be his finest work. So we're going to talk a little bit more about Gordon Lightfoot.

2:24 Also, I wouldn't know about the sinking of this ship if it were not for this song. And I think that's kind of what drew me to this content. We have some silliness in our family. So motorcycle rides and hiking and other grand adventures, I've been able to go on with my dad and my brother and the rest of my family, depending on what the adventure is. There's been times where we joked around and we sang sea shanties and just kind of things that we could remember, you know, shave his belly with a rusty razor. Lots of, you know, what would you do? I don't even remember that. It was on The Office. What was that? Hold on. Let's see. Shave his belly with a rusty razor.

3:23 Oh, the song Drunken Sailor by the Irish Rovers, 1994. Way hanging up she rises, way hanging up she rises, way hanging up she rises early in the morning. You may remember that from the show The Office. where Dwight thinks he's steering the ship while they're out on a river or a lake cruise for the evening. It's a very good episode. It's a very funny show. So the point is, sea shanties have been in my family, ironically, and one of the things that comes up on my Spotify time to time is the song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. So I've listened to it a couple times lately, and Gordon Lightfoot has some other good music. The song, here's another entry I'm reading, originally came on Lightfoot's 1976 album, Summertime Dream. The single version hit number one in Canada, where Lightfoot is from, on November 20th, 1976, barely a year after the disaster. So that's interesting to me. It was in the media, the social media, if you will, of the 70s right away. In the United States, the song reached number one in Cashbox and number two for two weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. Behind Rod Stewart's Tonight is the Night, making it Lightfoot's second most successful single behind the song Sundown. So I have that

4:57 queued up right now on my Spotify. I'm going to do something we've never done before. Any episode is demonetized if we play... songs, things like that. And I don't care because we don't make, uh, we are not looking for money on this, on this podcast and on this episode. So I'm going to play the song for you now, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald through this audio, and then we'll be back to discuss. The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down at the big lake they call Gitche Gumee. The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy. With a load of iron ore, 26 ,000 tons more than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty. That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early.

6:32 The ship was the pride of the American side coming back from some bill in Wisconsin. As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most with a crew and good captain well seasoned. concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms when they left fully loaded for Cleveland. Then later that night when the ship's bell rang, could it be the north wind they'd been feeling? The Witch of November comes stealing So that was The Wreck

12:01 of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot. Next, we'll be listening to Candy Shop by 50 Cent. Just kidding. Ha ha. I make myself laugh. So that's quite a piece of art. It's a long song, but I had to play the whole thing. And what I've actually done, I've gone and printed out the lyrics. I was going to read through them. Um, but I think I'm going to skip it because the song itself is over six minutes and you just heard it. So I, I love that song. Um, I've listened to it a couple of times. One of the things that jumps out to me is as I learned this story, um, for the most part, uh, this is a pretty accurate retelling of the story. And of course, Gordon Lightfoot saw that article we discussed and that's what made all this happen. So some of the same source material. One of the verses says, does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours? There's a lot in there. So what I'm going to do today, we're going to talk some more about this sinking outside of just the song by Lightfoot. The real story of the Edmund Fitzgerald is very interesting.

13:31 Of course, there are many ships that have sunk on the Great Lakes throughout recorded history. Many, many ships. The reason that the Edmund Fitzgerald is so well known is because of that song and because of the story itself. So we're going to talk about the story. So the Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during the storm, a storm. on November 10th of 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. When it was launched in 1958, it was the largest ship in North America's Great Lakes and remains the largest ship to have ever sunk there. Eventually, after sinking, it was located, and we're going to talk about how that went, but the U .S. Navy used aircraft with the ability to detect magnetic anomalies in a large mass of metal. on the base of the lake was soon found. So for 17 years, the Fitzgerald carried iron ore from mines, several locations, but mostly from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to ironworks in Detroit, Michigan, Toledo, Ohio, and other Great Lakes ports. Really, it was a workhorse.

14:49 It was always running, except for in the wintertime when the lakes freeze over. So carrying a full load of cargo of iron ore pellets, Captain McSorley, Ernest M. McSorley, in command, she embarked on her final voyage from Superior, Wisconsin, near Duluth, on the afternoon of November 9th, 1975. En route to a steel mill near Detroit, the Edmund Fitzgerald joined a second freighter, the SS Arthur M. Anderson. By the next day, the two ships were caught in a severe storm. together on Lake Superior with near hurricane force winds and waves up to 30 feet high. Shortly after 7 .10 p .m., Edmund Fitzgerald suddenly sank in Canadian waters at a depth of 530 feet. The distance closest was about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, and under normal operation, top speed, the Edmund Fitzgerald could have covered that distance in just over one hour. So it was darn close to safety.

15:57 So the Edmund Fitzgerald previously reported being in significant difficulty to a nearby vessel. Quote, I have a bad list, lost both radars, and I'm taking on heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I've ever been in. However, no distress signals were sent before she sank. Captain McSorley's last message at 7 .10 p .m. was to the Arthur M. Anderson. Quote, we are holding our own. Her crew of 29 perished and no bodies were recovered. The exact cause of the sinking remains unknown, which is part of the interest of the story. Though many books, studies, and expeditions have been in examination. Edmund Fitzgerald may have been swamped. It suffered.

16:46 Structural failure or potentially topside damage, or maybe it grounded on a shoal, or maybe it suffered from a combination of these, or perhaps something else. In my reading, there are many films, documentaries, books, articles written throughout the history from 1975 and since then, different research that's been done, different data that's been collected, and different suppositions of what's gone on in the sinking of the ship. The disaster is one of the best known in history of the Great Lakes shipping, in part because of Gordon Lightfoot's song. Lightfoot wrote the hit song after reading an article, The Cruelest Month, as we mentioned. The sinking led to the changes in Great Lakes shipping regulations and practices that included mandatory survival suits, depth finders, positioning systems, increased freeboard, and more frequent inspection of the vessels. So one thing I'll say here, I think it's a good time to fit it in. I may have noted this later in my notes. I have quite a few notes today, and I'll be doing some reading. But Lightfoot, I think he noticed that the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is spelled E -D -M -U -N -D, was misspelled Edmund in the article, The Cruelest Month. So I think... And maybe that's lore. There's a little bit of lore that surrounds the sinking of this

18:17 ship. But I think that's why he decided to write the song. He was influenced, or at least the source I read said that Lightfoot was influenced to write the song because, of course, the entire crew were lost. And in memoriam, it was unfortunate that the name of the ship was even misspelled. So the next thing I'd like to talk about is some history. of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which was on the seas, the Great Lakes, like I mentioned, 17 years before it did sink. So design and construction. The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, invested in the construction of the Edmund Fitzgerald. In 1957, they contracted a company called the Great Lakes Engineering Works, G -L -E -W, of Michigan to design and construct the ship. And what they wanted to do is build the largest ship that they could that could still be applicable to pass through the requirements of the St. Lawrence Seaway. So it was, quote, within a foot of the maximum length allowed for passage through the soon -to -be -completed St. Lawrence Seaway. The ship's value at the time was $7 million United States dollars, which is equivalent to about $60 million today, 2025. Edmund Fitzgerald was on the first, the ship was the first Laker built to the maximum

19:47 size, which we talked about, which is 730 feet long, 75 feet wide, and had a 25 -foot draft. The vertical height of the hull was 39 feet. Hull depth, which is the height inside of the cargo hold, was 33 feet and 4 inches. The ship had a dead weight capacity of 26 ,000 long tons and a 729 foot long hull. It was the longest ship in the Great Lakes, earning her the title the Queen of the Lakes. And that title was held until 1959 when a longer ship was launched, the SS Murray Bay. So the Fitzgerald had three cargo holds. And there were 21 watertight or maybe potentially not watertight cargo hatches. Each of those hatches, 11 foot by 48 feet, excuse me. And they were made of 5 16th inch thick steel.

20:49 So quite a robust build from what I know. I'm not, I don't know a lot about ships, but this sounds like, it sounds like a diversified ship that was built for this purpose. So originally it was coal fired, the boilers, that of course made steam to propel the vessel, were converted to burn oil in the winter layup of 1971 and 72. By the standards of typical ore freighters, the interior of the Fitzgerald was actually really luxurious. Her J .L. Hudson Company design furnishings included deep pile carpeting, tiled bathrooms, drapes over portholes, and leather swivel chairs in the guest lounge. There are two guest staterooms for passengers. Air conditioning extended to the cruise quarters also, which featured more amenities than usual. A large galley and a fully stocked pantry supplied meals for two dining rooms. Edmund Fitzgerald's pilot house was outfitted with state -of -the -art nautical equipment and a beautiful map room. The naming of the Edmund Fitzgerald is kind of interesting. So the company who paid to build it, the Northwestern Mutual, wanted to name the ship after its president and chairman of the board. His name, Edmund Fitzgerald.

22:14 Fitzgerald's grandfather and great uncles had been lake captains, and his father owned the Milwaukee Dry Dock Company, which built and repaired ships. So they had some seawater and some lake water in their blood. Fitzgerald had attempted to dissuade the naming of the ship after himself, as you must dissuade. He proposed the names of the Sentinel, Seaway, Milwaukee, and Northwestern. The board was resolute, and the Edmund abstained from voting, but the other 36 board members voted unanimously to name the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

22:55 More than 15 ,000 people attended the Edmund Fitzgerald's christening and launch ceremony on June 7th of 1958. The event was plagued by misfortunes. When Edmund Fitzgerald's wife tried to christen the ship by smashing a champagne bottle over the bow, which many of us have seen in film and perhaps in real life, it took her three attempts to break it, which of course is bad luck. Another gentleman... Jennings B. Frazier of Toledo suffered a heart attack and died at the event. The delay of 36 minutes followed while the shipyard crew struggled to release the keel blocks. Not so smooth, and upon sideways launch, the ship created a large wave, dousing the spectators, and then crashed into a pier before righting itself. The witnesses later said they swore the ship was, quote, trying to climb right out of the water. The career of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

24:01 So I've taken some highlights here out of some content, so I'm just going to say some things that I thought were most interesting. So the Fitzgerald was a record -setting warhorse, often beating her own milestones. for speed and whatnot and hauling. So she set the seasonal haul record six different times. She earned nicknames including The Fits, The Pride of the American Side, The Mighty Fits, The Toledo Express, The Big Fits, and someone said The Titanic of the Great Lakes, although I'm skeptical on that one until maybe after it had sank. A round trip for the ship between Superior, Wisconsin and Detroit, Michigan usually took her five days and she averaged 47 similar trips per season. She was hauling. The vessel's usual route was between Superior, Wisconsin and Toledo, Ohio, although her port of destination could vary. By November of 1975, Edmund Fitzgerald had logged an estimated 748 trips on the Great Lakes and covered more than a million miles.

25:13 a distance roughly equivalent to 44 trips around this world. Coffee. So up until a few weeks before her loss, passengers had traveled on board as company guests. Hi. Emily's here to say hello. Things are falling apart with the bridal shower and we're making do. Do you need help? No, it's nothing is allowing us to get in. So maybe hosting it here. Okay. Let me know if you need help. Our fans can wait. I could play the song again.

25:55 Buy us six more minutes. Oh, the door to the garage also broke. Okay. Fantastic. I got some things to fix when we're done recording here, folks. Much like the christening of the Edmund Fitzgerald. So far, the bridal shower of today has been plagued with struggle. All right, folks, we're back. So 44 trips around the world, a million miles. Okay, so she traveled with... Give me a moment, folks. Company guests. So guests could ride along, and I don't know how these guests were selected or who they knew. But some of the information that's been collected, it was quite the experience. Stewards treated the guest to the entire VIP routine. The cuisine was reportedly excellent, and the snacks were always available in the lounge. Hell yeah. A small but well -stocked kitchenette provided the drinks. Once each trip, a captain held a candlelight dinner for the guests, complete with mess -jacketed stewards. and special clam digger punch. I don't know what that was, but I bet you it was lit up with rum. Because of her size, appearance, string of records, and quote, DJ captain, Edmund Fitzgerald became a favorite of boat watchers throughout her career.

27:27 Although Captain Peter Pulser was in command of the Edmund Fitzgerald on trips when cargo records were set, he is best remembered for piping music day and night over the ship's intercom system. especially when passing through St. Clair and Detroit rivers. While navigating the Sioux Locks, he would often come out of the pilot house and use a bullhorn to entertain tourists with commentary and details about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Of course, it was quite the ship, so he had quite a bit to say. Some mishaps happened as the ship was in its service life. The vessel once ran aground in 1969 and collided with the SS, oh boy, the SS Hochelaga, H -O -C -H -E -L -A -G -A, sounds German, in 1970. Later the same year, she struck the wall of a lock. An accident repeated again in 1973 and 1974. On January 7th of 1974, she lost her original bow anchor, oopsie, in the Detroit River. None of these mishaps were considered serious or unusual, though. because freshwater ships have a tough life. In fact, freshwater ships are built to last more than half a century. And when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, it's estimated that she had a long career still ahead of her. Let's talk about the sinking.

28:57 So there's lots of things you could look up, including the map of the sinking and where the ship was eventually found. But the final voyage and wreck, The final voyage was almost completed, which is really, really unfortunate. Let's talk about the wreck. So at the time, Captain was Ernest M. McSorley. He was the last captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and he did end up perishing along with 28 other members of the crew on that date, November 10th, 1975. So the Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin at 2 .15 p .m. on the afternoon. Excuse me. On the afternoon of November 9th, under the command of McSorley, she was en route to a steel mill on Zug Island near Detroit, Michigan, with a cargo of 26 ,116 long tons of tankonite ore pellets. Takonite, excuse me. Tako.

30:01 And soon reached the full... Coffee break. soon reached her full speed of 16 .3 miles per hour. At around 5 p .m., the Fitzgerald joined the second freighter we discussed, the Arthur M. Anderson, destined for Gary, Indiana, and they had left out of Two Harbors, Minnesota. The weather forecast was not unusual for November, which is rough, and the National Weather Service predicted that a storm would pass through just south of Lake Superior at 7 a .m. on November 10th. As we know, forecasts are incorrect sometimes, and things do change. The SS Wilfred Sykes, another ship, loaded opposite of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Burlington Northern Dock No. 1 and departed at 4 .15 p .m. about two hours after the Fitzgerald for its own adventure. In contrast to the National Weather Service forecast, Captain Dudley J. Paquette of the Wilfred Sykes predicted that the major storm would directly cross Lake Superior. From the outset, he chose a route that took advantage of the protection offered by the lake's north shore to avoid the worst effects of the storm.

31:15 The crew of the Sykes followed radio conversations between Fitzgerald and Anderson, the two freighters, during the first part of their ship, and overheard their captains deciding to take the regular Lake Carriers Association downbound route, more central to the lake. Oh, my goodness. The National Weather Service altered its forecast at 7 p .m., issuing gale warnings for the whole of Lake Superior. So something, I don't know if it's going to come up again, something I read is that winds almost always come from the north to the south on Lake Superior, and one of the factors that played into the weather of this day was unusual winds, unusual waves, and a non -typical pattern. So Arthur M. Anderson and the Fitzgerald altered their course as the storm began and the forecast changed to go northward to also seek shelter along the Ontario shore. They encountered the winter storm at 1 a .m. on November 10th. Fitzgerald reported winds of 60 miles an hour and waves 10 feet high at that time. Captain Paquette, who we discussed to the Sykes. reported that after 1 a .m. he overheard McSorley say that he had reduced the ship's speed because of the rough conditions. Paquette said he was stunned to hear that from McSorley, who was not known for turning aside or slowing down, and he stated,

32:47 quote, we're going to try to get some lee, excuse me, we're going to try for some lee from Isle Royale. You're walking away from us anyway. I can't stay with you. So... The ship was not doing well, the Fitzgerald, and it was surprising that the captain, known for being a hard -nosed captain, especially in storms, was saying these things. At 2 a .m., the National Weather Service upgraded its warnings from gale to storm, forecasting winds from 40 to 58 miles per hour. Until then, the Fitzgerald had followed the Anderson, which was traveling at a constant 14 .6 miles per hour, but the faster Fitzgerald pulled ahead around 3 a .m. As the storm center passed over the ships, they experienced shifting winds and wind speeds temporarily dropping as the wind direction changed from northeast to south and then northwest. So the eye of the storm is usually it's kind of a weird calm and an unstable region. So that's what they're seeing here also. After 1 .50 p .m., the Anderson logged winds of 58 miles per hour. Wind speeds again picked up rapidly and began to snow at 2 .45pm, reducing visibility.

34:03 Arthur M. Anderson lost sight of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which at the time was about 16 miles ahead. Shortly after 3 .30pm, Captain McSorley radioed the Arthur McAnderson, M. Anderson rather, to report that the Edmund Fitzgerald was taking on water and had lost two vent covers and a fence railing. The vessel had also developed a list. Two of the Edmund Fitzgerald's six bilge pumps ran continuously to discharge shipped water. McSorley said that he would slow his ship down so that Arthur M. Anderson could close the gap between them. In a broadcast shortly afterwards, the United States Coast Guard warned all shipping that the Sioux locks had been closed and they should seek safe anchorage. Shortly after 4 .10 p .m., McSorley called the Anderson again to report a radar failure and asked Anderson to keep track of them. Fitzgerald, effectively blind, slowed to let Anderson come within a 10 -mile range so that she could receive radar guidance from the other ship. For a time, the Anderson directed Fitzgerald towards relative safety of Whitefish Bay. Then, at 4 .39 p .m., McSorley contacted the U .S. Coast Guard Station in Grand Marais, Michigan. They were inquiring whether Whitefish Point Light and Navigation Beacon were operational. The U .S. Coast Guard

35:33 replied that their monitoring equipment indicated that both instruments were inactive. McSorley then hailed any ships in the Whitefish Point area to report the state of navigational aids, receiving an answer from Captain Cedric Woodard of Avifors. between 5 and 5 .30 p .m. that the Whitefish Point light was on, but not the radio beacon. Woodard testified to the Marine Board that he overheard McSorley say, don't allow anybody on deck, as well as something about a vent that Woodard could not have understood. Sometime later, McSorley told Woodard, I have a bad list, I have lost both radars, and I am taking heavy seas over the deck. in one of the worst seas I have ever been in. Now, here's an aside. I found a document from the United States Coast Guard on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and I'm going to read this page to you in regards to Whitefish Point Light. The Aids to Navigation Monitoring Equipment at Salt Ste. Marie. I think I'm saying that wrong. S -A -U -L -T -S -T -E.

36:46 For now, I'll say Salt. At that Coast Guard station is fitted with a paper tape recording merchant. My goodness. Mechanism. But there are no indicator records for 10th of November. There is no requirement that a permanent record of the monitoring equipment be maintained. The records of the commander, 9th Coast Guard District, indicate that Whitefish Point Light. was automated and unmanned on the 11th of June, 1970. This is one of the first aids in the area to be automated. Immediately following the automation, several outages were experienced. However, they were attributed to the newness and complexity of the automation equipment. Between 1st of June, 1973 and 15th of November, 1975, the outages were in 73. six light outages seven radio beacon outages seven foghorn outages in seventy four one zero and three seventy five two light three radio and five foghorn the lighthouse at whitefish point is also fitted with a battery powered auxiliary light with a range of nine and one half miles which would come on automatically if both the normal power and emergency generator power for the main light should fail. The only U .S. navigational aids in the eastern Lake Superior north or west

38:17 of Whitefish Bay, which were inoperative on the afternoon or evening of the 10th of November, were those at Whitefish Point. There were no Canadian aids in eastern Lake Superior which were inoperative. So this paper is hundreds of pages. Literally. And this is the only segment in which I found reference to Whitefish Point or the lighthouses en masse. And I think it's interesting because obviously for this podcast where we talk a lot about lighthouses, these ships were looking, these captains were looking for lighthouses, especially this one in discussion at Whitefish Point, which would mean safety.

39:01 It would mean that they were close to land. At the time of the sinking, I think it's going to come up again. I think they're about 16 miles, 17 miles from that position from Whitefish Point. So they were near safety, but of course did not make it. By the afternoon of November 10th, there were sustained winds of 67 miles per hour recorded and waves increasing as high as 25 feet by 6 p .m. The Anderson was also struck by 86 mph gusts and rogue waves as high as 35 feet. At approximately 7 .10 p .m., when the Anderson notified the Fitzgerald of an upbound ship oncoming and asked how the Fitzgerald was doing, Captain McSorley reported, We are holding our own. She was never heard from again. No distress signal was received, and 10 minutes later, the Anderson lost the ability to either reach the Fitzgerald by radio or detector on the radar screens. The captain of the Anderson, his name was Captain Cooper, first called the Coast Guard at 7 .39 p .m. on Channel 16, the radio distress frequency.

40:26 The Coast Guard reported that they were having difficulty with their communication systems, including antennas blown down by the storm. Cooper then contacted another nearby ship, and they said they could not pick up the Fitzgerald on their radar either. Despite repeated attempts to raise the Coast Guard, Cooper was not successful until 7 .54 p .m., when the officer on duty asked him to keep watch for a 16 -foot boat lost in his area, a different incident. About 8 .25 p .m., Cooper again called the Coast Guard to express his concern about the Fitzgerald, and at 9 .03 p .m., he reported her missing officially. Petty Officer Philip Branch later testified, I considered it serious, but at the time, it was not urgent.

41:10 It sounds like there was quite a few things going on in this storm. Lacking appropriate search and rescue vessels to respond to the Fitzgerald disaster, At approximately 9 p .m., the Coast Guard asked the Anderson to turn around and to look for survivors. 10 .30 p .m., the Coast Guard asked all commercial vessels anchored near Whitefish Bay to assist in the search. The initial search for survivors was carried out by the Anderson, a second freighter, the Clay Ford. The efforts of a third freighter, the Toronto -registered SS Hilda Marjane, were foiled by the weather. The Coast Guard sent a buoy tender, Wood Rush, It's a cool name. From Duluth, Minnesota, but it took two and a half hours to launch and a day to travel to the search area. The Traverse City, Michigan Coast Guard Station launched a HU -16 fixed -wing search aircraft that arrived on the scene at 10 .53 p .m., while a HH -52 Coast Guard helicopter with a 3 .8 million candle power searchlight arrived at 1 a .m. on November 11th. Coast Guard aircraft joined on day three from Canada on the search, and Ontario Provincial Police established and maintained a beach patrol along all the eastern shore of Lake Superior.

42:33 Although the search recovered debris, including lifeboats and rafts, none of the crew were found. On her final voyage, the Fitzgerald's crew of 29, consistent of the captain, the first, second, and third mates, five engineers, three oilers, a cook, a wiper, two maintenance men, three watchmen, three deckhands, three wheelsmen, two porters, a cadet, and one steward. Most of the crew were from Ohio and Wisconsin. Their ages ranged from 20, the youngest being Watchman Carl A. Peckhall, and 63 was the oldest, of course, that was Captain McSorley. The Edmund Fitzgerald is among the largest and best known vessels lost on the Great Lakes. She is not alone on Lake Superior seabed in that area. In the years between 1816, when Invincible, the ship, was lost, and 1975, when the Fitzgerald sank, the Whitefish Point area had claimed at least 240 ships. It's really, really crazy. Sorry, those conditions are just nuts. 35 -foot waves. What did we say about the wind? I want to say 80 miles an hour, 86 miles.

43:53 Yeah, 86 -mile -an -hour gusts. Rogue waves as high as 35 feet. And I'm looking at an image. I don't know what I'm going to show on YouTube for this episode, but an image you could find easily on Wikipedia, for example, is one of the Edmund Fitzgerald's lifeboats, which is now on display at the Valley Camp Museum ship. A couple of items were recovered. So the wreck and the discovery and the surveys. There's a Coast Guard drawing that's on record of the ship that was found, and it was found in two parts, which will build into the mystery of how it sank. So the wreck discovery. The Navy sent an aircraft, and it used a set of equipment with magnetic anomaly detection. And on November 14th of 1975, it was able to find the ship, the Fitzgerald, close to the international boundary, U .S. and Canada, at a depth of 530 feet. For reference, if anyone knows the area, it's about 15 miles west of Dead Man's Cove, Ontario, about 8 miles northwest of Pancake Bay Provincial Park, and 17 miles from the entrance to Whitefish Bay to the southeast.

45:12 What fun names. There was a further survey, November 14th through 16th, quickly by the U .S. Coast Guard using a side -scan sonar. And that survey confirmed what was detected by the aircraft, two large objects lying close together on the lake floor. So there's a whole entry here on underwater surveys. And what I'll summarize, if you want to read, of course, plenty of reading to be had, but lots of footage. Many surveys were taken using different pieces of technology and underwater cameras. And actually, there was a record set for scuba diving. I think it was a pair of gentlemen scuba dove down to see the Fitzgerald and did some 3D videotaping. So there are many hundreds of hours of videotape of the Fitzgerald that were collected for research and to investigate the situation. Eventually, diving to the Fitzgerald, it became kind of a tenuous thing because what is the purpose of the dive?

46:23 Are you trying to solve the mystery of a now 50 -year -old shipwreck or a shipwreck or a rip check? Or are you diving for fun, for adventure, oceanic adventure? and it's disrespectful to those crew. So there was a restriction put on diving to the shipwreck as a defined watery grave for those gentlemen. So I think there's the potential that more investigation might be done, but since so long has passed since the shipwreck, I think it's more of a moment in culture and a respect now for those who were killed there. Regarding the sinking of the ship, you know, in the song, Sinking of the Edmund, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it talks about water came over the bow and the hatchway gave in and, you know, boys, it's been so good to know you. It's not exactly been determined from radio records and testimonies of the night.

47:35 Captain McSorley talked about a couple things that are interesting. There was a guardrail that was broken. on the surface of the ship, on the deck. They had already been taking on water for a while, and they had developed a list, as we talked about, so a lean in the ship as it was traveling. And there's a ton of investigations. So let's talk through some notes here briefly, and then I'll give kind of my summary of what I've read. So there was waves and weather hypothesis. We talked about some rogue waves. We talked about being in the eye of the storm that evening. Winds were changing. Things were not typical. The waves and the wind were coming from an unusual perspective from not the north to south, but rather multiple directions. The rogue wave hypothesis of the sinking of the ship is interesting because that ship we keep referencing that was close to the Fitzgerald, the Anderson, reported three waves.

48:38 Sometimes three rogue waves in a pattern are called three sisters. And let's see. The first wave introduces an abnormally large amount of water onto the deck. The water is unable to fully drain away before the second wave strikes, adding to the surplus. The third incoming wave again adds to the two accumulated backwashes, quickly overloading the deck with too much water. The Anderson reported that they were hit by two waves, 30 to 35 foot high, around 6 .30 p .m., which is before we think the Fitzgerald sank. But it's possible because they weren't in the same position that the Fitzgerald managed those waves more poorly. Also, a third wave or a particular dive where the bow would be taking on more water, it just... It just couldn't shed. It could lead to a couple things. And those are the other hypotheses that are oncoming. So one is that it just simply took on too much water over time. So this next one is the cargo hold flooding hypothesis. So as we mentioned, there are many, many hatches to the cargo hold. And there's some confusion as to whether or not they are truly watertight or mostly watertight or... they were clamped or not clamped, closed. So, you know, these are

50:09 steel hatch covers, and under a normal condition, they're going to fall closed. So they're opened manually when the ship is being loaded or unloaded. And it's regular. So here's a quote. Video footage of the wreck showed that most of her hatch clamps were in perfect condition. The Coast Guard Marine Board concluded that... the few damaged clamps were probably the ones that were fastened. So one of the theories is that ineffective hatch closure caused the Fitzgerald to flood. And so as it was taking on water and rough seas, a lot of the hatches were not clamped closed, which clamping is a manual process to where the crew would go to each of the hatches, and there were many of them, and clamp them closed with some ratchet -type devices, some hardware. With iron ore, if the ship were to roll over, which would be catastrophic, the weight of the cargo may rip those closures open, I guess is the supposed situation. And so if they were ripped open, the clamps would be destroyed. The fact that in the shipwreck it's seen the clamps in mass or in good condition means, well, those clamps must have never been engaged. So if they're never been engaged and water was flooding over onto the deck, perhaps it was finding its way into the cargo hold. And, you know, 16 ,000 long tons, I think, was the load of cargo. As you begin to add water to that load, it's going to become

51:40 too much weight for the ship, both structurally and from a basic buoyancy perspective. The ship's going to sit lower in the water with more weight, and then, of course, that's a compounding issue. hypothesis as the shoaling hypothesis. So perhaps they hit a shoal and the whole of the Edmund Fitzgerald was breached or the structure otherwise compromised to where the ship broke apart and then sunk in the two parts that are now at the bottom of the lake. Although it was investigated, no shoal was ever found within the area that No shoal was ever found that was obviously damaged, is what I should say, within the area that the ship sank. There is a shoal there, which will come up again. The third is that there was a structural failure. And this one's interesting to me. I'm a mechanical engineer by study, and there's lots of discussion about the structure of the Fitzgerald, about maintenance, about welds, and how some areas of the keel. were tack welded, quote, during inspections, and some welds had broken. There was also some supposition and some anecdotal evidence about captains. Several of the Fitzgerald had noted that the ship flexed

53:10 when it hit large waves, rogue waves, or was on rough seas. Sometimes... I think the diving board was used as a term to reference the flexibility of the ship, which throughout history, there's been an interesting relationship to strength and flexibility of ships. For example, the Vikings way back in the day, I learned this on a trip to Sweden, the Viking longboats were particularly interesting because they were wide and so they didn't require a great depth of water for travel. They could travel on the ocean as well as up riverways. They were able to be rowed or sailed, which allowed for that diversity. But what I wanted to say was they were made of wood and they built them in a way that they would flex also in stronger seas. Of course, many, many, many of them sank. But the longboat was interesting because the flexibility allowed the ship to endure the undulations of storm. And so that concept is still around. And the stronger you have something, or rather, the more rigid it is, the harder a metal is, the more brittle it is. And the more annealed a metal is, more or less. Of course, I'm speaking a little bit outside of my knowledge here. But what I remember is that the more...

54:41 durable a metal is the longer it will last in cyclical stress so you can have metal strain and stress and remain together without breaking to where hardened metal may last longer and provide a higher overall strain or rather a higher overall strength before failure but the failure is more of a crack rather than a tear that makes sense so um Structural. Structural strength. There's lots to read. If you're really interested in that, I would recommend reading some articles. The third hypothesis listed here is topside damage.

55:24 So again, it was mentioned by Captain McSorley. The Fitzgerald deck had something broken. The rail was broken on the side of the deck. So there's a couple things that might mean. One is that the ship was flexing and under flexion The bow was being pulled down by force. The rail, which was on the top of the deck, may have taken on some of that load and, of course, is not designed for that, so it may have snapped like a wire. This topside damage hypothesis is supposing that maybe something really heavy was floating, like a log example, and that log may have come onto the deck of the ship and caused some damage in which water might be able to enter the ship quickly.

56:09 through hatches or otherwise. The thing I just connected that I haven't thought about, it's really just a question, is that boat that went missing. There was another ship that the Coast Guard said to be on the lookout for. Let's see if I can find that real quick in the notes. A 16 -foot boat was lost in the area, was a quote from the Coast Guard. So around 8 p .m. So I doubt those are related, but potentially from the little that I have read and learned here, it's possible there was a run -in, especially with no radar on the Fitzgerald and presumably no radar on a boat as small as 16 feet. I don't know that story there, but I don't know why they were out in that storm, such a small ship. Such a small boat. So let's find our way back to our notes. Some possible contributing factors to the wreck is that it could be any of those failure modes that we talked about just recently. Structural failure, topside damage, shoaling hypothesis, cargo hold flooding. It could be any of those things, or it could be a combination of those things, even if the cargo hold were flooding.

57:36 They mentioned bilge pumps were activated, so that means that there is some water that had been taken on. If a significant amount of water added up to a certain part of the ship, you know, contributing to structural failure, that ship could have broken up on the surface and sank in two pieces. If it hit just a crazy wave or potentially a couple of rogue waves and took a dive, potentially it could have began to sink and then broken up on the way down. Of course, it did end up in two pieces. So some contributing factors. The weather forecasting. We talked about the National Weather Service changing their forecast a couple times. That was unfortunate. They did not predict that storm to be at that intensity.

58:21 And honestly, from what I've read, it was really unlikely that this situation would be so bad. And it was a culmination of bad luck, wrong time, wrong place. And, you know, if the ship had just put a couple more miles ahead of her, then she would not have been in that place. There was some inaccuracy to navigational charts. So one of the things we mentioned, there's an area called Six Fathom Shoal, which is a hazard to ships. And eventually a survey was taken after the Fitzgerald had sunk. and the survey revealed that the shoal ran about one mile further east than shown on the Canadian charts. So that's a big problem.

59:07 Now, of course, I mentioned the shoals were, nearby shoals for the crash area were surveyed, and it wasn't found to be any immediate damage. Also on the shipwreck at the Fitzgerald, there was no immediate damage that was visible. But, of course, the ship is not something you can, It was sitting in mud. So it's an imperfect assumption. Contributing factor, the lack of watertight bulkheads. So bulkheads are, if you know, separations in a ship that help in the case of sinking, especially to where if one area were to flood, the others would not flood. And it would have enough buoyancy in the ship to survive certain situations. Of course, a shipwreck that... everyone knows about is the Titanic. And the water, the design of the Titanic had a fault, I believe, with the bulkheads being insufficient. So when the Titanic hit the iceberg, there were several areas in which the water was able to travel. And of course, wrong time, wrong place, and bad luck took on too much water. And we know the story of the Titanic. But the Fitzgerald apparently had I mean, it was a cargo ship, so it had two non -watertight traverse screen bulkheads as part of the cargo area. Potentially that watertight

1:00:37 bulkheads might have helped in that case. There's a lack of instrumentation. So a fathometer, which is a fun name, was not required under the Coast Guard regulations. The Fitzgerald lacked one, so that's a depth finder. The Fitzgerald at the time actually used a rope, so the old -fashioned style was a piece of line knotted with measured intervals and a lead weight on the end, and that's what they would use. Of course, in a storm, it's unlikely and less likely that they would be using that system. So the Marine Board noted that because the Fitzgerald lacked a draft reading system, the crew had no way to determine whether the vessel had lost freeboard. which is the level of a ship's deck above the water. One thing I just missed here, the Fitzgerald had no system to monitor the presence or the amount of water in her cargo hold, which we talked about. So the intensity of that storm was likely to have some water that's going to reach that cargo hold.

1:01:40 We talked about the bilge pumps were on, so there were areas of the ship that were being emptied of water, but there was no bilge pumps within the cargo hold particularly, and no way to monitor if there's additional water, which is, of course, heavy. It's not as heavy as iron ore by volume, but again, additional load after the ship was fully loaded would not be a good idea. This is interesting to me. A contributing factor increased load lines and reduced freeboard. To summarize, the ship was allowed an additional number of inches to sink into the water, which allowed the ship to hold 4 ,000 more tons in its cargo.

1:02:24 So, of course, it's a regulated system, and the ship increased its cargo load and so also increased the depth at which it sat in the water. which for any situation with high seas is less advantageous. Captains that piloted the ship prior and afterwards to the load line increase said that she was a, quote, good riding ship, but afterwards the Fitzgerald became a sluggish ship with slower response and recovery times. McSorley said he did not like the action of a ship he described as a wiggling thing that scared him. Fitzgerald's bow hooked to one side or the other in heavy seas without recovering and made a groaning sound not heard on the ships. Scary. Very scary. Maintenance is contributed in here. The lake decils were dry docked only once every five years. And then, of course, we talked about the welds on the Fitzgerald.

1:03:36 There's a quote here. The hole was just being held together with patching plates. So it's not ideal. Really not ideal. The combings, gaskets, and clamps were poorly maintained. It was a note in the year before 1975. Dry dock complacency is interesting. How do I say this? I don't want to be disrespectful. This article is a little bit aggressive. Of course, it kind of makes sense because you don't want to do this. So McSorley, the captain, was known as, quote, a heavy weather captain, which, you know, in the sense of masculinity and the sense of holding a man's position, you know, he was a proud person and he was used to pushing the limits. He was known to, quote, beat hell. out of the Edmund Fitzgerald and very seldom ever hauled up for weather. So that's tough.

1:04:37 I mean, you know, there was several captains that were interviewed that discussed how McSorley was like, you know, a hard -nosed man and he pushed through and he knew rough seas. And of course, I've never been in these positions, but it's something in engineering and also in construction that we've seen. recur is when something works out when you do something you shouldn't do you take a risk and it turns out okay you've confirmed in your mind that you can do it and you can do it again and next time it will also be okay even if it's still sketchy so that's a bit of an oversimplification but that that theme has recurred several times and it's interesting to me how that would apply to this position I think it's more of an old -time position, and these days we have more assessed risk and more strategic thinking. I would say that the military, Coast Guard, and official positions at the time, we're talking about the Coast Guard and their regulations for the Great Lakes area. I would say that they're more measured, but again, I'm not really in that world. It's just from what I've heard and impressions I have from regimentation and strict procedure, the way things really need to be. And of course, no one wants any more ships to sink. So I just

1:06:09 thought that was interesting as a listed complacency. There's a legal settlement I don't really have an interest in getting into. There were several lawsuits that followed the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I would say in my personal take that, you know, the families of the lost sailors, the wives and children, you're never going to really be made whole again with a lawsuit. I'm not trying to blame them. I'm just saying overall the lawsuits kind of don't find much satisfaction in my reading. So if you are interested, you can look into that. Subsequent changes to Great Lakes shipping practice.

1:06:52 So, of course, after the event, there were some changes, which is good. I'll summarize. The Coast Guard made a requirement that all vessels of 1 ,600 gross registered tons or over use depth finders. Survival suits, strobe lights were added, life jackets and such as a requirement. Emergency positioning radio beacons. on all lake vessels for immediate accurate location of an event of a disaster. NOAA revised its method for predicting wave heights. Navigational charts for the northeastern Lake Superior were improved for accuracy and for greater detail. And the Coast Guard rescinded the 1973 load line regulation. that permitted reduced freeboard loadings. So the ships were sitting a bit higher in the water, those that had been modified previously. Coast Guard began the annual pre -November inspection program recommended by the National Traffic and Safety Board. Is that right? NTSB? Transportation Safety Board?

1:08:04 Coast Guard inspectors now board all U .S. ships during the fall to inspect hatch and vent closures and life -saving equipment. And, of course, there are some memorials that are nice. One thing I wanted to read, the day after the wreck, the Mariner's Church in Detroit rang its bell 29 times, once for each life lost. The church continued to hold an annual memorial, reading the names of the crewmen and ringing the church bell until 2006, when the church broadened its memorial ceremony to commemorate all lives lost in the Great Lakes. After the death of singer Gordon Lightfoot on May 1st of 2023, the church bell was ceremoniously rung 29 times in memory of the crew, plus an additional ring in memory of Lightfoot, who committed their deaths to posterity.

1:08:59 There's a lot in there, folks. It's a really interesting thing. It's very sad, of course. There's a lot of detail, and people have done quite a bit of research to bring notes together. There are many articles written, many sources to be cited. I just wanted to talk about it because I thought it was so funny that we go from singing sea shanties to... you know, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which, to be honest with you, when I heard that song, I did not believe that was a real event. I thought it was an old -timey song with a catchy tune, and it's always been fun to listen to, but it is saved on my Spotify playlist. In fact, it was recommended to me on a Spotify playlist recently called Sea Shanty Bangers. So there's that piece of information for you. Emily asked that I do a spooky episode.

1:09:59 And there's one that we have in mind that would be a lot of fun because this episode is releasing just around Halloween. But this one in particular, I thought maybe get somewhere with hauntings. And apparently there is a little bit of connection. So I won't draw a hard line, but between the Fitzgerald sinking and the many other ships, it's one thing, you know, the lake never gives up her dead. It's one of the quotes. Apparently, many people have reported sightings of the Fitzgerald and other ships. They've heard things. They've seen things. There's spooky seas out there on the Great Lakes. And the Fitzgerald, I guess, has come up on radars. And when ships pass through the area where it sank, sometimes there's some relation to hauntings. Because of the story we just covered, I'm not going to dive further into that, but there's your spooky moment for the day. That's all I have today, guys. I've never done the solo episode before. I appreciate you listening. Of course, it's rambled on a bit long here, but I hope you've made it through. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was a history buoy that got carried away. So, thank you for joining me. Please check out our... our audio on Spotify. Check out our YouTube. Almost every episode, very nearly every episode I posted YouTube

1:11:31 for. Someday I'll work on the early episodes and get all those cast on there too. But there's quite a few collected. I keep promising Emily and you all listeners some merchandise. Today I wore a Lighthouse Slowdown hat and I carried my Lighthouse Slowdown Yeti mug. So it's in the works, fam. It's happening. If you would, please reach out with a kind word. If you have one for Emily to support her in this tough time, she is very loved. We've got a great community and you all are a part of it. So once again, thank you very much. And I hope you have a great time today and tomorrow. I hope you're having a nice day and I am so tired and I will see you next time on the Lighthouse Lowdown. Cheers.