Yachting and Boating World forums: 36 years ago today...

The great bulk iron ore carrier the SS Edmund Fitzgerald foundered 15nm from Whitefish Bay on Lake Superior.

She certainly wasn't the only ship to founder on this great lake, nor was she the greatest disaster in Great Lakes maritime history, but she was immortalised in the song written by Gordon Lightfoot.

The "Big Fitz" as she was known weighed 13,632 tons and was 729 feet long. In 1958, when it was first launched, it was the largest carrier on the Great Lakes, and remained so until 1971. The Fitzgerald was labeled "The Pride of the American Flag". In 1964 it became the first ship on the Great Lakes to carry more than a million tons of ore through the Soo Locks. On November 9, 1975 she departed from Superior, WI with approximately 26,000 tons of ore bound for Detroit MI. Shortly after leaving, the Fitzgerald made contact with the Arthur M. Anderson bound, on a similar route, for Gary IN.

The Big Fitz weas indeed large, but its the dimensions of the lake itself that are truly staggering. Superior has a surface area of 4x that of North and South Wales put together and nearly that of the Irish Sea - but much, much deeper and far greater in volumetric terms. She has an average depth of 550 feet with the deepest parts plumbing 1340 feet.

The Fitz foundered in water only 2/3rds her depth at 550 feet and all because of a couple of factors. One being a typical November storm that arrived early and tirned into a Hurrican force blast that whipped the lake up into a fury developing what was and still is known as the 3 sisters - a succesion of 3 large breaking waves that are perilous to any ship, let alone one whose hull was allegedly suspect.

Why suspect? Well majority thinking on this says that the Fitz broke in two and dissappeared almost instantly - the wreckage still lies in two pieces on the lake bed. This was confirmed at the time by the crew of the Arthur M. Anderson. Above one wave she was there and by the secong huge wave, she was gone - with all 29 hands lost.

In the song by Gordon Lightfoot there is a line that says:

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours"

And whether your boat is big or small, anyone who has been caught out in bad weather will know how this feels only too well.

May God bless all mariners.

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Morocco and France Apartments

And while you sit and whistle Dixie with your money and your powers,
I can hear the flowers a-growin' in the rubble of the towers...