The final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald began November 9, 1975 at
the Burlington Northern Railroad Dock No.1, Superior, Wisconsin. Captain Ernest
M. McSorley had loaded her with 26,116 long tons of taconite pellets, made of
processed iron ore, heated and rolled into marble-size balls. Departing
Superior about 4:30 pm, she was soon joined by the Arthur M. Anderson,
which had departed Two Harbors, Minnesota under Captain Bernie Cooper. The two
ships were in radio contact. The Fitzgerald being the faster took the
lead, with the distance between the vessels ranging from 10 to 15 miles.
Aware of a building November storm entering the Great Lakes from the great
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 took them between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula.
They would later make a turn to the southeast to eventually reach the shelter
of Whitefish Point.
Weather conditions continued to deteriorate. Gale warnings had been issued
at 7 pm on November 9, upgraded to storm warnings early in the morning of
November 10. While conditions were bad, with winds gusting to 50 knots and seas
12 to 16 feet, both Captains had often piloted their vessels in similar
conditions. In the early afternoon of November 10, the Fitzgerald had
passed Michipicoten Island and was approaching Caribou Island. The Anderson
was just approaching Michipicoten, about three miles off the West End Light.
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"November
10, 1975" by William Koelpin |
Captain Cooper maintained that he watched the Edmund 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. He and his officers watched the Fitzgerald
pass right over the dangerous area of shallow water. By this time, snow and
rising spray had obscured the Fitzgerald from sight, visible 17 miles
ahead on radar.
At 3:30 pm that afternoon, Captain McSorley radioed Captain 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 was checking down his speed to allow
the Anderson to close the distance for safety. Captain Cooper asked
McSorley if he had his pumps going, and McSorley said, "Yes, both of
them."
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"The
Wreck Site II" by David Conklin |
As the afternoon wore on, radio communications with the Fitzgerald
concerned navigational information but no extraordinarily alarming reports were
offered by Captain McSorley. At about 5:20 pm the crest of a wave smashed the Anderson's
starboard lifeboat, making it unusable. Captain Cooper reported winds from the
NW x W (305 ) at a steady 58 knots with gusts to 70 knots, and seas of 18 to 25
feet.
According to Captain Cooper, about 6:55 pm, he and the men in the Anderson's
pilothouse felt a "bump", felt the ship lurch, and then turned to see
a monstrous wave engulfing their entire vessel from astern. The wave worked its
way along the deck, crashing on the back of the pilothouse, driving the bow of
the Anderson down into the sea. "Then the Anderson just
raised up and shook herself off of all that water - barrooff - just like a big
dog. Another wave just like the first one or bigger hit us again. I watched
those two waves head down the lake towards the Fitzgerald, and I think
those were the two that sent him under."
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Morgan Clark, 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. First mate Clark spoke to the Fitzgerald one last time,
about 7:10 pm:
"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
Captain 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 kept getting
obscured by sea return. And around 7:15 pm, the pip was lost again, but this
time, did not reappear. Clark called the Fitzgerald again at about 7:22
pm. There was no answer.
Captain Cooper contacted the other ships in the area by radio asking if
anyone had seen or heard from the Fitzgerald. The weather had cleared
dramatically. His written report states:
"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."
With mounting apprehension, Captain Cooper called the Coast Guard once
again, about 8:00 pm, and firmly expressed his concern for the welfare of the Fitzgerald.
The Coast Guard then initiated its search for the missing ship. By that time
the Anderson had reached the safety of Whitefish Bay to the relief of
all aboard. But the Coast Guard called Captain Cooper back at 9:00 pm:
"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. Captain 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 Anderson turned out to be the primary vessel in
the search, taking the lead. With the ship pounding 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 leave the safety of Whitefish Bay to join in the search
at the time. The Coast Guard launched a fixed-wing HU-16 aircraft at 10
pm and dispatched two cutters, the Naugatuck and the Woodrush.
The Naugatuck arrived at 12:45 pm on November 11, and the Woodrush
arrived on November 14, having journeyed all the way from Duluth, Minnesota.
The Coast Guard conducted an extensive and thorough search. On November 14,
a U.S. Navy plane equipped with a magnetic anomaly detector located a strong
contact 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point. During the following three
days, the Coast Guard cutter Woodrush, using a sidescan sonar, located
two large pieces of wreckage in the same area. Another sonar survey was
conducted November 22-25.
The following May, 1976, Woodrush was again on the scene to conduct a
third sidescan sonar survey. Contacts were strong enough to bring in the U.S.
Navy's CURV III controlled underwater recovery vehicle, operating from
Woodrush.
The CURV III unit took 43,000 feet of video tape and 900 photographs
of the wreck. On May 20, 1976, the words "Edmund Fitzgerald"
were clearly seen on the stern, upside down, 535 feet below the surface of the
lake.
On April 15, 1977 the U.S. Coast Guard released its official report of
"Subject: S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, official number 277437, sinking
in Lake Superior on 10 November 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 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."
However, the Lake Carrier's Association vigorously disagreed with the Coast
Guard's suggestion that the lack of attention to properly closing the hatch
covers by the crew was responsible for the disaster. They issued a letter to
the National Transportation Safety Board in September, 1977. The Lake Carrier's
Association was inclined to accept that Fitzgerald passed over the Six
Fathom Shoal Area as reported by Captain Cooper.
Later, in a videotaped conversation with GLSHS, Captain Cooper said that he
always believed McSorley knew something serious had happened to Fitzgerald
as the ship passed over Caribou Shoal. Cooper believes that from that point on,
McSorley knew he was sinking.
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Restored
Fitzgerald bell - Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum |
Conflicting theories about the cause of the tragedy remain active today.
GLSHS' three expeditions to the wreck revealed that it is likely she
"submarined" bow first into an enormous sea, as damage forward is
indicative of a powerful, quick force to the superstructure. But what caused
the ship to take on water, enough to lose buoyancy and dive to the bottom so
quickly, without a single cry for help, cannot be determined.
Twenty-nine men were lost when the Fitzgerald went down. There is absolutely no conclusive evidence to determine the cause of the sinking. The bell of the ship is now on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum as a memorial to her lost crew.
