Why Did She Split In Half?

on the 10th of November 1975 the SS Edmund Fitzgerald just vanished off the radar screens of nearby vessels and disappeared without a word despite being one of the biggest ships on the Great Lakes she managed to stay hidden for the better part of a week although she was later found even today we still don't know what really happened to her launched in 1958 the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a 26 000 deadweight-ton great Laker at 728 feet or 222 meters in length she was the first Seaway Max vessel ever constructed making her the longest ship on the Great Lakes at the time of her launch Seaway Max vessels are designed to be as big as possible while still capable of fitting through the canal locks on the Saint Lawrence Seaway giving them the potential of reaching the Atlantic Ocean it's spieling from a commercial perspective but it does give the ships a bit of an odd look making them much thinner than their ocean-going counterparts Edmund Fitzgerald for example had a beam of 75 feet making her almost 10 times as long as she was wide for the first 17 years of her life she carried tassanite pellets which is a form of iron ore from Superior Wisconsin to Iron Works in places like Detroit and Toledo her usual route would take her across Lake Superior through the Sioux locks and down towards Lake Huron Lake Sinclair and into Lake Erie for the final discharge over those years she undertook approximately 748 round trips covering over a million miles on November the 9th 1975 she completed loading her cargo of around 26 and a half thousand tons of tassanite or pellets in Superior as and all tassanite is quite a dense cargo meaning that to make it float you need to display substantially more volume than the all takes up this means that although she was fully loaded inside Edmund Fitzgerald's holds there was still plenty of empty space anyway she departed Superior at 1415 on route to Zug Island near Detroit Michigan a couple of hours later she joined another vessel the Arthur M Anderson which was destined for Gary Indiana together they continued in a northeasterly Direction aiming for the Ontario Shore to seek a little shelter the National Weather Service was forecasting Gales and storms in the area so it made sense to head closer in where it should be a little better despite that though early the following morning on the 10th of November they did encounter a winter storm Edmund Fitzgerald reported strong winds and 10 foot or three meter Waves by 2 am that morning the National Weather Service had upgraded their warnings from Gale to storm forecasting Winds of 35 to 50 knots the two vessels continued on with the Edmund Fitzgerald now pulling ahead of the Anderson who'd slowed down to better ride out the weather by the middle of the afternoon conditions had deteriorated even more with snow now also hampering visibility the Anderson and the Fitzgerald now only 16 miles apart could no longer see one another shortly after 3 30 in the afternoon the Fitzgerald radioed the Anderson to report that they'd lost a couple event covers and a fence railing were taking on water and had developed a list they were now running two of their six bilge pumps continuously to discharge water so decided to slow down and wait for the Anderson to get a little closer around that time the U.S Coast Guard radioed all shipping in the area to inform them that the Sioux locks were closed due to the weather and they advised seeking a safe Anchorage fortunately for our two vessels Whitefish Bay in the Southeastern corner of the lake looked like a good spot before we get there though let me just take a moment to mention this video's sponsor manscaped the global leader for Men's Grooming and hygiene products over the holidays they sent me their performance package 4.0 which includes the lawnmower 4.0 trimmer the weed whacker ear and nose hair trimmer crop preserver ball deodorant crop reviver toner performance boxer briefs and a travel bag to keep it all together now when my kit 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plus two free gifts if you use the promo code nav at manscape.com anyway back to the Edmund Fitzgerald where they were doing okay until shortly after 1610 when their Radars packed up they asked the Anderson to help keep an eye out and assist their navigation using their radar instead for a time this worked with the Anderson directing the Fitzgerald towards the relative safety of Whitefish Bay by late in the afternoon other ships and monitoring stations had logs sustained winds of over 50 knots and the Arthur M Anderson had logged them as high as 58 knots with 35 foot or 11 meter rogue waves around 7 10 in the evening the Anderson radio to check in on the Edmund Fitzgerald to see how they're getting on the reply came we're holding our own those were the last words ever received from the Edmund Fitzgerald around 10 minutes later even the radar return was gone the Arthur M Anderson reported the Edmund Fitzgerald missing but a combination of the weather lack of vessels and a lack of urgency meant at the start of the search was delayed overnight though numerous surface vessels and aircraft joined but they only recovered debris none of the crew were found a couple of days later on the 14th of November a U.S Navy Lockheed P3 Orion anti-submarine aircraft detected a couple of magnetic anomalies at a depth of 530 feet that's 160 meters side scan sonar was quickly deployed which revealed two large objects lying close together on the lake bed it wasn't until May of the following year that the Navy managed to get a submersible down to the wreck and confirm it as the SS Edge Fitzgerald to this day though the exact cause of the sinking remains unknown but there are a number of theories the first is that Edmund Fitzgerald suffered some sort of damage to the upper parts of her Hull by some external floating object like a log is believed that this could have caused the loss of the fence railing and could have caused the vent covers to come free this would have led to the Ingress of water into the ballast tanks which would lead to the list that they developed the second theory is that Edmund Fitzgerald at some point accidentally ran aground and weakened our Hull it's argued that the reported loss of a railing could have been caused by the ship touching the bottom in the midship section and hogging the tension along the deck would have caused the railing to break free and the Damage sustained by the hull would have been enough to cause it to break up in the heavy weather the postulation is that the vessel became disoriented at some point due to the weather and accidentally touched a Shoal near Caribou Island however dive surveys on the Shoal showed no sign of a recent contact the third hypothesis is that Edmund Fitzgerald suffered some sort of structural failure at the surface due to modifications to a winter load line effectively she was able to load to a deeper draft than she had originally been designed for that original design was already highly constrained by the fact that she needed to be a Seaway Max vessel so it's not like there was lots of residual strength left for increasing that winter load line this means that when she met heavy weather the bending and flexing of the hull was just too much so she broke apart the next hypothesis is that Edmund Fitzgerald founded because her hatches were not secured properly the idea has come about because surveys of the wreck show that some of the hatch clamps are undamaged and in the open position without properly secured hatch clamps water would progressively get into the massive cargo holds and fill all that empty space that was needed to keep the dents or cargo afloat over time she would sink lower and lower until eventually she would slip beneath the waves this hypothesis is disputed by surveys which show that the hatch covers have clearly buckled due to external forces making Progressive flooding due to unsecured hatch clamps less likely another hypothesis is that the wind and seas were simply too much for the Edmund Fitzgerald on the night she went down the wind and consequently the waves were from a northwesterly direction this gave them a long fetch increasing their height as Edmund Fitzgerald was heading in a southeasterly direction the waves would have been coming from writer sternova potentially leading to very heavy rolling it could be that on one of those rolls she just went over too far and never came back up leading on from that we then have the three sisters hypothesis it's reported that a group of three Road waves were in the vicinity of Edmund Fitzgerald at the time that she went down as each wave struck it's thought that there was not enough time for the previous wave to have drained from the deck so she just ended up being swamped as for me I think it was actually a combination of a number of different hypotheses that led to her thinking I don't know if you remember another video I made about the MV Derbyshire but it has so many similar polarities to this that I think it's a safe bet to also use that to help explain what happened here the change in load line would have led to a sitting lower in the water and being less capable of riding out extreme weather when the waves started to increase water on the deck could have dislodged ventilation covers leading to water Ingress into the ballast tanks that same water could have progressively found its way into the cargo holds through the unsecured hatches as the weight of the water increased the stress and strain would have led to the ship flexing more than usual adding so much force to the deck that the railings could have come apart over time she would have sat lower and lower in the water leading to more and more water being shipped over the deck at some point either from a particularly large wave or from a parametric roll due to the following Seas there would have been a single failure of one of our forward hatches allowing that cargo hold to flood completely remember there was loads of empty space due to the density of our cargo the additional way to the flood water would have drag the bow further down with subsequent waves collaps sing further hatch covers given that the vessel sank in only 160 meters of water the bow could have touched the lake bed while the stern was still afloat the shock sent through the hull would have been the final straw breaking the weakened midsection the forward end would have remained in place while a Stern could have swirled around a bit scattering a couple of holes of cargo across the wrecked site until coming to rest in the position it was eventually found as I say though it's impossible to know the truth so all we can do is piece together things and make a best guess as to what really happened on that night if you like this video I recommend you next watch my video about the Derbyshire which was a massive bulker that went down in similar circumstances in a typhoon near Japan in 1980 otherwise community members might want to check out the director's commentary of this video which has just gone live in the community for second mates and above if you're not yet a member just check the description to find out more

Channel: Casual Navigation

Views: 1,671,035

Keywords: casual navigator, marine, shipping, casual navigation, maritime explaination, merchant navy, sailing, marine animation

Id: BS5yTNVHOV0

Length: 10min 52sec (652 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 13 2023