November 10, 1975, 50 years ago: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in a storm in Lake Superior, between the American State of Wisconsin and the Canadian Province of Ontario, with 29 men aboard. There were no survivors.
A year later, Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot would have a hit song about the ship, reaching Number 2 on the U.S. music charts.
Lightfoot described the way the wind whipped up the Great Lakes as "the Witch of November come stealing." And there was recent precedent: On November 29, 1966, 9 years to the month earlier, the freighter SS Daniel J. Morrell, named for a Pennsylvania Congressman, sank in Lake Huron, taking with it 28 of its 29 crewmen. The sole survivor was named Dennis Hale.
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, known as "the Eddie Fitz" or "the Big Fitz" was launched in 1958. As Lightfoot said, "As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most." In fact, at the time of its launch, it was the largest ship of any kind sailing the Great Lakes: From west to east, Lake Superior, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Erie and Lake Ontario.
(Mark Russell, a native of Buffalo, New York, between Erie and Ontario, and a comedian whose specialty was politics, once commented on a bill before Congress to declare Lake Champlain, between New York, Vermont and Quebec, "the 6th Great Lake": "It is not a Great Lake. It's a pretty good lake, but it's not a great lake." He had a point: It is considerably smaller, with considerably less commercial traffic.)
The ship was owned by the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, and named for its president. Its home port was Milwaukee. There, on June 8, 1958, it was launched. It took Edmund’s wife Elizabeth 3 tries to break the champagne bottle at its christening. A delay of 36 minutes followed, while the shipyard crew struggled to release the keel blocks. Upon sideways launch, the ship created a large wave that "doused" the spectators and then crashed into a pier before righting herself. One man watching the launching had a heart attack and later died. Maybe all of this was a bad sign.
The ship regularly went to Duluth, Minnesota, where it would pick up deliveries of taconite iron ore from nearby mines in Minnesota's "Iron Range," and taking them to Great Lakes port cities, including Detroit, Toledo and Cleveland. She set seasonal haul records six different times.
On November 9, 1975, at 2:15 PM Central Standard Time, commanded by Captain Ernest McSorley -- as Lightfoot sang, "with a crew and good captain, well-seasoned" -- it left Superior, Wisconsin on its last voyage of the calendar year, due to arrive at Zug Island, off the coast of Detroit. (Lightfoot, either mistakenly or on purpose because it made for a better rhyme, said, "they left fully loaded for Cleveland.")
It would have to be the last voyage of the year, because it was getting colder, and a storm on any of the Great Lakes could be as bad as one on an ocean. As Lightfoot sang, such storms were known among the freighters' crews as "the Gales of November" and "the Witch of November."
The Edmund Fitzgerald traveled Lake Superior at a top speed of 16 miles per hour. At 1:00 AM on November 10, the ship's radio reported winds of 52 knots (60 miles per hour), and waves 10 feet high. At 2:00 AM, they received a report from the National Weather Service, upgrading their official warning from gale to storm. The ship kept going through the night, and the next morning. At 2:45 in the afternoon, it began to snow.
Another freighter crossing Lake Superior, the Arthur M. Anderson, had been in contact with them much of the way, and were even within visual contact until the storm and the fog got to be too much. At 3:30 PM, McSorley radioed the Anderson, reporting to Captain Bernie Cooper that the Fitzgerald was taking on water and listing. He chose to slow his ship down, so that the Anderson could catch up, in case a rescue was necessary.
Shortly afterward, the U.S. Coast Guard warned all shipping that the Soo Locks, between the city of Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario and the city of the same name on Michigan's Upper Peninsula, were closed, and safe anchorage should be sought.
At 4:10, McSorley called the Anderson again: The Fitzgerald's radar had failed, so they were effectively blind. The Anderson would have to get close, and use their radar to act as the Fitzgerald's "eyes." Cooper told McSorley head for Whitefish Bay, Ontario. McSorley learned that the lighthouse at Whitefish Point was on, but not its radio beacon.
At 6:00, both ships were reporting winds of 58 knots (67 MPH), with gusts up to 75 knots (86 MPH -- hurricane force, by definition, is 75 MPH). Waves were regularly as high as 25 feet, and some as high as 35 feet.
At 7:10, the Anderson received a message from McSorley, saying, "We are holding our own." It seemed to be a message of confidence, unlike in the song. But it would be the Fitzgerald's last received message. There was never a distress signal. The Anderson lost both radio and radar contact. At 7:39, after nearly half an hour of trying to reach McSorley, Cooper called the Coast Guard station at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan on Channel 16, the distress channel -- not for his ship, but for the Fitzgerald.
There weren't sufficient search-and-rescue vessels to look for the Fitzgerald. At 9:00, the Coast Guard advised Cooper to turn around and look for survivors. At 10:30, the Coast Guard asked all commercial vessels in or near Whitefish Bay to assist. Although no other vessels were lost in the rescue attempt, it would take until November 14 to find the Fitzgerald, its hull broken in two and sitting on the bottom of the lake.
The Mariners' Church in Detroit -- in the song, Lightfoot called it "the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral" -- held a memorial service, ringing its bell 29 times, once for each life lost. From 1976 to 2005, it held a memorial every November 10. Starting in 2006, it broadened the annual ceremony, to commemorate all lives lost on the Great Lakes.
Lightfoot had also called the Church "a musty old hall." Due to complaints, he changed the lyric to "a rustic old hall" in his live performances. The native of Orillia, Ontario, a few miles inland from Lake Huron, died on May 1, 2023, at the age of 84.
The 29 men: Ernest McSorley, Captain, at the age of 63 the oldest man on board; John McCarthy, first mate, 62; James Pratt, second mate, 44; Michael Armagost, third mate, 37; George Holl, chief engineer, 60; Edward Bindon, 1st assistant engineer, 47; Thomas Edwards, assistant engineer, 50; Oliver Champeau, assistant engineer, 41; Russell Haskell, assistant engineer, 40; Ralph Walter, oiler, 58; Blaine Wilhelm, oiler, 52; Thomas Bentsen, oiler, 23; John Simmons, senior wheelman, 62; John Poviach, wheelman, 59; Eugene O'Brien, wheelman, 50; William Spengler, watchman, 59; Ransom Cundy, watchman, 53; Karl Peckol, watchman, at 20 the youngest man on board; Paul Riippa, deckhand, 22; Bruce Hudson, deckhand, 22; Mark Thomas, deckhand, 21; Gordon MacLellan, wiper, 30; Joseph Mazes, special maintenance man, 59; Thomas Borgeson, maintenance man, 41; Robert Rafferty, steward, 62; Allen Kalmon, second steward, 43; Frederick Beetcher, porter, 56; Nolan Church, porter, 55; and David Weiss, cadet, 22.
As Lightfoot sang, "And all that remains are the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters."
Lightfoot died on May 1, 2023.
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