Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald

In this episode of History's a Disaster, host Andrew takes us through the tragic and mysterious sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior during a massive thunderstorm on November 10th, 1975. The episode details the ship's origins, its successful career, and the fateful final voyage alongside the Arthur M. Anderson. Theories surrounding the ship's disappearance are explored, including potential structural failures and storm damage. Despite extensive searches and multiple expeditions, the exact cause of the sinking remains unknown. The episode also touches on the cultural impact of Gordon Lightfoot's ballad on the tragedy and ends by highlighting the ongoing legacy of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

00:00 The Mysterious Sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald
00:41 The Launch of a Giant: SS Edmund Fitzgerald's Early Days
02:27 A Record-Breaking Career on the Great Lakes
04:49 The Final Voyage Begins
06:03 The Storm and the Struggle
08:57 The Disappearance and Search Efforts
12:03 Investigations and Theories
14:23 Expeditions and Discoveries
16:19 Legacy and Memorials
17:28 Conclusion and Sign-Off

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Transcript

 On November 10th, 1975, during a massive thunderstorm on Lake Superior, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald would disappear from the lake surface, taking all 29 crew members down with it. So what happened? I'm Andrew, and this is History's a Disaster.

Tonight we are diving, no pun intended, into the or, Raider, SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Its history and the theories surrounding its sinking and disappearance. On June 7th, 1958, thousands of people came to see the christening of the largest freighter to ever be launched into fresh water. Everyone wanted to be there for the Titanic of the Great Lakes maiden voyage, and this boat was big.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was 729 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 39 feet tall, and weighed in at a whopping 13,600 tons. It would end up having a maximum capacity of 27,500 tons and had a 7,500 horsepower steam engine that could push this massive ship at a high speed of 20 miles per hour. The ship was named after the chairman of Northwest Mutual.

Northwest Mutual was the company that had financed the building of the ship, and the ship did not get off to a great start during the christening. Ed's wife could not break the champagne bottle until the third attempt. Third time's a charm, right? Well, sailors didn't think so. They're just a tad bit on the superstitious side, and they saw this as a bad thing.

The shipyard crew fought to get the boat to release and slide into the water. When it did finally release, it went a bit out of control when it slammed into the water, launching a huge wave that drenched many other people watching, and then it would continue to slide sideways until it slammed into a neighboring pier and.

To add to this, a spectator watching had a heart attack and died when the ship hit the water. For such a shitty start, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald would have a highly successful career hauling larger and larger loads of iron ore across the Great Lakes to meet the growing demands of American steel mills.

In 17 years, she completed nearly 750 trips with over a million miles sailed, and she was a dream assignment for sailors and captains working the Great Lakes. She would set record after record of tonnage hauled in a single trip with the highest record being 27,402 tons of taconite ore, which is a type of banded iron ore.

She would load up from Minnesota's Iron Range near Duluth and travel to Iron Works in Detroit, Toledo, and several other ports around the Great Lakes. Loading this massive ship would take four to five hours while unloading. It was a much slower process at a whopping 14 hours. For most of her long career, she would often carry company guests on her voyages and for an OR freighter.

Its interior was pretty fucking fancy with thick carpets, tiled bathrooms with DRS over the portholes, which is. Money for me to some reason. Gotta remember it's the sixties and seventies, so fancy things were a bit different back then, and guest lounges had leather swivel chairs and two state rooms were set up for passengers and the ship had air conditioning throughout and included a fully stocked galley and a pantry with two dining rooms.

The pilot house hits. State-of-the-art equipment and a large, beautiful map room. Sounds like they didn't cheap out on this ship. Then again, it's probably because the ship's owners set it up to be the flagship of their fleet.

November is a pretty shitty month for ships out on the Great Lakes. They had a deal with raging thunderstorms and bitter snowfall. 90 mile per hour winds and 20 foot tall waves quickly became the norm. So if you're a sailor and got vacation time. November is the time to take it. The Fitzgerald's final trip began November 9th, 1975 in Superior, Wisconsin.

Captain Ernest McSorley had loaded the Fitzgerald with 26,116 tons of tech ignite pellets, which is made of. Processed iron ore heated and rolled into marble sized balls. At two 30, they left Wisconsin and joined up with the Arthur M. Anderson, who was under Captain Bernie Cooper. The two ships would remain in radio contact for the voyage.

The Fitzgerald being the faster of the two, took the lead with the distances between the vessels ranging from 10 to 15 miles.

Aware of a building November storm entering the Great Lakes from the plains. Captain McSorley and Captain Cooper agreed to take the Northerly course across Lake Superior, where they would be protected by Highlands on the Canadian shore. This would take them between the Iowa Royale and the Kiwi Now Peninsula.

They would later make a turn to the Southeast to eventually reach the shelter of Whitefish Point. Weather conditions continued to go downhill. Warnings had been issued at 7:00 PM on November 9th. Upgraded to storm warnings early in the morning. Of November 10th, while conditions were bad, winds were gusting up to 50 knots and waves were reaching 16 feet.

This was nothing new to either captain. Just another normal November storm, early afternoon of November 10th, the Fitzgerald had passed Mitch Pickton Island and was approaching Caribou Island. The Anderson was just approaching Mitch of Pickton about three miles off the west. End of light. Captain Cooper maintained that he watched the Fitzgerald pass far too close to six Fathom Shoal to the north of Caribou Island.

He could clearly see the ship and the beacon on caribou on his radar set and could measure the distance between them, both him and his officers. Watch the Fitzgerald pass right over the dangerous areas of shallow water. By this time, snow and rising spray had obscured the Fitzgerald from sight visible 17 miles ahead on radar.

At three 30 that afternoon, the Fitzgerald contacted the Anderson to tell them that they had suffered some damage with two vents damaged a fence rail down, and the ship was tilting. They had both of their pumps running, but they could not keep up with the water. As the day dragged on the Fitz, she kept in contact with the Anderson concerning navigational data since they had lost both of their radar towers.

But no other reports concerning alarm were offered up at roughly seven o'clock that night. Captain Cooper and his men in the Andersons. Pilot house felt a bump. The ship worked forward and they turned to see a monstrous wave engulfing their entire ship. The wave swept all the way along the deck crashing into the back of the pilot house.

Driving the bow of the Anderson down into the sea, the first mate of the Anderson kept watching the Fitzgerald on the radar set to calculate her distance from some other vessels near Whitefish Point, he kept losing sight of the Fitzgerald on the radar from sea return, meaning that seas were so high.

They interfered with the radar reflection. The first mate spoke to the Fitzgerald one last time, about seven 10. After getting an update from Captain McSorley, his final words were, we're holding our own.

At seven 15, the radar signal for the Fitzgerald disappeared and would not pop back up at 7 22. The Anderson would try to contact the Fitzgerald repeatedly, but they would get no response over the radio. Captain Cooper contacted other ships in the area by radio asking anyone if they had seen or heard from the Fitzgerald with growing fear.

Captain Cooper contacted the Coast Guard about 8:00 PM and told them that he was concerned about the Fitzgerald. The Coast Guard would go on to initiate a search for the missing ship, and by this point, the Anderson had reached the safety of Whitefish Bay, but the Coast Guard called Captain Cooper back and asked him to return to the area to start the search.

The. The Anderson would turn off to be the primary vessel in the search. Taking the lead with the ship rocking and rolling badly. The crew of the Anderson discovered the Fitzgerald's two lifeboats and other debris, but no sign of survivors. Only one other vessel, the William Clay Ford was able to lead the safety of Whitefish Bay.

To join in the search at this time, the Coast Guard launched a fixed wing HU 16 aircraft at 10:00 PM and sent out two cutters, the Naga talk and the wood rush. The nagata would not arrive until 1245 on the 11th, and the wood rush would not get there till November 14th. Having journeyed all the way from Duluth, Minnesota.

The Coast Guard conducted an extensive and thorough search on November 14th, a US Navy plane equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector, located a strong contact 17 miles north of Whitefish Point.

During the next three days, the Coast Guard cutter wood rush would use a side scan sonar to locate two large pieces of wreckage in the same area. Another sonar survey was conducted November 22nd through the 25th. The following May of 1976, wood rush was again on the scene to conduct a third side scan.

Sonar survey. Contacts were strong enough to warrant bringing in the US Navy's curve. Three controlled underwater recovery vehicle operating from the wood brush. The curve three unit took 43,000 feet of videotape. In 900 photographs of the wreck on May 20th, 1976, the Ward's Edmund Fitzgerald were clearly seen on the stern, upside down, and 535 feet below the surface of the lake

on April 15th, 1977. The US Coast Guard released its official report of subject SS Edmond Fitzgerald, official number 2 7 7 4 3 7, sinking in Lake Superior on November 10th, 1975. With loss of life, while the Coast Guard said the cause of the sinking could not be conclusively determined, it maintained that the most probable cause of the sinking of the Fitzgerald was the loss of buoyancy and stability resulting from massive flooding of the cargo hold.

The flooding of the cargo hold took place through ineffective hatch covers. As boarding seas rolled along the deck. However, the Lake Carriers Association strongly disagreed with the Coast Guard suggestion that the lack of attention to properly closing the hatch covers by the crew was responsible for the loss.

The issued a letter to the NTSB in September, 1977. The Wake Carriers Association. Was inclined to accept that Fitzgerald passed over the sixth Fathom SHO area as reported by Captain Cooper. Later in a taped conversation, captain Cooper said that he always believed McSorley knew something serious had happened to the ship as it passed over Caribou Shoul, and that he believes from that point on, McSorley knew he was sinking in September of 1980.

Jacque CTO's son. Jean-Michel would lead an expedition down the 535 feet to the Fitzgerald. Two divers would use a little yellow submarine, the Calypso, to go down and film the ship, and they would learn. Absolutely nothing, but still put forth a theory that the ship split into on the surface and sink slowly.

A theory that cannot be verified in any way since no one saw the ship go down, and not a whole lot of people believe this theory either. There would end up being a lot of evidence, the point that the ship broke up underneath the waves.

In 1989, another expedition was launched this time with better technology and more hope of getting answers as to what happened. They used an ROVA remote operated vehicle, so basically it was an RC submarine. They got back better pictures and videos than any of the previous expeditions, but no further determinations could be found as to why it sank.

But what they did find was evidence that this proved any previous theory. The way the ship was damaged was inconsistent with storm damage and more in line with damage caused by the stress of sinking. There was also still glass intact on the ship and a pilot house door was not closed, meaning it was possible the door was opened as crew attempted to escape.

In 1994, another series of expeditions began with the use of a submersible. They found evidence that when the Fitzgerald went down, it hit the bottom and slid for over 250 feet pushing mud and clay in front of it. It is believed that as it struck bottom, the propeller kept pushing the ship forward, and eventually the torque from the propeller twisted the ship in half.

One body would be discovered during these expeditions still wearing the remains of a life jacket. However, retrieving the body would've been expensive and almost impossible. Identification under the water was also just not possible either. The families of the crew decided not to even attempt to reclaim it.

They preferred to leave their loved ones where they lay, and no bodies would ever be recovered from this wreck.

One of the final expeditions in 1995 was to retrieve the ship's 200 pound bronze bell. They would bring it up and it would be replaced with a replica bell with the names of the crewmen inscribed in it. The bell is now on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point as a Memorial Canada would eventually pass laws declaring the Edmund Fitzgerald and other similar shipwrecks, a watery grave, and stopped all diving in the area.

With no further dives allowed, we will probably never know exactly what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald. We are just left with the theories to the largest great lake shipwreck. And unlike similar wrecks, the sinking of the Fitzgerald would never really fade away. Thanks to Gordon Light foot's ballad about the sinking, the song would become extremely popular in the seventies, hitting number one and number two on multiple music charts including the billboard.

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Annette was the sinking of the Ss Edmund Fitzgerald. Thanks for listening, and if you like the show, please consider leaving a rating or review on your Apple choice and. You can reach the show at Histories a disaster@gmail.com or follow us on social media at Histories, a disaster on Facebook, Instagram, and a few others.

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