When the gales of November came early
S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was lost on Lake Superior during a storm 40 years ago
The waves were over three metres high on Lake Superior early in the morning of Nov. 10, 1975, but that shouldn’t have been too much of a problem for the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.
The freighter was 220 metres of steel, the largest, fastest, most expensive man-made object ever launched into fresh water.
On one trip alone, it could carry enough iron ore to Detroit to make 7,500 cars.
So Capt. Ernest McSorley, 63, of Toledo, Ohio was concerned but not panicked by the walls of frigid water as he radioed Capt. Jesse Cooper of the S.S. Arthur M. Anderson early that afternoon.
“Anderson, this is the Fitzgerald. I have sustained some topside damage,” McSorley reported. “I have a fence rail laid down, two vents lost or damaged and a list. I’m checking down. Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish?”
“Charlie on that, Fitzgerald. Do you have your pumps going?” “Yes, both of them.” Not long after that, McSorley also requested assistance from the nearby Swedish-flagged Avafors.
Much of that message is impossible to decipher.
McSorley could be heard saying: “I have a bad list, lost both radars. And am taking heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I’ve ever been in.”
The waves were choppy and steep, which meant McSorley couldn’t ride over them but had to try to push through them.
“We are holding our own,” the Fitzgerald reported.
“OK, fine,” the Anderson replied. “I’ll be talking to you later.” That was the last time they spoke. At that point, the Fitzgerald had battled the storm for almost 24 hours and pulled within 24 kilometres of Whitefish Point, Mich., and safety.
When the end came, it was so sudden that McSorley didn’t have time to launch his lifeboats or issue an SOS. All 29 men on board perished.
The next year, Gordon Lightfoot released his haunting folk ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
At first the song included the verse: “When suppertime came the old cook came on deck/Saying fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya’/At 7 p.m. a main hatchway caved in/He said, fellas, it’s been good to know ya.’ ”
Lightfoot later changed the verse for live performances to remove the implication that human error played a part in the disaster. That came after the theory was pressed on History Television that the ship was sunk by a massive rogue wave.
His later lyrics went: “When suppertime came the old cook came on deck/Saying fellas it’s too rough to feed ya’/At 7 p.m. it grew dark, it was then/He said, fellas it’s been good to know ya.’ ”
In 1995, the bell of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was raised from under160 metres of water and taken to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point at the southeast end of Lake Superior.
Under the lake, it was replaced with a replica bearing the names of the dead.
There was a tribute at the Port Dover Harbour Museum on Nov. 5. Other tributes are planned at the Lake Superior Marine Museum Association in Duluth, Minn., Detroit Historical Society, the Mariner’s Church in Detroit, and the Great Lakes Historical Society National Museum in Toledo, Ohio.
There’s also the annual tribute at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, where the ship’s bell tolls 30 times — 29 times in memory of each life lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald and another time in memory of all mariners lost on the Great Lakes.