The SS Edmund Fitzgerald

November 10th marked the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior. I was reminded of this when my social media was flooded by people who did remember and were quoting Gordon Lightfoot's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The following has been adapted from Wikipedia to provide background.

SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. 

When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the first laker built to the maximum St. Lawrence Seaway size, which was 730 feet (222.5 m) long, 75 feet (22.9 m) wide, and with a 25-foot (7.6 m) draft. The vertical height of the hull) was 39 ft (12 m). The hold depth (the inside height of the cargo hold) was 33 ft 4 in (10.16 m).

Edmund Fitzgerald's three central cargo holds were loaded through 21 watertight cargo hatches, each 11 by 48 feet (3.4 by 14.6 m) of ⁵⁄₁₆-inch-thick (7.9 mm) steel. Loading Edmund Fitzgerald with 26,535 t of taconite pellets (a variety of iron ore) took about four and a half hours, while unloading took around 14 hours.

For 17 years, Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite from mines along the Minnesota Iron Range near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Michigan; Toledo, Ohio; and other Great Lakes ports, passing through the Soo Locks (between Lakes Superior and Huron) and St. Clair and Detroit rivers (between Lake Huron and Lake Erie),

A round trip between Superior, Wisconsin, and Detroit, Michigan, usually took her five days and she averaged 47 similar trips per season. The vessel's usual route was between Superior, Wisconsin, and Toledo, Ohio. By November 1975, Edmund Fitzgerald had logged an estimated 748 round trips on the Great Lakes and covered more than a million miles, "a distance roughly equivalent to 44 trips around the world."

Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, at 2:15 p.m. on the afternoon of November 9, 1975, under the command of Master Captain McSorley. She was en route to the steel mill near Detroit, Michigan, with a full cargo of taconite ore pellets and soon reached her full speed of 16.3 miles per hour (26.2 km/h). Around 5 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald joined a second freighter under the command of Captain Jesse B. "Bernie" Cooper, Arthur M. Anderson, destined for Gary, Indiana.

The weather forecast was not unusual for November, and the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted that a storm would pass just south of Lake Superior by 7 a.m. on November 10. At 2:00 a.m. on November 10, the NWS upgraded its warnings from gale to storm, forecasting winds of 65–93 km/h. The NWS later altered its forecast, issuing gale warnings for the whole of Lake Superior. Arthur M. Anderson and Edmund Fitzgerald altered course northward, seeking shelter along the Ontario shore, but sailed directly into the storm at when the wind shifted. Edmund Fitzgerald reported winds of 52 knots (96 km/h; 60 mph) and waves 10 feet (3.0 m) high.

Routes usually taken vs actual trackline

After 1:50 p.m., Arthur M. Anderson logged winds of 93 km/h, wind speeds again picked up rapidly, and it began to snow at 2:45 p.m., reducing visibility; Arthur M. Anderson lost sight of Edmund Fitzgerald, which was about 16 miles (26 km) ahead at the time.

Shortly after 3:30 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald began taking on water and had lost two vent covers, both radars, and developed a list. Shortly after 4:10 p.m., Captain McSorley said that he would slow his ship down so that Arthur M. Anderson could close the gap between them to within a 10-mile (16 km) range so she could receive radar guidance from the other ship.

For a time, Arthur M. Anderson directed Edmund Fitzgerald toward the relative safety of Whitefish Bay; then, at 4:39 p.m., McSorley contacted the USCG station in Grand Marais, Michigan, to inquire whether the Whitefish Point light and navigation beacon were operational and was informed later that the light was active, but the navigation beacon was not.

By late in the afternoon of November 10, sustained winds of over 93 km/h were recorded by ships and observation points across eastern Lake Superior. Arthur M. Anderson logged sustained winds as high as 107 km/h while waves increased to as high as 25 feet (7.6 m) by 6:00 p.m. Arthur M. Anderson was also struck by 130 to 139 km/h gusts and rogue waves as high as 35 feet (11 m).

 In a broadcast shortly afterward, the United States Coast Guard (USCG) warned all shipping that the Soo Locks had been closed, and they should seek safe anchorage.

Sometime after 5:30 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald reported being in difficulty; at 7:10 p.m., Captain McSorley sent his last message, "We are holding our own". Shortly after 7:10 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald suddenly sank in Canadian (Ontario) waters 530 feet (88 fathoms; 160 m) deep, about 17 miles (27.36 km) from Whitefish Bay near the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario—a distance Edmund Fitzgerald could have covered in just over an hour at top speed. Her crew of 29 perished, and no bodies were recovered.

She was located in deep water on November 14, 1975, by a U.S. Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies, and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces.

Position of the wreck in a relatively small area

In 1976, the U.S. Navy dived on the wreck and found Edmund Fitzgerald lying in two large pieces in 530 feet (160 m) of water. Navy estimates put the length of the bow section at 276 feet (84 m) and that of the stern section at 253 feet (77 m). The bow section stood upright in the mud, some 170 feet (52 m) from the stern section that lay capsized at a 50-degree angle from the bow. In between the two broken sections lay a large mass of taconite pellets and scattered wreckage lying about, including hatch covers and hull plating.

The exact cause of the sinking remains unknown. Several hypotheses have been put forward (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald from where this post was extracted and adapted. None explain satisfactorily how the Edmund Fitzgerald  split almost exactly in two and came to rest with half upside down and half right side up, with iron ore pellets scattered over only 2 acres.

Edmund Fitzgerald is among the largest and best-known vessels lost on the Great Lakes, but she is not alone on the Lake Superior seabed in that area. In the years between 1816, when Invincible was lost, and 1975, when Edmund Fitzgerald sank, the Whitefish Point area had claimed at least 240 ships.