Mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald

[Music] [Applause] [Applause] simply sailed the mall might have been a freshwater hurricane and was chewed alive and just spit out there still is no proximate cause for the loss of Fitzgerald they cannot determine it they cannot tell it there were no witnesses there were no survivors she's laying on the bottom of a lake with 29 men the answer why is unknown [Music] for centuries human kind has been intrigued and captivated by tales of maritime disaster the sea with its powerful pull has issued a timeless sirens cry backing adventurous souls to a marriage that offered its own challenges it promised a lifetime of hard work delivering its own individual rewards and in all too many cases it hinted of a doom much greater and much darker than a young boys worst recurring nightmare in America the Great Lakes provide their own unique colorful history carved out by a glacier and eternally supplied by nature these huge bodies of water have been an integral part of a commerce that expanded as rapidly as the young nation itself business and industry issued their demands which commercial shipping was all too eager to fulfill every conceivable type of freight from lumber and iron ore to grain and dry goods were hauled by huge vessels moving from port to port edging their way through these Lakes cold waters disasters however were inevitable those navigating the Great Lakes learned all too quickly that nature exact that its own deadly tolls from those striking bargains with her storms and the lakes could be fierce and unrelenting especially those that created boiling seas and huge walls of waves when autumn was changing to winter master Mariners encountered compromising Nor'easters that battered wooden ships to tender even enormous steamers built to modern safety minded specifications face demise when the seas erupted in anger it is not by accident or whim that Lake Superior is known by experienced sailors as old treacherous the floors of our Great Lakes volunteers silent testimony to this each sunken vessel ghostly presences indeed our stark reminders to those who explore them today of all the Great Lakes maritime disasters uncaptured the imagination quite like the story of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald the giant bulk carrier that sank in a violent Lake Superior storm on November 10th 1975 carrying 29 men to their watery graves there are a number of reasons for the interest in this particular shipwreck maritime historians are intrigued by the fact that its sank in such modern times Science and Technology combined to make such ships virtually unsinkable let's think she did and in very little time some estimating as little as 10 seconds there's no doubt either that the great success of Gordon Lightfoot's popular song the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald which rose to number one on the charts in 1977 added to the public interest in the Fitzgerald's final voyage the major attraction though seems to lie in the air of mystery surrounding the ship's demise decades have passed since the Fitzgerald sad and violent ending time has offered very few answers as to what actually brought her down there are many remaining questions and for each question there seems to be a theory rather than an answer that's how it will always be for with no survivors or witnesses to the sinking there can be no absolute conclusions during this program we will explore the story of this great and noble vessel we'll examine her history prior to her fateful last voyage and we'll hear the different theories about what might have led to her demise while so visit the site of the wreck itself in tuned in more than 500 feet of icy water forever silent the mystery is locked into the depths of Lake Superior build in Michigan in 1958 by Great Lakes engineering for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was truly a vessel for its time at 729 feet in length 75 feet in breadth and a gross tonnage of thirteen thousand six hundred and thirty-two pounds the Fitzgerald boasted a tremendous cargo capacity nicknamed the big Fitz it was the largest ship ever to sail in Great Lakes waters at the time of its launching the bulk carriers ability was tested repeatedly in its 17 years of service although it was named after Northwestern Mutual's chairman of the board and called Milwaukee Wisconsin its homeport the Fitzgerald could usually be found working in Lake Superior hauling cargoes of taconite pellets iron ore coal and grain between ports originating in Minnesota and ending in Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie a look at the Fitzgeralds performance record indicates just how efficient she was On June 19 1960 while carrying 25,000 172 net tons of iron ore pellets the Fitzgerald established a new record for single shipment tonnage transported through the SU canal locks then in 1964 the Fitzgerald set a new record for the greatest tonnage carried through the locks in any one season this was only the beginning over the ensuing years the Edmund Fitzgerald set new standards for the Great Lakes shipping industry by repeatedly breaking its own records during 1966 alone the Fitzgerald broke its own single trip tonnage record six times over the course of its 17-year history the ship endured a number of scrapes accidents and close calls but none serious enough to put her out of operation for any noteworthy period of time in the fall of 1969 she experienced minor hull damage when she grounded near the Soo Locks the following spring she collided with another ship on several occasions she hit the lock walls of the Sioux although these incidents were hardly what could be considered routine they were not so far out of the ordinary as to merit special attention from shipping officials as fate would have it the Fitzgerald received her last spar deck inspection on October 31st 1975 a mere 10 days before the ship's final journey at that time inspectors found damage to four of the ship's 21 cargo hatches but the damage was regarded as routine and the Fitzgerald was permitted to close out its current shipping season on the condition that repairs be made prior to the opening of the new season the following spring whenever there is a shipwreck resulting in loss of human life there are bound to be questions about safety measures taken to prohibit such loss over the years Great Lakes storms have necessitated the change in a number of safety standards especially in terms of ship to shore and ship to ship communication the Fitzgerald was well equipped to handle anything the Great Lakes had to offer our so it seemed it conformed to the Coast Guard safety regulations and appeared to be prepared to confront even the worst case scenario ironically some of these safety features only added to the mystery surrounding the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald for instance there were three marine radio telephones aboard the Fitzgerald two that ran from the ship's power and one that operated on rechargeable batteries radio contact became vital when the ship's two radar units were disabled during the storm and the Fitz's final voyage and the ship radioed for navigational assistance unfortunately no one aboard the Fitzgerald ever sent a distress message indicating that the ship was sinking or that it was even in danger of going down then there's the issue of the Fitzgerald's life-saving equipment the Fitzgerald was equipped with 250 man lifeboats as well as 225 man life rafts more than adequate for handling the ship's officers and crew in the search for the Fitzgerald both lifeboats were recovered both badly damaged in its report on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald the Coast Guard concluded that quote there was no evidence that the crew of the Fitzgerald made any attempt to use any life-saving equipment or the life-saving equipment or its performance contributed in any way to this casualty what this along with a lack of radio contact suggests is twofold first the Fitzgerald sank very quickly too quickly for the crew to radio for help or launch its life-saving vessels which took 10 minutes to lower during the ship's customary fire drills second and perhaps more eerie it is possible if not likely that the captain and crew of the Fitzgerald were unaware of the grave danger they were in until the ship had taken a nosedive and was actually on our way to the floor of Lake Superior what then happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald on that terrible night on the lake in November 1975 to hazard so much as a guess we must begin with a story of her fateful last voyage [Music] [Applause] [Music] captain Ernest M McSorely prepared the Edmund Fitzgerald for departure from superior Wisconsin on Sunday November 9th 1975 he had no reason to believe that he would be involved in anything other than a routine run the Fitzgerald loaded with twenty six thousand one hundred and sixteen tons of taconite pellets was scheduled to move across Lake Superior with a final destination of Detroit Michigan it was also to be the ship's last run of the season loading and fueling of the Fitzgerald had been strictly routine as were other preparations and while captain McSorely was aware that a storm was heading his way he had no reason to be alarmed or to delay his scheduled departure with 44 years time on the Great Lakes McSorely could boast a wealth of experiences he had been working on ships since he was 18 years old and at age 19 he had become the youngest master on the lakes he had seen a lake storm in his day when the Fitzgerald left the Superior dock on the afternoon of November 9th the National Weather Service was calling a storm a typical November storm and the early hours of the Fitzgerald journey passed uneventfully two hours into the trip around two harbors Minnesota the Fitzgerald found company in the form of the SS Arthur M Anderson a 767 football carrier bound for Gary Indiana like the Fitzgerald the Anderson was carrying taconite pellets the two ships followed similar eastward courses the Anderson in front by 10 to 20 miles the storm intensified by the hour was now proving to be bothersome slowing the two ships progress to such an extent that by 7:00 a.m. on November 10th after a night on Lake Superior captain McSorely radioed ahead to sue st. Marie and informed the company office there that his estimated time of arrival would be delayed indefinitely due to the weather by this time it was clear that the storm in the lake was anything but typical the weather system a classic Panhandle hook had begun in the Oklahoma Panhandle gained momentum as it moved in a northeastern direction through Iowa and Wisconsin and was roaring at full force by the time it's centered itself over Michigan the National Weather Service had taken note and had issued gale warnings for Lake Superior by early evening on November 9th by early in the morning of November 10th those warnings had been changed to the more ominous status of storm warnings no one in fact needed to tell the captains of the Fitzgerald and the Anderson of the worsening weather conditions battered by heavy winds and high seas the vessels forged ahead their respective captains agreeing to alter their courses from the normal Lake Superior shipping lanes to a safer but longer route that would give them at least minimal protection from the eastern shore of the lake throughout the day the ship's traveled in a southeastern direction battling the storm as well they could the two ships were still in sight of each other though the anderson was now having to cut navigational corners to keep up with the faster Fitzgerald which had moved out ahead at 1:40 in the afternoon captain Jessie Cooper of the Anderson radioed captain McSorely to say that he anticipated a wind shift and that he would be changing his ships course in a way that would allow it to pass Misha pick cotton island with high seas astern McSorley replied that he had already passed the island but then he added that the Fitzgerald was rolling some the ship's journeys continued the Fitzgerald about 16 miles ahead of the Endor the winds picked up considerably and a heavy snow began to fall by mid-afternoon the Anderson had lost sight of the Fitzgerald no one would ever see her again [Music] the two ships remained in contact by radio and the Anderson was able to keep track of the Fitzgerald by radar with 25 to 35 foot waves now washing over the decks of the Anderson captain Cooper had concerns of his own but he couldn't help but be concerned about the plight of the Fitzgerald dead ahead were the six fathom shoals a potentially dangerous area of shallows north of caribou island the weighed down ships buffeted about in high seas had to be very cautious to avoid being grounded in this area and while captain Cooper altered his course to bypass the shoals he was concerned about the course the Fitzgerald was taking as he would later admit the Fitz was moving closer to the six fathom Shoals than he would have wanted his own ship to be whether the Fitzgerald actually hit bottom on the six fathoms Shoals or elsewhere is a mystery that will always be debated but there is no question that the ship was suffering damage at the hands of the storm only ten minutes after he had spoken to the Anderson captain McSorely radioed again with more ominous news the Fitzgerald he reported had a fence rail down two vents lost or damaged and had developed a starboard list this was troubling news indeed with damaged vents the Fitzgerald would be taking on water from topside the ship did the Fitzgerald have its pumps going captain Cooper asked McSorely replied that he had two of the ship's pumps working now worried about his ship and the toll the storm was exacting from it McSorely told Cooper that he was going to slow the Fitzgerald down to let the Anderson catch up Cooper promised to keep an eye on the troubled ship Cooper was no sooner off the radio with McSorley then he received another message on the radio this one from the Coast Guard the Soo Locks have been closed due to the intensity of the storm and all ships on Lake Superior were advised to find safe Anchorage with winds howling at more than 80 miles an hour in some waves rising to the height of two or three storey buildings the lake promised doomed to those who dared to defy its power this was the kind of storm that comes around once in every few decades if not once a century captain McSorely had seen his fair share of Great Lakes storms but he admitted in a radio conversation that the Seas now were the worst he had ever seen both of the Fitzgeralds radar units had been knocked out and the ship was listing badly McSorely must have realized that in the teeth of such a storm he was battling both time and nature still he had little choice but to forge ahead inching towards safe harbor at whitefish point aware that the Fitzgerald had lost its radar the officers of the Anderson did their best to navigate the fits by radio at the very least there was still a few hours of very rough sailing ahead of them at 5 o'clock in the afternoon the Fitzgerald was near caribou island still 35 miles from whitefish point the anderson was closing the distance between the two ships and the Fitzgerald was calling regularly about once an hour to receive its position from the anderson McSorely believed that his vessel was in any true danger of sinking he didn't indicate it during these radio transmissions at 7:10 in the evening the Anderson's first mate contacted the Fitzgerald to inform McSorely that there was another ship in the area about nine miles ahead of the Fitzgerald well am I going to clear the Fitzgerald asked yes replied the Anderson's first mate he is going to pass to the west of you then just as he was about to sign off almost in afterthought the Andersons first made added oh by the way how are you making out with your problem replied the Fitzgerald we are holding our own no one ever heard from the Fitzgerald again no one will ever know for certain what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald after that final radio transmission one minute she was on the Andersons radar supposedly holding her own in her terrible battle against the forces of nature the next minute she was nowhere to be found the snowstorm on the lake had stopped but no one could see the Fitzgeralds lights where them was the Fitzgerald it was a question that captain Cooper wanted almost desperately to answer ships the size of the Fitzgerald didn't just disappear from radar there had to be an answer and Cooper prayed it wasn't the one he feared he tried several times unsuccessfully to contact the Fitzgerald hoping against hope that her lights couldn't be seen because she had slack out when he failed to make contact he called other ships in the area to make certain that his radio was working properly and to see if other ships could spot the Fitzgerald on their radar he learned that his radio was working fine and no the Fitzgerald was not on another ship's radar Cooper called the Coast Guard which was not especially concerned ships by tradition would disappear in storms only to reappear at a later time the Fitzgerald had probably found shelters somewhere and was waiting out the storm the Anderson skipper was not so certain he had been on the lake with a Fitzgerald the whole time and he knew of the Fitzgeralds problems something must have happened even if he hadn't received a distress signal of any sort I am very concerned with the welfare of the steamer Edmund Fitzgerald Cooper told the Coast Guard in a radio conversation just ten minutes after his first he was right in front of us expecting a little difficulty he was taking on a small amount of water and most of the upbound ships have passed him I can see no lights as before and I don't have him on radar I just hoped he didn't take a nosedive [Music] an intense exhaustive search for the missing ship took place beginning immediately after the Anderson's second call to the Coast Guard the search lasted several days with over a dozen ships searching the area including the Anderson which risked capsizing by turning around in the huge waves Coast Guard aircraft patrolled overhead looking for possible survivors or evidence of a shipwreck either ship nor survivalists were found news of the Fitzgerald spread quickly appearing in newspaper headlines and in radio and television broadcasts coast to coast the story made page 1 of The New York Times and received mentioned in both Time and Newsweek Walter Cronkite brought up the story in his CBS Evening News as did the other two major television networks - those reporting and receiving the news it seemed impossible that a vessel of the Edmund Fitzgerald size and stature could sink in this modern age of shipping the continuing search for the Fitzgerald finally yielded evidence of the ship's tragic demise it's too large lifeboats were found terribly gnarled and damaged one looking as if it had been bitten in half by the teeth of the angry Lake itself the other inflatable life rafts were located though none showed any sign of being launched by the Fitzgeralds crew also discovered were some lifeboat oars life preservers a boat cover a sounding board a wooden fender a searchlight and others scraps of flotsam there was however no sign of the ship itself finding any survivors or the Fitzgerald if she was still afloat would be to ask the anderson or any other vessels that were in the area such as the William clay Ford which had anchored off a whitefish point to turn around go back out into that area to see if they could see any survivors when I asked the Anderson the captain Burnie Cooper was a little bit shocked he says do you know what you're asking me to do and I said well yes I do because I was in a storm like that myself about nine years ago on a coast guard vessel when the Daniel Jay morale had sunk in Lake Lake Huron and I know what it is to be in the 20 and 30 foot waves and to have 40 or 50 knots of wind blowing and it was difficult to turn a vessel around and that kind of a kind of a see I had to tell him that I couldn't order him to do that but I would ask him to do it because he was the only salvation that could possibly save any crew members off of the Fitzgerald at that point in time the only problem probable salvation that they had unless some helicopter could spot some people in the water and pick them up which wouldn't be an easy thing to do either but we did have helicopters in route to the scene and other Coast Guard fixed-wing aircraft so anyway the Anniston agreed that he would turn his vessel around and I so he had to make the final decision as to hazarding his vessel and I was a rule of reluctant to ask him to do it because somebody might fault me for for making that decision or even requesting that that decision if something would have happened to the Anderson in those heavy seas out there but I knew that he was a very capable Mariner and he would evaluate the situation and do the best he could and if he couldn't do it he would turn around and come back in to Whitefish Bay he did search through the area for the whole following day and he and the other vessels did find some debris from the Fitzgerald we had about Peter kinships anchored in the bait we talking to Andersen says well he and he might go back out there and so I'm thinking well if my son was on that ship which I knew people a lot of people on that ship it's my son was on a ship I sure want some of my friends to come out and look for my son sorry yes to the guy see you want to go out there do you think we should go out there and every one of them says well whatever I wanted to do they would do so I says well get her under way we'll get to get the engine ready we'll go out and we'll take a look and it was the captain's decision that he decided that we would go look for this boat in the storm at our own risk of our lives to go rescue another vessel that was out and the seas are very heavy 30 to 40 foot seas the wind was blowing 70 gusting up to 75 and 80 and it was very serious and dangerous conditions in which the captain left our safe port to go look for another vessel there's something for this captain Ericsson and all the men well approved are going out there and looking for this vessel because we know that could possibly happen to us someday and we would like to have someone looking for us anyhow I couldn't believe that the ship the size of the fish would sink disappear like that so I call Cleveland because I thought my officer of the deck was messing with me so I call Cleveland they said no that was correct at the they really had so I ordered in me it recalled the crew and we were on six hours standby in an hour and 17 minutes we sailed out of Duluth we've been down there it took us about 30 or 23 hours and 10 minutes I think it was really and we saw a light flashing light we hope over towards that and it turned out to be probably the last life ring with with a float light on it that it came off the Fitzgerald we marked the position that we picked it up in assuming that it would be relatively close to where the fish went down the water in the area is very deep far too deep for divers to explore safely so much of the search for the Fitzgerald was conducted by using sonar equipment or a magnetic anomaly detection unit both detected a large presence that proved to be the Fitzgerald I was excited about going on there you know and she was kept up real well all the departments very clean vessel operated real well she was to ask any sailor if they would name one or two ships that they would rather ride on in a storm the Fitzgeralds name would always come up because she was well made you know and she was the big ship and was noted for riding good season every haul all aspects of a storm you know and my the woman I worked for had called me and said what time but ship was time on and I said the Fitzgerald she's tempted to hear the news and I said no she said well don't don't speak her house she said some do come be with you the people that all Fitzgerald till and was that the next thing I called and they wouldn't give me any information at all even after we listened to the testimony we decided that we just had to take a look at the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald the board looked at four alternatives one was to drop a camera over the site fly it by the vessel and hope that you got something useful that was not a great potential value the second one possibility was to put divers down now the vessel sunk in five hundred and thirty feet of water which meant the dive would be a saturated dive something out of a habitat the diver would have about an hour at the outside time on the bottom before he had to get back into habitat and rest because of the high pressures if the diver got hung up on the debris or wreckage you pretty much wrote him off there wasn't what you could do we didn't feel that we would gain much from the divers because you can't find too many divers that are knowledgeable naval architects and so on you still have to communicate with them we also looked at putting down a man submersible the man submersible would have one Operator and one observer we could put an observer down that a lot of ship knowledge we discounted that primarily because it to more great deal of risk that the vessel would become entangled in the wreckage we really didn't know what the wreckage looked like at that time we knew it was strewn about the landscape on the bottom so the fourth alternative was to send down an unmanned submersible and that's what we chose and it was a vehicle called the curve 3 it was owned by the Navy it was developed primarily to retrieve acoustic torpedoes that didn't surface after practice runs because the torpedoes are very expensive the curve 3 and their crew were the same vehicle and crew that had recovered the h-bomb that was lost off the coast of Spain some years before that and they had retrieved a submersible that got hung up in the bottom of the Marcy so they were very experienced crew very very knowledgeable competent crew we asked the weather bureau to give us a time when we could have a window of about 10 days of good weather I have to remember we're talking in January of 1976 by this time and we're asking for good weather and you don't get much good weather up on Lake Superior that time they gave us a time in May of 76 the Edmund Fitzgerald came to rest in 530 feet of water about 17 miles northwest of whitefish point the wreckage offering a stark indication of the horrors of its final voyage the ship was torn into two pieces most likely from the tremendous force will do it should struck the bottom of Lake Superior the 270 foot bow section came to rest in an upright position buried deep in the mud that the Fitzgerald plowed through when she hit the floor of the lake the 252 foot stern section came to rest about a hundred and seventy feet from the bow this section wound up in an inverted position the Fitzgeralds massive propeller and rudder facing upward nearly intact the damage to both sections is extensive the first pictures and videotapes are taken during a nine day period beginning on May 20th 1976 just over six months after the Fitz went down all told the Navy curve units spent over 56 hours exploring the wreck taking 895 photographs and recording 43 thousand two hundred and fifty five feet of video tape the curve or controlled underwater recovery vehicle is essentially a six by six by 15-foot frame that acts as a mobile underwater photo unit equipped with lights and three propulsion units that move it around the remote controlled unit operates on electricity supplied through a cable running from the ship to the unit curve three houses two video cameras and one thirty five-millimeter still camera what you are about to see our our images of the Edmund Fitzgerald taken by curve three in the cold dark and murky waters of Lake Superior even now it's difficult to believe that this twisted wreckage was once considered to be an invincible part of the shipping industry [Music] the Fitzgeralds pilothouse resting silent in the cold dark depths of Lake Superior [Music] the Edmund Fitzgerald lies on the floor of Lake Superior in a depth of 530 feet just 17 miles from safe harbor [Music] the Edmund Fitzgerald stern lies upside down the letters that spell out Edmund Fitzgerald [Music] some experts say she plunged to the bottom in as little as 10 seconds far too fast to summon help from the phone which was only an arm's length away in the pilothouse [Music] twisted plates of metal resulting from the bow severing from the stern as she plunged below the lakes surface [Music] the once pride of her fleet now reduced to only Salvage [Music] as the water smashed in the front windows of the pilot house every crewman would have been pushed down the rear stairs leading to the ship's hold and the lower deck [Music] in the darkness lies a world of her own [Music] sadly all the underwater footage in the world cannot answer one basic question why did the Edmund Fitzgerald sink on that fateful November night this is a question that has troubled and challenged maritime experts for decades and when all is said and done when all the evidence has been gathered and sifted through and debated one is still left with only maddening theory and speculation generally speaking there are four basic theories which in turn have spawned a number of variations the first is the theory advanced by the United States Coast Guard which conducted an exhaustive investigation shortly after the Fitzgerald went down the boards final report concluded that the most probable cause of loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald was water entering the cargo hold through defective hatch closures causing the vessel to lose buoyancy and sink the sinking was rapid because the vessels had no reserve buoyancy left so which he came over the crest of a wave and the bow plunged in the vessel continued on this was borne out by the photographs that showed that the crew on a bridge had not even put on life jackets the year following the issuance of the board's report the Coast Guard started host testing hatches hatch covers we found that five vessels had been made with a very thin hatch gasket three of these we could not get tight no matter what they did short of replacing the gasket with a heavier gasket a fourth vessel was not sailing so we don't know what the story was there she never did sail again a sister in the Fitzgerald and a fifth vessel was the Edmund Fitzgerald lying on the bottom of Lake Superior the lake carriers Association located in Cleveland disputed the Coast Guard's conclusions in a study of its own this report contends that the Fitzgerald suffered its fatal damage beneath the sea line most likely as a result of the ships bottoming out on the six fathom Shoals and sustaining hull damage such damage could not be seen by present-day underwater surveys since it would be buried in the mud that covers much of the Fitzgeralds Broken Bow section in this scenario the end result is the same only the cause differs from the coastguard report that she probably did touch on caribou shoal she likely did damage her bottom she was unaware of it she continued down bound heading for the zoo and because of the damage damage suffered and the continuing erosion of the vessel integrity she's simply at 7:10 p.m. or shortly thereafter dough for the bottom I suspect that there would have been virtually no warning I mean my gosh here's a mic cable in the pilothouse to the emergency radio literally an arm's length away from the crew or the captain or the master it only has to do is reach out and hit that like button he has instant communication with the Anderson and it never happened so I would suggest that the actual moment of loss was perhaps a minute the time it took the vessel the sink perhaps five minutes but in that five minutes there was no time to take any effective action of any kind to save life limb or the vessel one interesting theory advanced by Robert J hemming in his book gales of November can support either the Coast Guard or the lake carriers association theories in this one the Fitzgerald listing badly as a result of water taken in is overwhelmed by a massive wave that tips the bow shifting the cargo weight to the front and causing the Fitzgerald to suddenly submarine to the bottom of the lake [Music] finally there is the theory that the Fitzgerald suffered a stress fracture and broke into two pieces while it was still afloat the Edmund Fitzgerald did a fatigue break on the surface of Lake Superior due to the fact she was overpowered and under structured she broke midship humpbacked her her bottom still connected she did a power dive to the bottom she struck the bottom of the lake and is embedded at 27 feet on her stemming lure forward section she did a body slam and broke apart her Stern section did a couple passes at the forward section doing much damage and finally she squatted and went over the deck dumping her taconite on the deck like a salt shaker with the cover off the taconite remains there three foot deep this section was struck very many times to damage the hatches her forward section then was passed by the stern section and it went over nose down right in front of the forward section with the wire still tethered keeping her straight up and down with the power still on she finally quit and her boilers went off she did a dance around the forward section making the strikes then going up and making several strikes like the clapper and a bell under the pilothouse she then rested a hundred and eighty feet away where she floated to because her wires are still tethered mr. Jacques Cousteau found us out on his first dive on her she lays there now because of her buoyancy and the ballast tanks letting her rest upside down there is no question the tremendous pressure was placed on the ship's superstructure during the storm and the idea of the ship breaking apart from the stress was given consideration by those conducting different investigations of the Fitzgerald sinking there was after all precedent for this in 1892 the Western Reserve a steel carrier had broken apart from stress and sank and Lake Superior in more recent times the Carl Bradley had split and sank in Lake Michigan in 1958 while the Daniel J Morrell had a similar fate on Lake Huron in 1966 the second possibility was that the vessel broke up on the surface and sank we didn't give a lot of weight to that only because the sections were all found together on the Daniel Jay morale which had broken on the surface the vessels were found four miles apart the pieces and this one they were found within 2,000 yards 2,000 feet so the pieces went down together now it could have cracked on the surface taking water and going down it's obviously in more than one piece on the bottom but that's from crash damage that's plunging into the bottom because the calculations showed that the vessel was probably doing about 30 miles an hour when it struck the bottom of a lake and that would cost a lot of the damage similar to what you see in an airplane crash so we we didn't give a high weight to that but we couldn't say that it wasn't possible it was a possibility that she broke on the surface the concept of the fish'll sinking I support the theory that she did lose some enough positive buoyancy where that she took a nosedive like a submarine would wear that once you start diving that's impossible for the ship to recover if you don't have enough when she left even the submarine when it dies it wasn't for the bow planes and their ability to blow up blow ballast but they would also hit the bottom so in this case where the Fitzgerald once she started down there was really a point of no return I personally think that she just slowly but surely filled up with water and at one point in time one of those 30-foot waves hit her just right and just rolled her right under I don't think she hugged and sagged in in half because they were you know there's the bow section a little bit 6a to say and the stern section and six hatches and there's still nine hatches missing all that center section is just a rolled-up mess and they were huge waves crashing high winds the wake fish area was equally terrible and Molokai worse at that time the loss of the Fitzgerald was in my opinion most likely caused by running aground on the shoulder there caribou around I don't think we'll ever know for sure but that seems to be the most plausible of the theories the hatch cover theory that others certainly have certain of a credibility but I think weighing all the evidence trolling seems to be most plausible of the theories the massive ship of that that size strength of the ship lead credence the idea that that would be a way that would provide sufficient damage to cause its loss we couldn't come to a firm conclusion where we could say that the proximate cause that is the cause beyond a reasonable doubt was any of the potential loss categories we said that it could have been one of several things the vessel could have been a ground we knew that she passed within a mile of a shore we had asked the Canadians to go out and research a they had reserved aided a found that there was a shoal it wasn't in a spot charted on me American chart but it wasn't too far away we so we had to leave that as a possibility that she went aground we didn't give that a strong wait because the vessel was built without subdivision when we did the computer analysis of the vessel we found that if she tore her bottom out in the forward two-thirds of the vessel and we know she didn't do it in the after third because we could see the bottom if she tore out in the four forward two-thirds of the vessel and didn't rip into the double bottoms that is into the cargo hold itself but only into the water tanks she could make it to whitefish now the vessel would be pretty well heavier decks awash so it was a an iffy thing but she could make it to weight fishing if she tore into her cargo hole opened up the plate between the cargo hold and the water bottoms the vessel would sink rapidly because it had no subdivision but this didn't happen the report was at 3:30 of her first difficulty and by the nature of the report that she had a list that her fence was down indicated that the problem had occurred some time previous to that and then the vessel stayed afloat until 1900 or 7 7 p.m. it just didn't add up that that would happen if you tore into the inner bottoms right here would be a drain over here and here would be a drain over here like so where they pumped out of the cargo hold okay that would be the ordinary thing on a lake vessel with the Fitzgerald what they did they cheapen her up they put one drain in the center now he was telling us also that he was taking on a list if the lists were caused by water into the ballast tanks or the Lord section he could pump out either side because they were divided absolutely midship he could have straightened her up but with only one drain in the cargo hold she could pile up water over here and it could not be pumped out if she had a list there were a number of things in doing the research that I discovered that surprised me greatly number one was the abysmal lack of search-and-rescue capability on the Great Lakes as possessed by the coastguard at that time and at this time it's the situation still has not improved that here we have a modern ore freighter disappears with all hands severe storm on the lakes and the Coast Guard was basically ineffective in any capability of rescuing the crew if indeed the vessel had not disappeared if indeed has simply had been incapacitated was was still afloat but sinking wrap and they needed to get a vessel out there to rescue the crew they could've done it if something didn't have the capability yeah and along with that the fact that here we are in 1975 and we did not have an approved survival suit for used by commercial sailors these suits had been in use on the Great Lakes unofficially really since the 1920s we're looking at a neoprene suit or a canvas suit that you can get into seals at the neck and allows you to survive the cold water and literally stay alive but because these were not classified as class a life-saving devices the Coast Guard prohibited there they're being provided to the crew of commercial vessels had they been provided and had anyone been injured or killed in the use of them because they were not approved the vessel owners would have been held liable so the the rescue technology the self rescue technology has simply not kept pace [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] the Edmund Fitzgerald left behind no survivors nor was earning eyewitnesses to her sinking so all we're left with is speculation there's an old thing on Lake Superior the lake never gives up her dead and this rings of terrible truth when one thinks of the fates of the 29 souls aboard the Fitzgerald on November 10th 1975 on that night Nature had spoken with all its fury and now all these years later we were left to ponder nature's power in the cold silence of the lakes dark and frigid depths on the night of day more home a straight deck steamer loaded down the penny departed from the burlington reveled up in and steamy smooth walls [Music] on superiors [Music] Savage Great Lakes No unleash me [Music] was breaking seas across the deck when Fisher all the colors for the leaf the man bravely near the show [Music] fighting scenes behind this gym the steamer his crew received a colorful of ahead Fitzgerald offense really [Music] a tooth ballast tank the radar systems of the devil face [Music] [Applause] as its dear sir see the firemen higher as the icing [Music] the rocky shore vessels [Music] they had passed away - screams - nothing reported I know [Music] six families reading of the island

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Views: 337,155

Rating: 4.7838864 out of 5

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Id: Wmv4Krzbnms

Length: 58min 54sec (3534 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 25 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/j0217995]

The legend lives on from the Chippewa in down...

[u/EdFitz]

The church bells chimed, It rang twenty-nine times For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald