Great Lakes Shipwrecks Disasters Including the Edmund Fitzgerald

erie huron michigan ontario superior we know them as the five great lakes between them they hold the largest surface of fresh water on earth all but lake michigan share shoreline with canada and each is unique in its offerings to commercial ventures and pleasure seekers as well as in the dangers that threaten ships out on their waters as maritime historian and author william ratigan noted in his book great lakes shipwrecks and survivals during the 20 years between 1879 and 1899 some six thousand vessels were wrecked on these inland seas and of this number more than one thousand were total losses of ships cargos and hands nowhere in the atlantic or pacific is there an expanse of ninety thousand square miles to muster such a record of death and destruction all told experts estimate that more than ten thousand shipwrecks litter the floors of the five great lakes each disaster with its own tragic story sobering numbers indeed [Music] the reason we've got 10 000 wrecks on the great lakes is because of the instant storms that we get i mean i've been on lake superior and lake michigan lake huron where i'll go down diving come up 20 minutes later and i went from flat lake to a five foot swale or even more in 20 30 minutes because a storm has come through we have a lot of different i mean you've got the great lakes basically on the west end is is plains okay you've got the planes coming in which is flat country on the east side you get into a little bit probably not enough of the appalachian trail and mountains are too far away from the great lakes except for lake ontario on that so you've got this open area that is pretty much plains and flat lands and that weather can come in very quickly and create a storm plus you've got the arctic winds that are coming down from canada and the two meet and it causes some problems both and that has been historically known you know in many a different uh the 1905 storm the 1913 storm the 1940s storm these all basically settled in different areas the michigan was hit in the 1941 lake huron took quite a bit in 1905 and the 19 lake michigan also took it to 1905. a 1913 storm basically covered a good portion of part of lake superior quite a bit of michigan lake here and got hit the most lake erie all these have vessels that were lost in these storms because of the instant storm and the length of the storm can go from very quick to very short we've been on the lake we've seen white uh sprouts okay where you look out there and there's basically a water tornado going on and you can see it five minutes later it's gone okay and there's been documented history where ships have met these and disappeared some of the finest ships ever to work the great lakes met their fates and the jaws of wicked storms in 1958 the carl d bradley split in two and sank in lake michigan with great loss of life only a few years later in 1966 the daniel j morrell suffered a similar fate breaking apart on the surface and sinking into the depths of lake huron then in 1975 in what might be the best known great lakes disaster of them all the mighty edmund fitzgerald lost its battle with a raging november storm and dove to the depths its entire crew was lost the accounts of these disasters send shocking reverberations from coast to coast serving as grim reminders of what might happen when the creations of humanity lock horns with the forces of nature in the cases of these three ships the news seemed unbelievable how could such a thing happen in the age of modern shipping when vessels were equipped with radar state-of-the-art technology and communications and the knowledge gained from a long history of navigating the stormy waters of the great lakes could these tragedies have been prevented although they were responsible for the demise of more ships than any other natural cause storms were by no means the only villain in the history of great lakes shipwrecks some vessels were brought down or torn apart by ice as in the case of the rao simmons often remembered as the christmas tree ship which ran into a nasty storm on lake michigan in 1912 only to lose her buoyancy after becoming encrusted in ice low visibility or fog is another element of the lakes often causing deadly collisions such was the case with the senator which went down in 1929 a year that saw a large number of ships beaten down by the forces of nature then there's the issue of human error which could be found at the heart of a multitude of collisions as well as in other disasters fire caused a number of tragedies especially in the older wooden structures such as the griffith which burned on lake erie in 1850 the phoenix which sank on lake michigan in 1847 or the neuronic which burned on lake ontario in 1949 the lakeland in a rare incident sank when her captain ordered the opening of the valves known as seacocks causing the vessel to leak and sink in lake michigan in 1924 finally there is the horrifying story of the eastland which capsized while taking on passengers its 835 victims made it the costliest disaster in the history of the great lakes [Music] great lake storms by nature can be much nastier and more difficult to navigate than storms on the ocean this was especially true in the 19th century before the advent of radar and modern communications systems you didn't have a whole lot of choice whether you're out there or not because the captain had to be his own weatherman there was no uh no weather channel to pick up and uh the weather reporting was pretty primary and if they're flying the storm flags are you the smartest thing to do is stay in in port but of course ships don't make any money when they're in port and so you took your chances and you kept watching that weather and if it uh if it if you were lucky you uh you made corrections accordingly you say okay it's coming out of the west we'll go over along lake michigan we'll go over on the west shore we'll be in the lee or we'll go up and hit uh beaver island and go to anchor behind beaver island and and uh ride it out there but you're continually watching that weather and continually trying to figure out how how to keep going and yet stay ahead of it or keep it moving and better constructed chips again with new high-tensile steel they don't have rivet riveted construction anymore it's all well welded construction better navigation instruments such as the gps which is a tremendous navigation instrument better radars than they had when they first came out they improved those tremendously over the years in the early days of course there were no controls there were no requirements for for demonstrating a capability to sail and as a result there were a lot of people who simply built a ship and sailed it and and it either was badly built and came apart or it was or wrecked was just simply put up in a mud bank someplace when they lost interest and left as time has gone along of course there have been more and more controls rules and and and very properly so um the early days there were no the the best equipment you had was was yourself your eyes your ears even your nose uh and and uh of course today the equipment you have uh as a matter of fact i would be willing to wager that the average 40-foot yacht today has got better equipment on it than the edmund fitzgerald had and and you can uh locate yourself when you're in and people that are around you so much better um there was none of that in the early days you you sailed uh pretty much by instinct and uh it's amazing to me that more men weren't lost about there there were certainly a great many who were well the that's one thing the the waves are closer together on the great lakes than they are in the ocean they're farther apart on the ocean and then which makes for bigger seas when you get bigger seas they're farther apart the same that's what happens in the great lakes you've got shorter just like lake erie they got short and choppy because it's so shallow see but the bottom of the contour the bottom has something to do with how the the the seas run october and november have been the toughest months on ships sailing the great lakes where changing weather patterns can turn calm seas into angry waters in a matter of hours people working the great lakes during these two months might become accustomed to sailing under very difficult conditions but they never take nature for granted i think when you consider the extreme number of vessels that have vanished without a trace on the great lakes and november storms this is a common occurrence it's not something that needs a supernatural phenomenon to explain it the great lakes in november are violent dangerous places to sail ships go down and sometimes no one's there to see it but anytime your vessel is bouncing around it makes it a little more difficult to to use your navigation instruments whether it be the radar or taking a line of bearing or taking a stopwatch or or looking at or even looking at the radar screen is a little difficult if you have to hang on real tight [Music] the five great lakes have seen more late season storms than anyone cares to remember but none can match the storm that raged over lake huron from november 7th to november 12 1913 howling 70 to 80 mile per hour winds whipped up monstrous waves of over 35 feet often coming in groups of three battering ships and causing the greatest loss of life and ships due to a single storm in the history of the great lakes forty ships were destroyed in the storm including eight huge carriers and 235 people lost their lives there were no survivors among any of the ships brought down by the storm in the aftermath of the storm there was the grim task of searching for the missing vessels and bringing in and identifying the victims under the best of circumstances this was difficult to do but the 1913 storm created a mystery which to this day has not been solved two of the ships out on the lake the charles s price a 524 foot ore carrier and the regina a much smaller 269 foot package freighter went missing on a day in november and were presumed lost this was confirmed several days later when victims washed ashore however a mystery sprang up when the body of the price's chief engineer was found wearing a life preserver from the regina how had this happened had the two ships collided in the storm if this had occurred the crew from both ships would have desperately grasped at any potential life-saving device making the situation with the chief engineer entirely plausible answers were not forthcoming even when the wreckage of the price was located floating upside down not far from port huron with the regina still unaccounted for some theorized that the regina might have been trapped underneath the enormous carrier a diver however proved this was not the case the regina's whereabouts remained unknown until 1985 when it was discovered in one hundred feet of water near sanilac county in michigan it too had come to rest upside down and its hull was badly damaged had it been a victim of a collision how had she met her fate no one would ever know for certain all told 48 lives were lost 28 on the price 20 on the regina men from one ship had life life jackets identifiable bodies had life ship life jackets from another ship now the question is did the ships collide or did one go down and the other ship rescued the some of the crew and then then they were lost apparently most of them were just as i say overwhelmed now that the price of course uh floated for a couple of days upside down afterwards they they didn't know exactly what it was and they had the diver down to read the name plate but she turned turtle and there's no doubt about that and i think many of the others did too and a couple of those ships were down that were small saltwater vessels that should have been able to handle the seas but uh there were no mysteries in the story of the carl d bradley the mammoth 639-foot limestone carrier that met its fate 45 years later in a november storm on lake michigan the disaster claimed 33 men but two lived to bear witness to how the ship had broken in two on the surface of the lake that such a thing could happen seemed inconceivable at the time of its launching in nineteen twenty seven the bradley was the largest ship on the great lakes and was considered unsinkable there was no question the bradley was a great worker the ship repeatedly set tonnage records over the years and in 1958 it had made 46 trips in a word this was a top-notch vessel that could look forward to many more years of service the ship and crew led by captain roland bryan had no reason to suspect that the ship's last trip of the season would be anything but the usual it had left rogers city michigan bound for buffington indiana with a load of limestone and on the evening of november 18 1958 the bradley was leaving harbor for a return trip to rogers city where most of its crew resided the weather was less than perfect but no one expected it to affect the ship any more than to slow it down however by the next morning the winds had increased and there were gale warnings on lake michigan still the bradley plowed ahead taking on the rough weather the way it always had in fact at 5 15 in the afternoon of november 19th captain brian radioed rogers city sometime around 2 am 15 minutes later his ship was in mortal danger there was a bad storm on the lakes the storm of 1958 was again by all accounts uh one of the worst storms in a long time it was uh definitely worse than the storm that sank the daniel jamerrill on lake euron people in wisconsin still remember the older folks the 1958 storm it did a lot of damage all along the lakes this was the storm that the bradley found herself in uh and again uh in 1958 weather forecasting wasn't the science it is today um there was uh not a lot of reason to believe that this storm would be as bad as it was the steel of the earlier along with the riveted construction plate played over two edges overlapping each other and drilled and riveted uh there's a there's a lot more working going on with that system the still had a lot of carbon in it they didn't have the metallurgy knowledge that we do nowadays and with that working those those rivets would actually in a bad storm crew members have reported them going off like shotgun shells if the ship was working hard enough it would shear the end off that rivet and squeeze it out one way or the other either the cargo holder and out into the lake but the bradley worked her way up the wisconsin coast and basically had gotten up near gail island about 12 miles off gill island up in the beaver islands and was fighting waves in the 20 to 25 foot area again the the vessel was empty so it was only in ballast water so it was fly it was basically high in the water and again imagine there was enough wave action to have this thing work its way back and forth back and forth until the steel at some point became brittle and she snapped in half vessel went down very quickly two crew members were the only survivors that came out of this thing they were found like 25 miles away the next day the rest of the crew was basically lost there was different vessels in the area that went to their aid to search for but nothing was ever found the wreck today lies in 360 feet of water two members of the crew first mate elmer fleming and watchman frank mays survived the tragedy fleming and mays along with two other members of the bradley's crew managed to swim to one of the bradley's rafts upon which they floated through the night facing frigid temperatures and high seas while they awaited rescue sadly one of the crewmen was lost when the wrath tipped over in the high waves and another beaten down by the ordeal on lake michigan jumped overboard in a misguided attempt to swim to a shore that was nowhere in sight fleming and maize held on and were eventually rescued the loss of the bradley carried a controversy in its wake when a dispute broke out between the bradley's insurers which claimed that the ship had been lost due to negligence and the company that owned the bradley which suggested that the ship might have broken up as a result of its crashing into a reef fleming in maize as survivors found themselves caught up in the debate safe harbor would have been in door county sturgeon bay but he had any opportunities coming up to the eastern coast of wisconsin to have put in sheboygan or fond du lac or milwaukee or even port washington has the coal power plant there they were taking coal and from ships at that time and sit out until morning the controversy about the carl d bradley is still pretty pretty much alive today because the the shipping company that owned her insisted that she was that she never broke in half on the surface and that she was intact on the bottom and uh the next year they actually went out and found the wreck and did a drop camera survey on her and they claimed that she was in tech they followed the railing all the way down and the crew that survived were fairly adamant that she broke in half on the surface they saw it break in half and so there was a lot of controversy about it now there's been a recent expedition uh to the rack again and it's actually been dived by scuba divers as has well actually as has the fits in the morel but scuba divers went down and took a look at it very briefly but the people who have seen it again say that it's somewhat inconclusive but it looks much more like it's broken in half now when they did a drop camera survey you know they had a hard time following the continuity of the hull this time when they follow the hull you can see that it's actually in two pieces it may however be connected with a tether of some sort like the fits you know initially was because the stern and the bow section are are very close together and they're actually in line so it really is difficult to tell because of it's in northern lake michigan where green bay let's out and the visibility in that area is notoriously low so i mean even on a good day up there you're lucky if you get five feet of visibility we had a the marine historical site detroit i was active in that for many many years and uh four or five years in the early days we used to keep the voluminous minutes and every time a speaker spoke it was all written out i mean they don't do that anymore but in this one set of minutes there was an architect a naval architect from the university of michigan who was speaking about how they design and test and build these these modern freighters and he mentioned he says now we can build all these safety factors into the ship but what happens after they're launched and how they're treated by the loading docks and the crews uh we can't control that and he says some of the ships have had a lot of their life uh taken away from them by improper loading uh for example the carl bradley now this was like eight or ten years before she she sunk and so this this man cited her as an example of a modern vessel that had been mistreated now i never saw that come out in the hearing and i of course the minutes we had weren't we never published them so they didn't know but i i thought it was kind of ironic that that here was a ship and there were other ships out there the same night and the same storm that didn't break into the bradley case might have been messy in court with lawsuits piling up and arguments raging over how the ship was lost but an important safety measure was initiated after the loss like most vessel losses after aftermats was that the radio was in 1959 all ships were required to have their radios put onto a backup battery system in the pilot house so if they did lose connection uh they would still be able to read to put out an sls [Music] in 1966 another massive carrier sank during a battering storm this time on lake huron the daniel j morrell a 603 foot behemoth was another great lakes workhorse and in this case there was only one member of the crew that survived the morel was on its final run of the season when it came up against forces of nature that it could not endure the morel when she was at the height of the storm would have probably been battling 20-foot waves it was definitely pretty cold you're talking about near freezing conditions intermittent snow squalls a very high wind when we sailed out of harbor beach that evening at about five o'clock it was almost flat calm and it was only a couple hours later and we were in heavy seas 15 to 20 feet and heading north up towards the north end of lake huron and it picked up really fast it just just was like a couple hours we had really heavy seas and of course it started to rain and was a very nasty night and i think the if i recall the morel sank somewhere around midnight or close to it and we were still off of the entrance to saginaw bay at that time not making very good headway maybe at only a mile or two an hour and we never heard anything from the morel and but i was having a tough time myself so i finally decided i had to turn around and head back south to port huron and get out of that heavy sea i've talked to people that actually sailed on the daniel j morrell and in 1966 this vessel was 60 years old by any standards this was a very old vessel on the lakes in fact she had been mothballed and brought back out into service um to try to squeeze one more run out that year um people that i talked to that sailed on her said that she was a rust bucket um you could put your hand through uh you know uh places on the vessel the the she was so so rusty and that was not uncommon to have vessels that were in that shape on the lakes back in the 50s and 60s she was uh probably in no condition to be out in the type of weather that she was in the morel like the bradley had been built at a time when the steel used in construction was inferior to the materials used in the modern era of shipbuilding in stormy frigid waters the older steel could become brittle and the constant pounding on the seas could lead to the kind of fracture that did in the bradley and the morale the secret in this and many of the vessels built at that time was the steel the steel was very prone to cold water and quite often these ships they ran their their march until september october they got off the lakes and they went into harbor okay now you've got a vessel as the 60s and the 70s came on and there was more need for steel they ran these ships longer and they this same steel problem that was identical to what the titanic had it still became brittle and in the cold water even though it was a storm it wasn't a horrible storm water temperature was enough to take the daniel morrell and make it brittle and that's all basically it needed um it hit a wave or it made a hit of three sister you know nobody's really proven that the only survivor was in his bunk at the time so he doesn't know but it was enough to crack that ship in half the vessel cracked in half the bow went down shortly after it cracked in half and the stern continued to drive went forward five miles before it sank well the daniel j morrell was built at a time when a lot of vessels were being built on the great lakes uh the period right after 1900 the technology for building large steel freighters had had just been developed on the great lakes and uh they were starting to break into the 500 foot range a lot of people don't realize that that's not much smaller than a lot of the modern freighters the the vessels that were built right around the turn of the century um looked a little different but we're not that dissimilar from the vessels that you know are on the lakes uh say in the 60s and 70s the daniel j morrell like most of her sisters though built around that period was built with the best technology and steel that they had at the time and unfortunately that technology wasn't um really state of the art yet uh the steel that was used to construct vessels back then um had uh a really high temper meaning that it was somewhat brittle [Music] they were proceeding up the lake they had the paul h townsend who was traveling with them the townsend was in probably a little bit better shape than the morel but as they got off of poino bark in that area the vessel basically broke in too um there was only one survivor so we do know something about what happened from uh uh dennis hale who uh was the only person to survive the daniel j morrell disaster deckhand dennis hale's survival is truly an amazing story in an otherwise tragic tale hale was off duty trying to catch some sleep when he heard the loud banging that signaled the breaking up of the morale groping around in the darkness he grabbed a pea coat and ran up to the deck wearing only the coat and his underwear this would be his only protection from the bitter cold and freezing waters as he clung to life aboard one of the morels life rafts later when he learned that the rest of the morel's crew had perished hale's comment was simple but profound why am i alive fortunately didn't try to get off the raft because they say if he would have gone out got tried to get up he was actually frozen to the metal raft he would have lost a lot of skin they had to literally thaw him off of the raft when he was there uh he had an afterlife experience laying on the raft he uh saw an apparition of a of an elderly man appear to him and tell him not to eat the ice chips on his pea coat which in fact proved to be uh a life-saving advice because it would have lowered his body temperature even further than it already was and um what happened finally a navy helicopter i'm sorry a coast guard helicopter spotted them from uh spotted him from the air and they were able to rescue him and part of what they attributed dennis hale's survival to was the fact that he was a physically large man he had a lot of um you know body size he didn't lose his heat as quickly but um he was in remarkably good condition too considering he had some frost bite and they had to do uh i believe an amputation on on one of his toes but beyond that he was in fairly good condition considering how long he'd been out there truly a miraculous story of survival it's almost unbelievable 28 men lost their lives on the daniel j morrell many died of exposure in lake huron's unyielding pitiless waters another great wrestle had lost its battle against nature sending shockwaves among all those working on the great lakes mariners never take the lakes for granted they're well aware of the dangers especially in october and november yet it's always shocking when another ship disappears in this very special fraternity the loss of sailors is the loss of brothers on the floor of the lakes the ship's remains serve as silent reminders perhaps the best known story of all is the story of the edmund fitzgerald the rugged 729-foot ore carrier that sank in lake superior in 1975. memorialized in gordon lightfoot's popular the wreck of the edmund fitzgerald the fitzgerald stands as one of the most tragic losses in modern great lakes shipping it also serves as one of the lake's great mysteries this was a ship equipped with state-of-the-art technology and communications a ship that had weathered many a storm in its illustrious history yet on that november evening as it struggled to work its way through a particularly vicious storm the fitzgerald disappeared suddenly and completely without so much as an sos or communication with a nearby ship and even today over a quarter century later many questions remain we know that it rests in two pieces one upright and one upside down on the floor of lake superior the wreck has been visited on a number of occasions but there are no definitive answers only theories as to how and why the fitzgerald sank one thing is certain when the edmund fitzgerald departed from superior on the afternoon of november 9 1975 carrying a load of taconite pellets no one on board from captain ernest mcsorley to his crew of 28 had any idea that their journey on lake superior would be anything out of the ordinary the weather was clear and calm and all indications led one to believe that the edmund fitzgerald's last run of the season would be run of the mill the early portion of the trip went smoothly the fitzgerald soon found company in another large ore carrier the arthur m anderson and the two ships essentially traveled together separated by only a few miles both captain mcsorley and captain bernie cooper the skipper of the anderson had heard reports of an approaching storm but both were veterans of late season storms and neither was too concerned at first however by the early morning hours of november 10th both ships found themselves facing increasing winds and rain mixed with snow in no time at all the storm developed into a major concern it was literally one of the worst storms to hit the great lakes in a hundred years perhaps only rivaled by the 1913 storm on the great lakes and when the fits started to get into that uh the eastern end of the lake the waves started to really build and she decided to try and get under the lee of the canadian shore where there were some high bluffs and then you know perhaps that would cut down some of the force of the wind the fitz was uh was under load so she was pretty low in the water she wasn't getting too much trouble from the wind it was primarily the waves that were causing the problems and the waves on the lake were anywhere from 10 to 30 and some reports even 40 feet that night depending on where she was as she came into the eastern end of the lake and she came up around caribou island she sort of hit a what we might term the eye of the storm it became a little bit calmer in there it was at that time that the fits started to really develop problems around the northern part of lake superior the storm intensified and continued and at that point it was really the captain's hope to make whitefish point and throw the hook at that point and rest and relax while in process the vessel lost its radar and some of its other essentials for tracking and relied upon the anderson to keep an idea of where they were anderson did that to the best their ability and during the process they were concerned they got too close to one of the islands up there and might have bottomed out and within 15 miles of whitefish point she obviously took a large wave and the lobster buoyancy never recovered and did a basically a plow into the bottom of the lake at 535 feet she buried up to 26 feet on her bow into the bottom of lake superior and from the way her stern has flipped and you can also see where she has uh basically according into herself it was obvious that she had uh dug into the bottom of lake superior and her stern was still in the air above and the the pitch of the propeller would place the wreck of the stern upside down just as it would stand today captain bernie cooper in a transmission to the coast guard worried that the sudden disappearance of the fitzgerald from his radar indicated that the ship might have taken a nosedive that it had taken on so much water that it ultimately lost buoyancy and in one final terrifying sequence submarined to the bottom of lake superior even as other ships struggled against the storm the coast guard asked them to attempt to mount a rescue mission in the unlikely event that someone on board the fitzgerald might have survived and we asked the anderson to turn around and go back out there and we asked the william clay ford to up anchor from inside whitefish point to head out there and look and help in the search which they both did we asked several other vessels and they refused because they thought it was too rough for them sadly the courageous rescue efforts were in vain the edmund fitzgerald had come to rest in over 500 feet of water all 29 men on board lost their lives [Music] the loss of the edmund fitzgerald was reported in newspapers across the united states and out of the headlines arose a mystery exactly what caused the fitzgerald to sink with no survivors it was impossible to tell for certain the coast guard conducted a lengthy investigation of the possibilities concluding that the fitzgerald had lost its buoyancy as the result of a huge intake of water probably from water leaking in through faulty hatch covers this however was only one of a number of theories and the debate continues to this day the coast guard ruling is a classic and they ruled that she like sank from lack of buoyancy now um i don't know any ship that ever sank that that you couldn't say the same thing about if if it's buoyant it's not going to sink if it's not buoyant it's going to sink and uh it's sort of like saying uh the patient died for lack of a heartbeat i think it's obvious in the fitzgerald that she was taking on water now the coast guard seemed to think that this were coming around the hatchcombings uh i don't know as she she seemed to uh that's an awful lot of water to come in and of course the list taking the list and that the event caps blew off uh it's my own opinion this is reading everything i could find all the time that i think she may not have touched that caribou reef out there but i think she came close enough that there was a compression there that blew in her side tanks and that she was taking on water and i think that mcsorely the captain knew more than he let on and of course he was from the old school and he wasn't about to admit anything he about the admission to the anderson that uh well we were having a problem keep us in mind but he didn't say well come on up beside us and he didn't say well let's let's swing the lifeboats out or let's uh do it and that was sort of the code of the lake so most of the men that those days we call came up through the haws pipe and they were the toughest and they were the smartest too they they outwitted all their their fellow men and worked their way up the hard way but when they got there they were they were king of the hill and they were not about to lose the ship if they could possibly avoid it a very popular theory that you grounded on caribou reef or at the reef north of six fathom shoal north of caribou island uh passing between mr pakoten and and and caribou island and in fact uh there's evidence to indicate that might be the case the captain of the anderson said he he was in closer than uh than he should have been but that was his opinion too and by doing that she picked up water and and eventually this as as the formal findings said she lost buoyancy and sank well of course if you lose buoyancy you sink captain mcsorley had mentioned in talking with uh captain cooper of the anderson that he had lost some vents and he had a rail down that might have been one way the water got in i really don't feel that's it i feel that it was a combination of uh some by in some in some manner perhaps leaking hatches which is another uh point that they had brought up uh leaking hatches or possibly a combination of leaking hatches and the vents the fact that just just as they turned into that passage between caribou and mishpocate and the wind switched they had gotten over against that shore in order to get advantage of the leave from the northeast wind and then the wind went northwest which meant they no longer had the lead and that water was coming in over the starboard quarter rolling forward down the deck piling up behind the deck house and then finally clearing over the port bow that must have put a tremendous load of water on the deck of that ship with the possible loose hatch covers and and whatever else eventually she did i think just simply lose uh lose enough buoyancy that one of those big c's came rolling over and and the bow couldn't rise to to the next one and it just acted like a down plane on a on a submarine and she nose dived as uh anderson as cooper of the andersons had said it was a combination of things i'm sure there was a confused sea coming off the the michigan shoreline as well to help back up those seas that were coming in from the northwest and and it was one of those combinations of of just bad uh circumstances that finally all came together in one spot well their primary determination as the most probable cause was that water came in through the hatch covers through the hatch gaskets there were 21 hatches on the ship and each hatch has a a perimeter of 54 feet and when you multiply that by 21 you get over over 2707 feet of uh hatch uh uh circumference where you can have a leak coming through and uh if you don't notice on the fitzgerald here if you're taking seas over the midsection of the ship where the where the seas are coming over deck you have a lot of water coming over those hatch covers and it's not just casual water it's actually providing a pressure head so it's trying to squirt the water in there to the ins in through the through the edge of the uh the hatch cover between the hatch cover and the combing of the hatch there were two sister ships to the fitzgerald one was the homer which was in the shipyard i guess that winter and they checked the hatches on the on the homer and actually did a water test on them and they did leak a lot of water so that was a similar design the anderson had a little different design on her hatch covers because a lot of people will say well how come the anderson survived the storm and was only 10 miles behind the fish trail then the fitzgerald didn't well she had a little bit of different hatch covers the ship was a slightly different design but basically the same bulk carrier design they were both she was 730 feet the fist joe was 729 feet so it's almost the same size ship they were but they were not sister ships so they think that the hatch covers were a little faulty design on on that one on the fitzgerald uh the other two ships never sailed again incidentally uh that were sister ships to the fitzgerald there's a six fathom shoal off caribou island and they thought that the fitzgerald could have gotten off course far enough that she touched bottom on this shoal the timing is fairly consistent with the uh with the track line of the fitzgerald that about that time she would have been off of caribou island and could have hit the six fathom shawl being 36 feet of water and this fish drill was drawing 27 feet of water but in going up and down in that heavy sea she could have touched bottom on that shoal and possibly fractured her hull uh specifically the the ballast tanks because it was a double bottom vessel there's a ballast tank underneath the cargo hole so water could be coming into the cargo hold and then there had to be some fracture into in the bottom of the hull of the of the i mean the bottom of the cargo hold to let the water come into the cargo because you have to flood the cargo hold in order to uh to to some extent in order to sink the vessel there's just too much uh space there that if you don't put water in there to make it that you can't sink the vessel well the theories that came around for many years was that she was caught between three sisters three sisters or three waves that basically picked her up had caused in such a rapid procession to basically pick her out of the water and she cracked in half and sunk the other theory is that she did bottom out on one of the shoals up there and those are probably the biggest theories the coast guard i believe went with the theory that she had lost some of her covers on her deck and she had taken water in that route my own personal opinion uh is that she did bottom out she did take on water she continued to lose more freeboard uh the pumps that she had were capable of pumping 7000 gallons a minute but it wasn't able to keep up with obviously what had occurred to the boat the damage from the vessel when you look at it does basically say that some place along line she took one too many waves couldn't recover and did a header right into the bottom of the lake and just flipped over on the stern after she according vessels are nothing more than uh two bulkheads on them usually that are waterproof that's at the stern and at the bow and the in between section in the case of a 700 foot vessel is close to 450 to 500 feet of open space i mean that's where your tonnage is and depending on how she bought them out how much water she took um she just continued to take on water no matter if it was a big hole if it was a big hole she would have sunk quicker it was a smaller hole she wouldn't have one of the problems with takanite is that even though you've got 7000 uh gallons per minute pumps that is equivalent to an empty ship taking on a lot of water now you've got a ship that's got you know 29 000 tons of taconite in it that water doesn't seep well through attack and i so it and plus taconite absorbs water so the theory that they came up with the faulty i mean could very much be that there were some faulty but not the amount of water that would have taken it to sink in that period of time you're talking if it hit the shell around three and it sunk around seven it would have to take a lot more water all through its cargo holds than if on the side where it was basically coming in from the bottom and bubbling up and just taking away buoyancy and more freeboard any vessel that sinks 26 feet into the bottom of lake superior and there's enough you can see the damage from where it basically made itself into an accordion there was obviously stern behind it pushing as it dug into the bottom and it just basically sunk at that point part of the reason that i believe that she broke in half on the surface is because of the relative depth of the water there to her length the water is 530 feet deep the ship is 734 feet long give or take and uh it would take a significant depth of water to um allow that uh vessel to go underwater and then break from hitting the bottom and then have the stern end up upside down uh i mean looking at the physics of of what's involved there you pretty much have to have the vessel break in half on the surface and then sink and then the stern flutter upside down and hit the bottom if uh if as some people suggest she simply torpedoed and hit the bottom bow first i consider it somewhat unlikely that you would then find the the the ship breaking in half on the you know and then the bot the bet the stern somehow ending up upside down um she almost had to break in half on the surface each theory added to the mystery but no single idea was adopted all that's known for certain is that with the popularity of the gordon lightfoot recording and all the subsequent publicity over the years the edmund fitzgerald became the most famous victim of a great lakes storm storms might be the most common cause of great lakes shipping disasters claiming countless victims over the past century and a half but one other natural phenomenon fog has claimed a huge number of victims thick pea soup frog a common phenomenon in the spring has been responsible for terrible disasters when ships collided while trying to make their way through zero visibility conditions i run the fall we couldn't see the end the boom you just hope that you your radar's working good nowadays or otherwise be without the radar you heard everybody alert could hear the other people and you hope everybody's sounding signal so some guys don't like to be sounding them signals like they uh like you're supposed to do every minute you know used to be years ago maybe some guys don't want to be sounding signals all every time some guys would be bitching about being awake it's pretty uh spooky if i could use that term you really uh check down you've got to check down if you're if you're going anywhere and of course the more you check down the less steerage way you have the less control you have on the rudders and of course the fog signal keeps going continually and it's it's kind of a bad situation that probably is going to be a thing of the past if it hasn't already a couple years ago we saw a demonstration's new thermal imaging uh where you can see just like broad daylight in the fog radar is still tricky in the fog but this is a thermal image you see the perfect thing you see a ship two miles away and you can tell where the engine room is because it shows up a different color because there's heat there and it's it's amazing [Music] some of the worst disasters on the great lakes were not the result of ships battling nature raging fires were responsible for the demise of many ships and the loss of countless lives especially in the 19th century when wooden ships ruled the waves in one single decade between 1840 and 1850 an estimated 1 000 lives were lost due to fire or explosions on the great lakes the worst by far of these disasters on lake erie in terms of loss of life was the loss of the g p griffith in june 1850 with its beautiful 193-foot wooden structure and twin paddle wheels the griffith was a sight to behold and its illustrious history of transporting newly arrived immigrants from the docks of buffalo to ports throughout the midwest gave the ship a special place in american maritime history when it set sail on june 16 1850 the griffith was packed with 326 passengers and crew many of them new arrivals from germany england and ireland entire families hoping to make a new start in the land of promise a day later 287 had lost their lives including all of the children on board and all but one of the women the griffith was especially tragic because the ship almost made it to safety as soon as fire was detected the captain ordered the ship to be turned toward shore which was only about five miles away this action created some problems since the ship's movement caused a draft that further fanned the flames but with land so nearby the captain was confident that the ship would reach safety before there were many casualties on board he almost made it unfortunately a half mile from shore the griffith struck a sand bar and was immobilized panicking passengers jumped overboard and mass many drowning on the spot while others drowned while attempting to swim to shore the griffith continued to burn until it had burned to the waterline the victim count was so great and the nearby facilities so overwhelmed by the number of bodies being recovered that a mass grave was built on the shoreline and a large number of passengers were buried without being identified but not all the shipwrecks caused by fire were confined to the old wooden ships for instance nearly one hundred years after the loss of the griffith on september 17 1949 a beautiful passenger ship the neuronic burned in toronto harbor at the cost of 118 lives the elegant 385-foot ship which had served travelers and vacationers on the great lakes for 36 years had a passenger list of 524 along with a crew of 171 at the time of its final voyage incredibly the fire and subsequent loss of life occurred while the neuronic was still docked the fire broke out they seemed to think there was arson csl lost a couple ships down st lawrence about that same time and there was a person who was if i recall right was brought to trial for those but i don't think they ever really pinned the ironic awning but it seemed to start in a linen closet and it's under suspicious okay but these these ships were completely wooden superstructure above the main deck and of course once they took off they and of course they were old they've been varnished for years and painted for years the great lakes offer a colorful history filled with legendary stories heroic adventures and tragic tales often colored with the whispers and roars of mother nature these stories will be told and retold in songs books poems and documentaries for years to come partly to pay tribute to those who worked the lakes and in some cases who sacrificed their lives to them but also in respect to the forces of nature that help guide our lives and give us reason to wonder you

Channel: Titanic Films by Mark

Views: 174,348

Keywords: Titanic Documentary, RMS Titanic, Save the Titanic, Titanic survivors, Titanic wreck, Titanic sinking, Titanic facts, Titanic movie, Titanic passengers, Titanic disaster, James Cameron, RMS Olympic, HMHS Britannic, White Star, Titanic found, Robert Ballard, Titanic, Harland and Wolff, Raise the Titanic 1980, The Titanic disaster 1912, Titanic the disaster that shocked the world, Titanic wreck footage, Why did the Titanic sink, Capitan Edward Smith, God, Edmund Fitzgerald

Id: _HvBLb_e_IQ

Length: 59min 13sec (3553 seconds)

Published: Wed May 05 2021