MICHIGAN, USA — It's been nearly half a century since the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, taking the lives of all 29 members of her crew.
49 years ago on Sunday, one of the most "mysterious and controversial" of all shipwrecks on the Great Lakes took place 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point.
According to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, the only shipwreck to surpass the Edmund Fitzgerald's story in books, film and media is the Titanic.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum's annual Edmund Fitzgerald memorial ceremony was livestreamed at 7 p.m.
13 ON YOUR SIDE also livestreamed the ceremony, which can be found here:
All of the information about the Edmund Fitzgerald in this story is credited to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.
The Ship
The ship was created as a business project for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
The company contracted with Great Lakes Engineering Works of Ecorse, Michigan to construct what they called a "maximum sized" Great Lakes bulk carrier.
On Aug. 7, 1957, the Edmund Fitzgerald's keel was laid as Hull No. 301.
The ship was 729 feet long and weighed 13,632 gross tons. It was the largest ship on the Great Lakes for 13 years, until 1971.
The Launch
The ship was named after the president and chairman of the Board of Northwestern Mutual, Edmund Fitzgerald, and launched on June 8, 1958, at River Rouge, Michigan.
The launch didn't exactly go as planned, with some "odd" things happening during the event.
Thousands of people showed up to see the ship take her first dip into the water.
Edmund Fitzgerald's wife, Elizabeth Fitzgerald, had the honor of christening the ship. However, it took her three tries to break the champagne bottle over the bow.
To some, this was considered as a bad omen for the ship.
When the ship was launched, the impact in the launch slip caused a massive wave to collapse a nearby grand stand.
One spectator had a heart attack in that moment, and died shortly after.
Video from the launch, put together by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, can be found here:
The Work
Following its launch, the Edmund Fitzgerald continued to work for the next 17 years.
Northwestern Mutual placed the ship under permanent charter to the Columbia Transportation Division of Oglebay Norton Company in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Edmund Fitzgerald's normal course traveled between Silver Bay, Minnesota, where she loaded taconite, to the lower lakes in the Detroit and Toledo area for steel mills.
The ship was usually empty on her return trips to Silver Bay.
The Sinking
The Edmund Fitzgerald's final journey began on Nov. 9, 1975, at the Burlington Northern Railroad Dock No. 1 in Superior, Wisconsin.
Captain Ernest M. McSorley manned the ship for her very last voyage.
The Edmund Fitzgerald was loaded with 26,116 long tons of taconite pellets which were made of processed iron ore and heated and rolled into marble-sized balls.
The ship left Superior at about 2:30 p.m. and was soon joined by the Arthur M. Anderson, a ship that had left Two Harbors, Minnesota under Captain Bernie Cooper.
The two ships were in radio contact throughout the voyage.
The Edmund Fitzgerald was the faster ship and took the lead, creating a distance between the two ships of about 10 to 15 miles.
McSorley and Cooper knew there was a building November storm entering the Great Lakes from the great plains, so they agreed to take the northerly course across Lake Superior. With this course, they hoped to be protected by the highlands on the Canadian shore.
The course took them between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula.
Later, the ships would make a southeast turn to eventually reach Whitefish Point.
Weather conditions on the journey continued to worsen. Gale warnings were issued at 7 p.m. on Nov. 9, which were upgraded to storm warnings early in the morning of Nov. 10.
Winds were gusting to 50 knots and waves were 12 to 16 feet tall.
In the early afternoon on Nov. 10, the Edmund Fitzgerald passed Michipicoten Island and was approaching Caribou Island.
The Arthur M. Anderson was approaching Michipicoten about three miles off of the West End Light.
Cooper said they saw the Edmund Fitzgerald pass too close to the Six Fathom Shoal to the north of Caribou Island. He said he could clearly see the ship and the beacon on Caribou on his radar set and could measure the distance between the two.
Cooper and his crew watched the Edmund Fitzgerald pass over the dangerous area of shallow water.
At this time, snow and rising spray from the water had obscured the Edmund Fitzgerald from sight. It was visible 17 miles ahead of the Arthur M. Anderson on radar.
At 3:30 p.m., McSorley radioed Cooper and said:
“Anderson, this is the Fitzgerald. I have a fence rail down, two vents lost or damaged, and a list. I’m checking down. Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish?”
McSorley slowed down to allow the Arthur M. Anderson to close the distance for safety.
Cooper asked McSorley if he had his pumps going. McSorley replied: "Yes, both of them.”
As the afternoon went on, radio communications between the ships consisted of navigational information, but nothing alarming.
At about 5:20 p.m., the crest of a wave crashed into the Arthur M. Anderson's starboard lifeboat, which made it unusable.
Cooper reported winds from the northwest and west at 58 knots with gusts to 70 knots and 18 to 25 foot waves.
At 6:55 p.m., Cooper said he and the men in the Arthur M. Anderson's pilothouse felt a "bump," felt the ship lurch, then saw a wave engulfing their ship from astern.
The wave flooded the deck, crashed into the back of the pilothouse and drove the bow of the Arthur M. Anderson into the sea.
Morgan Clark, the first mate of the Arthur M. Anderson, kept watching the Edmund Fitzgerald on the radar to calculate her distance from other vessels near Whitefish Point.
Clark said he kept losing sight of the Edmund Fitzgerald on the radar from sea return. This means the waves were so high they interfered with the radar reflection.
Around 7:10 p.m., Clark spoke to the Edmund Fitzgerald for the last time. The transcription from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum reads:
"Fitzgerald, this is the Anderson. Have you checked down?”
“Yes, we have.”
“Fitzgerald, we are about 10 miles behind you, and gaining about 1 1/2 miles per hour. Fitzgerald, there is a target 19 miles ahead of us. So the target would be 9 miles on ahead of you.”
“Well,” answered McSorley, “Am I going to clear?”
“Yes, he is going to pass to the west of you.”
“Well, fine.”
“By the way, Fitzgerald, how are you making out with your problems?” asked Clark.
“We are holding our own.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll be talking to you later.” Clark signed off.
The radar signal, or “pip” of the Fitzgerald continued to be obscured by sea return.
Around 7:15 pm, the pip was lost again, but this time, it didn't reappear.
Clark called the Fitzgerald again at about 7:22 pm., but it didn't answer.
Cooper then used the radio to contact other ships in the area and ask if anyone had seen or heard from the Fitzgerald.
According to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, the weather had cleared dramatically.
Cooper's written report stated:
“At this time I became very concerned about the Fitzgerald – couldn’t see his lights when we should have. I then called the William Clay Ford to ask him if my phone was putting out a good signal and also if perhaps the Fitzgerald had rounded the point and was in shelter, after a negative report I called the Soo Coast Guard because I was sure something had happened to the Fitzgerald. The Coast Guard were at this time trying to locate a 16-foot boat that was overdue.”
At about 8 p.m., Cooper called the Coast Guard again and said he was concerned about the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The Coast Guard began its search for the ship.
The Arthur M. Anderson reached Whitefish Bay.
Around 9 p.m., the Coast Guard called Cooper back:
“Anderson, this is Group Soo. What is your present position?”
“We’re down here, about two miles off Parisienne Island right now…the wind is northwest forty to forty-five miles here in the bay.”
“Is it calming down at all, do you think?”
“In the bay it is, but I heard a couple of the salties talking up there, and they wish they hadn’t gone out.”
“Do you think there is any possibility and you could…ah…come about and go back there and do any searching?”
“Ah…God, I don’t know…ah…that…that sea out there is tremendously large. Ah…if you want me to, I can, but I’m not going to be making any time; I’ll be lucky to make two or three miles an hour going back out that way.”
“Well, you’ll have to make a decision as to whether you will be hazarding your vessel or not, but you’re probably one of the only vessels right now that can get to the scene. We’re going to try to contact those saltwater vessels and see if they can’t possibly come about and possibly come back also…things look pretty bad right now; it looks like she may have split apart at the seams like the Morrell did a few years back.”
“Well, that’s what I been thinking. But we were talking to him about seven and he said that everything was going fine. He said that he was going along like an old shoe; no problems at all.”
“Well, again, do you think you could come about and go back and have a look in the area?”
“Well, I’ll go back and take a look, but God, I’m afraid I’m going to take a hell of a beating out there… I’ll turn around and give ‘er a whirl, but God, I don’t know. I’ll give it a try.”
“That would be good.”
“Do you realize what the conditions are out there?”
No reply from the Coast Guard. Cooper tries again.
“Affirmative. From what your reports are I can appreciate the conditions. Again, though, I have to leave that decision up to you as to whether it would be hazarding your vessel or not. If you think you can safely go back up to the area, I would request that you do so. But I have to leave the decision up to you.”
“I’ll give it a try, but that’s all I can do.”
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum provided radio chatter between the Arthur M. Anderson and the Coast Guard on Nov. 10, 1975:
The Arthur M. Anderson was the primary vessel in the search for the Edmund Fitzgerald. It found two of the ship's lifeboats and other debris, but no survivors.
At the time, only one other vessel, the William Clay Ford, left Whitefish Bay to join in the search.
Around 10 p.m. the Coast Guard launched a fixed-wing HU-16 aircraft and dispatched two cutters, the Naugatuck and the Woodrush.
At 12:45 p.m. on Nov. 11, the Naugatuck arrived. The Woodrush came in from Duluth, Minnesota and didn't arrive until Nov. 14.
On Nov. 14, a U.S. Navy plane with a magnetic anomaly detector found a strong contact 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point.
Over the next three days, the Woodrush used a sidescan sonar and found two large pieces of wreckage in the same area.
Another sonar survey of the area happened from Nov. 22-25.
Finding the Ship
In May 1976, Woodrush completed another sidescan sonar survey. Contacts were then strong enough to bring in the U.S. Navy's CURV III controlled underwater recovery vehicle.
The vehicle took 43,000 feet of video tape and 900 photos of the wreckage.
On May 20, 1976, the words "Edmund Fitzgerald" could be seen on the stern, upside down, 535 feet deep.
On April 15, 1977, the U.S. Coast Guard released its official report on the sinking of the ship.
The report was called, "Subject: S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, official number 277437, sinking in Lake Superior on 10 November 1975 with loss of life.”
Although the Coast Guard said the cause of the sinking couldn't be conclusively determined, it did maintain that:
"The most probable cause of the sinking of the S.S. Edmund 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 closures as boarding seas rolled along the spar deck.”
The Lake Carrier's Association disagreed with this suggestion that a lack of attention when closing the hatch led to the ship's sinking.
In September 1977, the association issued a letter to the National Transportation Safety Board that said it was inclined to accept that the ship passed over the Six Fathom Shoal Area, per Cooper's reports.
In a videotaped conversation between Cooper and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS), Cooper said he always believed McSorley had known something serious happened to the ship as it passed over the Caribou Shoal.
Cooper said from that point on, he believes McSorley knew that the ship was sinking.
GLSHS has made three underwater expeditions to the wreck, in 1989, 1994 and 1995.
Through these trips, the society determined it's likely the ship "submarined" bow first into the lake, as damage forward indicates a powerful, quick force to the superstructure.
However, it's still unclear what caused the ship to take on enough water to lose buoyancy and sink without so much as a cry for help.
According to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, "There is absolutely no conclusive evidence to determine the cause of the sinking."
The ship's 200-pound bronze bell was recovered on July 4, 1995 and is on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum as a memorial to the 29 lives lost in the shipwreck.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum provided the last interview conducted with Cooper, captain of the Arthur M. Anderson, before he passed in 1993:
For shipwreck enthusiasts, 13 ON YOUR SIDE put together a special that covers nine stories of Great Lakes shipwrecks discovered by explorers:
