The fateful, final journey of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The fateful, final journey of the Edmund Fitzgerald(shipwreckmuseum.com)

81 points by DrScump 3 years ago | 57 comments

sutoor 3 years ago |

Interestingly, the SS Arthur M. Anderson which was 10mi behind the Fitz when it went down, is still in use 70 years since launch and currently in Lake Huron.

https://www.marinetraffic.com/ais/details/ships/mmsi:3669720...

Aloha 3 years ago | |

Lakers seem to have unusually long lives for ships because of the unique nature of the cargo carried, and the lack of salt water. As far as I can tell, many are retired because metal fatigue reasons, or an ship that cannot be upgraded to diesel propulsion.

mauvehaus 3 years ago | | |

What will put them out of service in fairly short order is salt exposure from carrying salt.

Cargill has a big salt mine in Cleveland that extends several miles under Lake Erie[0]. I don't know where else they're mining it, but it gets shipped in lakers, and it's pretty rough on them for obvious reasons.

I toured the Mather[1] some years back (take the below decks and engineering tour if they're offering it), and the guide made a point that the fact that the Mather hadn't carried salt was a big factor in how well-preserved she is. Carrying salt is apparently the last stop before the ship breakers for a lot of lake steamers.

[0] http://www.rockthelake.com/buzz/2017/12/cargill-salt-mine-cl...

[1] https://greatscience.com/explore/exhibits/william-g-mather-s...

bombcar 3 years ago |

Things I didn't know even though this is one of my favorite songs:

1. The person the ship was named after died 27 years after the ship named after him did (he hadn't wanted the naming, the board overruled him).

2. The wreck is in Canada.

3. Gordon changed the lyrics of his live performances to take in new information not available at the time of writing.

Jun8 3 years ago |

Great Lakes have claimed so many ships, deadliest being the Lady Elgin with a loss of approximately 300 lives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Lady_Elgin).

The huge waves that brought down Edmund Fitzgerald are thought to be caused by the mythical Gales of November phenomenon on Lake Superior (https://www.mprnews.org/story/2022/11/10/lake-superiors-gale...), which is due to cold Arctic air from north colliding with very warm air from the Gulf of Mexico (we had 70s in Chicago this week!).

From the MPRNews article:

"John Swenson, a professor in the department of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth who grew up on Lake Superior, has looked at records of the biggest storms over the past 30 years.

'I find that the average storm, so in terms of time of the year, actually falls on about Nov. 10. So long story short, we get a storm like this, you know, on average on Nov. 10.' "

Kon-Peki 3 years ago | |

> deadliest being the Lady Elgin with a loss of approximately 300 lives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Lady_Elgin).

The wikipedia page isn't quite clear on the matter:

> Professor Mason and Lieutenant Bartlett asserted that a principal cause of the collision was the lack of a $15 lantern on the Augusta

> The judgement was based on a law that not only gave sail the right of way over steam, but did not require sailing vessels to carry running lights.

It didn't matter that the Augusta was a sailing ship, it still had the right of way over the Lady Elgin, and it was the duty of the Lady Elgin to alter course to avoid the collision. But because the Augusta was a sailing ship it didn't need adequate lighting, so the Lady Elgin didn't see it until it was too late.

By the way, the law [1] right now still gives sailing vessels right of way over motor vessels. The location of the wreck, just offshore from Chicago, 700+ miles from the nearest ocean, is subject to the international treaty governing the avoidance of collisions at sea.

[1] https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/COLREG.aspx

bombcar 3 years ago | |

> Many of these ships were never found, so the exact number of shipwrecks in the Lakes is unknown; the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum approximates 6,000 ships and 30,000 lives lost, while historian and mariner Mark Thompson has estimated that the total number of wrecks is likely more than 25,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_the_Grea...

FourHand451 3 years ago | |

This year fit the pattern quite well. I heard on the radio that there were 20' waves on Superior the other day.

pseudolus 3 years ago |

More historical photos that include some shots of the underwater remains of the wreck:

https://www.mlive.com/news/2021/11/wreck-of-the-edmund-fitzg...

jihadjihad 3 years ago |

If you haven't visited the Great Lakes, it can be hard to fathom how vast they are. They are really more like inland seas than lakes. At its deepest point, Lake Superior is about 1300ft deep, and edge-to-edge it measures about 350 miles across. If Lake Superior were drained, it could cover the entirety of North and South America with a foot of freshwater.

The northwestern coast of Michigan and the Upper Peninsula that bounds Lake Superior is absolutely worth a trip if you haven't been there.

cratermoon 3 years ago |

The most fascinating aspect of the incident to me is that the Edmund Fitzgerald was 728' long and sank in 535 feet of water. One video I saw analyzing the sinking showed that it was possible the ship's bow was forced down hit the bottom with 200' or so still above the surface.

bell-cot 3 years ago | |

IANANE (not a Naval Engineer), but that scenario sounds wildly implausible. It's easy to "do" it with a scale model toy, or simplistic geometry - but out in real life, at the size of a lake freighter, the square-cube law is absolutely merciless. Below (very optimistic guess) ~120' depth, the ship's hull can no longer hold air, to provide buoyancy. Recall that the water pressure a few hundred feet down is enough to crush a WWI submarine like an empty beer can in your fist. And lake freighters hulls are not built to anything remotely resembling WWI military submarine standards.

swearwolf 3 years ago | |

Can you imagine the horror of being on the bridge, thinking that the bow has just submerged into a wave, and only realizing it’s not going to come back up when you feel the ship slam into the lake floor?

jcranmer 3 years ago | | |

For reference, that would be at least a 47° incline, or about 108% grade. You'd probably realize the ship isn't going to come back when you reach 20%-ish grade.

kevin_thibedeau 3 years ago | | |

Lakers usually have their bridge at the bow.

michaelcampbell 3 years ago | |

If memory serves, the Russian Kursk sank in water less deep than it was long, too. And in one piece.

ubermonkey 3 years ago | |

It's not exactly comforting, but in truth the ship broke in two, so that scenario is unlikely.

djha-skin 3 years ago |

I strongly believe that iron ore liquefaction ultimately proved the ship's demise. More about how this can happen here[1]. The facts all line up:

  - Tons of water likely getting into the cargo hold, wetting it down, especially if the 
    crew didn't take care of shutting the cargo hold top.
  - Lots of rocking back and forth
  - They were carrying tons of iron ore
  - That stuff can absorb a ton of water, then when rocked, let it all loose at once, 
    thus causing a top-heavy rocking motion that will capsize a vessel within minutes.

1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG_EknYj5go

dev_tty01 3 years ago | |

You may be right about the liquefaction, but there is zero chance the crew forgot to shut the cargo holds properly. They knew they were heading into a storm and everyone on that ship understood their lives depended on securing all the hatches.

nradov 3 years ago | |

Iron ore liquefaction is still a deadly problem for bulk carriers today and is suspected to be the cause of several recent sinkings.

https://gcaptain.com/cargo-liquefaction-continues-to-pose-de...

bell-cot 3 years ago |

Well worth a read, if you're seriously interested:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Fitzgerald#Maintenance

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_Fitzgerald#Structural_f...

Huge waves (running down the ship's length) obviously put extreme stresses on the hull of a long, thin, heavily-loaded ship. And the Fitzgerald's wreck is broken into two pieces, right in the middle.

ubermonkey 3 years ago |

I'm a child of the 70s. I grew up with this song being everywhere for a long time, but I never really paid attention, and I lived far from the Great Lakes, so it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized it was about a contemporary disaster and not some long-ago age-of-sail thing.

The song was released in 1976, and details a sinking from only a year before.

DrScump 3 years ago |

(Lost 47 years ago today.)

bayareabadboy 3 years ago |

This told me nothing Gordan Lightfoot hadn’t already.

AlexandrB 3 years ago |

Obligatory link to the Gordon Lightfoot song about this disaster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI

washywashy 3 years ago |

Gordon Lightfoot