Posted on Sun, Oct. 23, 2005
DIANA LAMBDIN MEYER/Special to The Star
Split Rock Lighthouse, about 50 miles north of Duluth, Minn., was the last lighthouse to make visual contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald. The freighter is remembered in ceremonies at the lighthouse each Nov. 10.
SUPERIOR SHIPWRECK
Edmund Fitzgerald remembered in sites and song
By DIANA LAMBDIN MEYER
Special to The Star
ON THE SHORES OF LAKE SUPERIOR — I first learned about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on an eight-track tape.
That dates me, I know. If the big freighter had sunk today, I might have known about it almost immediately from CNN, online and dozens of other 24-hour news services.
But almost 30 years ago, Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot was part of my eight-track collection. And his most well-known song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” tells of the November 1975 loss of the ship in Lake Superior near the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down, Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee,” Lightfoot sings. Can’t you hear it? “The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead, When the skies of November turn gloomy.”
Lightfoot’s woeful voice and the song’s droning rhythm reflect the peril of the maritime disaster. Even today it captures the pain felt by all those affiliated with the shipping industry.
The Fitz was lost in one of the most powerful storms ever on Superior. Each year the 29 persons who went down with the Fitzgerald, as well as others lost in Great Lakes shipwrecks, are remembered at commemorations around the shipping channels. On Nov. 10 additional homage will be paid at four sites on the Great Lakes as the gales of November are remembered.
Although the Fitzgerald garners much of the attention, these events and the museums that host them provide a fascinating look into the otherwise largely unnoticed and treacherous world of maritime traffic along the U.S./Canadian border.
Superior stats
It was a warm, sunny day — Nov. 9, 1975 — when the 735-foot Edmund Fitzgerald left the docks of Superior, Wis., fully loaded with 26,000 tons of iron ore. At the time the Fitz was the largest boat on the Great Lakes. Technically it was carrying taconite pellets, a less pure form of iron that is a staple product of Minnesota’s “iron mountains.”
On any given day at the Superior, Wis.-Duluth, Minn., harbor, you can see taconite and other raw materials being loaded aboard superfreighters heading to ports along the Great Lakes or to international harbors by way of the 2,300-mile seaway system to the Atlantic Ocean.
On a dinner cruise through the harbor last September, we felt dwarfed as our sightseeing boat nudged up beside freighters nearly a third larger than the Fitzgerald.
Vessels on Lake Superior are called boats, not ships, and people on the lakes know the names and statistics of these big freighters like many Kansas Citians know the names and statistics of Chiefs players.
Visitors can learn which boats are coming and going at
www.lsmma .com , the Web site for the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center in Duluth’s trendy Canal Park. If you happen to be visiting this museum when a boat arrives, you’ll hear announcements regarding its name, cargo and other statistics, much like when a star athlete takes the field.
Every year the center holds an event called “The Gales of November.” Now in its 18th year the Gales of November was begun as a tribute to the Fitzgerald, but it now provides an opportunity for participants to learn about other shipwrecks and environmental factors that affect Lake Superior.
This year’s event, Nov. 11 and 12, includes shipwreck artifact exhibits, boat tours, a silent auction and speakers on topics ranging from lighthouse preservation to documentation of shipwrecks to exotic species that are threatening the ecosystem of the lake.
As the event concludes, a bell rings 30 times, once for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald and an additional time for all others lost on the Great Lakes.
Under the radar
As the Fitzgerald made its way up Minnesota’s rugged North Shore, the winds switched, bringing freezing rain, snow and waves crashing over the railing. The last lighthouse to make visual contact with the Fitz was Split Rock Lighthouse in Two Harbors, Minn., about 50 miles north of Duluth.
Split Rock is now operated by the Minnesota Historical Society, which occasionally turns on the historic light. Its beautiful 25-acre grounds include a restored keepers house and exhibits that provide insight to the lonely and dangerous world of light keepers more than 100 years ago. A hiking trail that leads down 171 steps to Lake Superior’s cold waters is well worth the cardiovascular workout. The view of the lighthouse and rugged coastline from the bottom of the 130-foot cliff is spectacular.
Each Nov. 10, the lighthouse closes temporarily at 4:30 p.m., which was about the time the Fitz passed this harbor. At that time the names of the lost crew members are read and a ship’s bell rings 29 times, often by a relative of a victim. The historic beacon is lighted and visitors are allowed inside, the only time of the year to see the lighted beacon from inside.
Seeking protection from the storm, the Fitz continued to hug the shoreline. It was joined in its long struggle through the storm by the Arthur M. Anderson, a superfreighter that had departed Superior/Duluth shortly after the Fitz.
About seven miles from the Fitzgerald, the Anderson’s captain and crew kept radio contact with the Fitz and learned that radar and other navigational equipment had failed. Winds were gusting up to 90 mph and waves capping at 40 feet.
At 7:10 p.m. Capt. Ernest McSorley on the Fitzgerald radioed that water was coming in, but they were holding their own. That was his last transmission. A few minutes later the Anderson could no longer see the lights from the Fitz. At 7:25 p.m. the radar image disappeared.
Local lore
The great boat lies in two pieces beneath 530 feet of water on Caribou Shoals Reef in Canadian waters, 17 miles from Whitefish Bay, Mich. None of the crew was recovered.
Several theories have been debated on the exact cause of the disaster. The most widely accepted is that as the Fitzgerald topped a 40-foot wave, the load created a torpedo effect, forcing it to Lake Superior’s floor.
A good place to study those theories and learn more about the 6,000 additional shipwrecks on the Great Lakes is at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. This is where the Fitzgerald and the Arthur M. Anderson were heading and is considered the turning point for all shipping traffic in and out of Lake Superior.
Whitefish Point Light, built in 1849, was tragically dark the night the Fitzgerald sought shelter from the storm. The grounds today include a museum, the restored keeper’s quarters, a video theater and bed-and-breakfast inn.
Exhibits cover numerous shipwrecks and conditions that led to the disasters, but the focal point is the 200-pound bell from the pilothouse of the Fitzgerald. In July 1995 a dive crew from the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, with encouragement from crew family members, removed the bell from the roof of the pilothouse and replaced it with a memorial bell engraved with the names of those who died on the Fitzgerald.
In Sault Ste. Marie, about 70 nautical miles from where the Fitzgerald went down, Linda Hoath was the young mother of a 6-month-old baby the night of Nov. 10, 1975, and had to go out in the storm to buy formula. As she drove along Portage Avenue, she recalled, the rain was pounding so hard she could barely see.
“I heard the next day that the Edmund Fitzgerald had gone down and then the stories about the Arthur M. Anderson going back for her,” Hoath said. “I loved the ships and knew them so well, it was very upsetting for me.”
Hoath told us this story a few weeks ago at the Soo Locks Visitors Center in Sault Ste. Marie, where a schedule of boats coming through is posted and an observation deck allows a bird’s-eye inspection of the proceedings.
Later that day, as we crossed the five-mile long Mackinac Bridge over Lake Huron to Michigan’s lower peninsula, a huge freighter was just crossing under the bridge. We strained our eyes, searching for the name of the boat, beginning to feel the bond that others in the region have with these huge vessels — and there it was: The Arthur M. Anderson, which had been with the Edmund Fitzgerald 30 years ago, was passing directly beneath us, a blue sky and calm winds its only companion on this voyage.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mariners’ Church
“In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
the church bell chimed ’til it rang 29 times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald”
— Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”
The Mariners’ Church of Detroit was founded in 1849 as a sanctuary for those who worked on the Great Lakes. At the time of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the Rev. Richard Ingalls knelt in prayer and then rang the church bell 29 times, one for each soul lost. This was the beginning of “The Call to the Last Watch,” the bell-ringing ceremony that will be replicated at numerous sites around the Great Lakes on Nov. 10, including at the Mariners’ Church of Detroit.
■ Mariners’ Church, 170 E. Jefferson Ave., Detroit. (313) 259-2206 or
www.marinerschurchofdetroit.org