Imagine a ship as long as two entire football pitches, sailing through waves taller than houses, and then vanishing completely without a single trace.
SPEAKER_01What? Did it get eaten by a giant sea monster?
SPEAKER_00No, but the real story is just as wild! Welcome to History's Not Boring by kidopoly.com. I'm Mira. And I'm Finn. Before we set sail into history, we have some huge shout-outs today. First, a very happy seventh birthday to Peachers in My Steg, South Wales.
SPEAKER_01Peaches listens every night before bed and even goes to a Welsh language school. Penbloid Harpies Peaches. That means happy birthday in Welsh.
SPEAKER_00We are also sending a massive shout-out to Aidan, who is also seven, and his siblings Aaron and Amelia, listening right now from Michigan.
SPEAKER_01Oh, Michigan! Doesn't Michigan have some seriously huge lakes?
SPEAKER_00It does! And that is exactly why we are heading there today. We are travelling back in time to the Great Lakes to uncover the famous mystery of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.
SPEAKER_01Wait, a giant ship on a lake? I thought giant ships only sailed on the ocean.
SPEAKER_00Well, the Great Lakes in North America are so incredibly massive, they are basically inland seas. And the biggest, deepest, and coldest of them all is Lake Superior. How big was this ship exactly? When the Edmund Fitzgerald launched in 1958, she was the largest ship on the Great Lakes. She was 729 feet long. Whoa! What was she doing out there? She was a freighter built to carry iron ore, specifically little iron pellets called tachanite. She could hold 26,000 tons of it. 26,000 tonnes? How heavy is that? That is equal to about 5,000 adult elephants. The ship was so heavy she sat very deep in the water.
SPEAKER_015,000 elephants. Did it take a long time to travel across the lakes?
SPEAKER_00A round trip took about five days. By the night she sank, she had made 748 trips. That's over a million miles of sailing, which is like travelling around the entire earth 44 times. 44 times? That is a legendary ship. Oh, they loved her. People called her the pride of the American side. One of her captains even used to play music over the loudspeakers and yell fun facts through a bullhorn to entertain the people watching from the shore. So what went wrong? You said she vanished. It all happened on November 9th, 1975. The Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, fully loaded with iron ore, heading for a steel mill in Detroit, Michigan. Did they know a storm was coming? They knew the weather might be rough. November on the Great Lakes is famous for terrible storms. Sailors even call the fierce autumn winds the Witch of November. The Witch of November? That sounds super spooky. It is. By the next afternoon, November 10th, they were caught in one of the fiercest storms ever recorded on Lake Superior. The sky turned black, it started freezing rain, and winds were howling at over 70 miles per hour. That's hurricane speed! What about the waves? The waves were monstrous, swelling 25 to 35 feet high. Imagine a three-story house made of freezing cold, violent water, crashing down onto the deck over and over again. Was the Fitzgerald all alone out there in the freezing dark? No. Another ship called the Arthur M. Anderson was trailing about 10 miles behind them. The two captains were talking to each other over the radio, trying to help each other survive. Who was the captain of the Fitzgerald? His name was Captain Ernest M. McSawley, a veteran sailor with 40 years of experience, but even he was struggling. At 3.30 pm, he radioed the other ship to say the Fitzgerald's fence rails were broken and she was taking on water.
SPEAKER_01Taking on water is really bad for a ship full of heavy iron. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00The storm was so bad it ripped off the ship's radar antennas. They were completely blind in a freezing hurricane, relying on the Arthur M. Anderson behind them to guide them. Did they make it closer to safety? They were desperately trying to reach the calmer waters of Whitefish Bay. At 7 10 pm, the captain of the Anderson radioed Captain McSawley to ask how they were doing. McSawley replied, We are holding our own. Oh, well that sounds okay. He sounded confident. Those were his exact last words. Just 10 minutes later, the Arthur M. Anderson completely lost the Fitzgerald on their radar screen. Wait, she just disappeared? Did they send our distress signal? No. No distress call, no cry for help. In a matter of minutes, the massive 729-foot ship simply sank to the bottom of the freezing lake, taking all 29 crewmen with her.
SPEAKER_01That is so incredibly sad.
SPEAKER_00Did they ever find the ship? They did. Just four days later, a US Navy aircraft using special magnetic equipment found the wreck. She was resting 530 feet deep at the bottom of Lake Superior, broken into two giant pieces. Did they ever figure out exactly why it sank so fast? That is the biggest mystery of the Great Lakes. Some experts think a series of giant rogue waves flooded the deck, pushing the heavy iron down. Others think she scraped a shallow reef, but no one knows for sure.
SPEAKER_01It's crazy that such a huge, strong ship could just be swallowed up by a lake.
SPEAKER_00It really is. And here is an amazing fact. Less than a year later, a famous Canadian singer named Gordon Lightfoot read an article about the disaster. Did he write a song about it? He did. He wrote a beautiful six-minute folk ballad called The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It became a massive worldwide hit in 1976. Because of that song, the story of those 29 men will never be forgotten.
SPEAKER_01I love that. Alright, Finn, quiz time!
SPEAKER_00Are you ready? I think so. Lay it on me. First question. What year did the Edmund Fitzgerald launch? Next one, what was the name of the ship's captain? Question three. Which of the Great Lakes did the ship sink in? Here's number four. What were the exact last words the captain said over the radio? Last question. What was the name of the singer who wrote a famous song about the ship? Great job! Let's see how you did. The first answer is, it launched in 1958. For question two, the captain was Ernest M. McSawley. Number three, the answer is it sank in Lake Superior. Question four, his last words were, we are holding our own. And the final answer is, the singer was Gordon Lightfoot.
SPEAKER_01I still can't believe a lake could have waves that tall. Nature is incredibly powerful.
SPEAKER_00It really is. And the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald reminds us how brave those sailors were navigating such dangerous waters.
SPEAKER_01Hey listeners, if you love learning about this wild Great Lakes mystery, please leave us a five-star review.
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SPEAKER_01And don't forget to head over to our site, kidopoly.com. We have tons of fun learning games and activities waiting for you.
SPEAKER_00Plus, if you want a shout out like Peaches, Aidan, Aaron, and Amelia, just have an adult email us at hello at kidopoly.com. We love hearing from you. See you next time on History is not boring. Bye everyone.