It was 36 years ago today......

[Libertarian_Guard]

This is the 36th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald just north of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior. Twenty-nine men were lost as the Fitzgerald sank in 530 feet of water. The ship was launched June 8, 1958, and was the largest ship on the Great Lakes until 1971. It was carrying a cargo of 26,116 tons of taconite pellets, which are used in the steelmaking industry. A popular song by Canadian folk-singer Gordon Lightfoot titled “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” reached #2 on the Billboard chart one year later (lyrics). You can hear the song here and see a list of Great Lakes shipwrecks. A service will be held tonight from 6-8 PM in River Rouge Michigan to pay honor to those lost on the Fitzgerald. A bell will toll 29-times, plus one more time for all those lost in the Gales of November on the Great Lakes. The service is free and will be streamed on the web. Read more here and here. Here’s video of the Edmund Fitzgerald on the floor of Lake Superior. Here’s the Great Lakes Shipwreck File. And here’s audio from that fateful night. Here’s where there are ships on the Great Lakes right now.


http://blogs.woodtv.com/2011/11/10/edmund-fitzgerald-anniversary-1110/

[Libertarian_Guard]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw

[freespirit]

i love that song!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9A4HRzHz5Y

[Libertarian_Guard]

March 31, 2011
When the SS Edmund Fitzgerald set out from Superior, Wis., on the afternoon of Nov. 9, 1975, to Detroit loaded with taconite pellets, everything it and its crew did from then on was for the last time.

Officers on the bridge barked unbearthing orders fore and aft. Ratings on forecastle and fantail carried out commands.

Below in the engine room, engineers heard bells ringing in concert with pointers jostled ahead and back on the wheelhouse telegraph.

The bow swung off the jetty, past breakwalls guarding the harbor entrance and into Lake Superior.

Most everyone interested in Great Lakes history knows the Fitzgerald sank in a storm. No one knows exactly why it went down less than 30 hours after departure. All 29 crew members died in the wreck.

The closest thing to witnesses were aboard the bulk carrier, Arthur M. Anderson, 10 miles behind the Fitz, navigating by radar in winds gusting more than 70 mph and waves breaking green water against the pilot house, 35 feet above the water line.

Captain Jesse Cooper of the Anderson said, essentially, the 729-foot Fitzgerald entered a squall shortly after 7 p.m. and disappeared from the radar screen.

About two hours later, after the Anderson reached the safety of Whitefish Bay, Cooper wasn't enthusiastic when the Coast Guard asked him to re-enter the storm and search for the missing freighter.

"Ah … God, I don't know," he answered in radio messages transcribed on the website, edmundsfitzgerald.com. "That sea out there is tremendously large. I'm afraid I'm going to take a hell of a beating out there. You do realize what the conditions are out there, don't you? I'll give it a try, but that's all I can do."

It's become something of a personal matter whether the Fitzgerald's final voyage ended 29 hours after departure 530 feet down on the bottom of Lake Superior, or whether her crew can't rest until the reason for their loss is solved.

The ship was the longest on the lakes — the Queen of the Lakes — when launched in 1958 at the former Great Lakes Engineering Works in River Rouge.

She was longer than the 47-story, 566-foot Penobscot Building in downtown Detroit is tall. She also was the first "maximum sized" laker due to her size being limited only by the 730-foot capacity of the MacArthur Lock, built during World War II at Sault Ste. Marie.

She now lies in three pieces on the Canadian lakebed 17 miles outside the entrance to Whitefish Bay.

Some 276 feet of bow is upright; 253 feet of stern is upside down; a 200-foot middle section is shattered and scattered.

"It's the largest shipwreck on the Great Lakes and the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes," said Ric Mixter, producer of the documentary DVD, "The Edmund Fitzgerald Investigations."

Mixter, of Saginaw, is a former television reporter. His videographies have aired on the Discovery and History channels.

He visited the sunken Fitzgerald in a submersible during the summer of 1994.

"Since then, I've been finding new voices to showcase what the ship is all about," he said. "This is the only documentary that has construction of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

Mixter's 60-minute documentary is presented at 7 p.m. Monday, April 4, at the Grosse Pointe War Memorial by host Frank Frisk. Tickets cost $24.

Frisk, originally from Grosse Pointe Park, is a retired freighter crewman and operator of boatnerd.com, the on-line Great Lakes shipping news site.

"I've gone over the Fitzgerald site 40 or 50 times while sailing on the lakes," said Frisk, whose assignments included the 1,013 1/2-foot Paul R. Tregurtha, queen since 1981 and limited in size by dimensions of the Poe Lock, opened at the Soo in 1969.

"I always got an eerie feeling going over the Fitzgerald," Frisk said. "It's like the mystique around the Titanic. The magnetism of a horrendous event."

"It's a subject we think can be told reverently," Mixter said.

Gathering evidence

Descending to the Fitz in 34-degree water, Mixter was happy to learn rivulets of moisture inside the hull came from condensation, not leaks.

"We felt triumphant about going down and visiting this incredible shipwreck," he said.

Another crew on the following dive found a body on the lakebed near the pilot house.

"We went from being jubilant to the harsh reality that this was a grave site," Mixter said. "We saw the first images that came off the submarine camera. It was really sad. The body was wearing coveralls and a life jacket, and very clearly had to be from the Edmund Fitzgerald."

The Canadian government tries to prevent such finds.

"We couldn't put lights or cameras into any portholes," Mixter said. "We reported immediately that we found a body. We thought the Canadian government would shut down our expedition. We were lucky to get one more day."

Investigation

A 2 1/2-year investigation of the sinking by the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the Fitzgerald went down for a combination of reasons:

u Sudden flooding of the 806,950-cubic-foot cargo hold by heavy waves that collapsed one or more hatch covers.

u Gradual flooding started hours before the plunge as water from boarding waves leaked into the hull through topside storm damage and unsecured hatch covers.

u Boarding seas had a shorter climb to the main deck because amended rules let the vessel be loaded with more cargo than built to carry, resulting in nearly 3 1/2-feet less freeboard.

Hatch clamps

Frisk doubts crewmen risked the ship and their lives by not battening down hatches.

The Fitz has 21, 5/16-inch-thick steel hatches measuring 11-by-48-feet. Each hatch is secured by 68 manually operated C-shaped fasteners called Kestner clamps. That's 1,428 clamps.

"There's no way deckhands would leave Duluth with hatches loose," Frisk said. "It doesn't make sense that time of year. Other people thought the ship hit a shoal and broke in half, which is what I think happened."

Mixter disagrees.

"Many of the Kestner clamps were not dogged down," he said. "It was very evident when we were there that many were not employed. They were laying at the side. Since that sinking, I've seen ships in the Soo Locks that are the same way."

Hull failure

Mixter thinks water entered the hull through cracks caused by hogging.

Hogging describes the bow and stern rising upon the crests of separate waves, leaving amidships unsupported and swayback; or, conversely, when amidships teeters on wave, the bow and stern sag. Both situations can stress hulls to the point of cracking, especially welded hulls such as Fitzgerald's.

"Many old crew members told me the ship would bend radically," Mixter said. "I think she opened a seam on the bottom and started taking in water. Other good evidence of hogging is the broken fence rail they reported. It would have taken a severe amount of hogging to break a fence rail."

Years of overloading the boat could fatigue the hull and prime it to snap in rough seas.

This theory was advocated by British naval architect, Raymond Ramsay, a member of the Fitzgerald hull design team at the Engineering Works and author of "SS Edmund Fitzgerald: Requiem for the Toledo Express."

Ramsay's story appeared in the Nov. 12, 2009 Grosse Pointe News.

"After she was delivered, the Coast Guard authorized the ship to carry more cargo," Ramsay said in the article. "But they did not do any structural modifications. So, you had an already questionable hull compounded by carrying another 4,000 tons of cargo. Something had to give."

"The Coast Guard allowed ships to travel with more cargo in winter because, as one of the investigators told me, they thought those hatches were watertight," Mixter said.

"Captains used to get paid extra money for overloading boats," Frisk said, "although no one will ever admit it. But, I've talked to a couple old captains who said they made good money overloading the boats. People who worked with the captain of the Fitzgerald said he was notorious for overloading the boat."

Grounding

A dissenting member of the transportation safety board was certain the Fitzgerald took on water by grounding on a shoal near Caribou Island. The shoal rises to 36 feet below the normal lake surface. The Fitzgerald could have landed on it in the trough of a wave.

The dissent quotes Cooper's account of tracking the Fitzgerald from the Anderson:

"I am positive he went over that bank," Cooper testified before a Coast Guard Marine Board of inquiry.

"The mystery shoal turned out to be deeper than they thought," Mixter said. "I saw the whole, 250-foot bottom section of the Fitz. There's not a scratch on it from a grounding."

The upright forward section revealed more evidence.

"Hatchways one and two are collapsed," Mixter said. "I saw them. It's clearly from a giant wave that came on board, probably because she was lying at a list against the waves. It collapsed the two front hatches, pushing her nose underneath. That's what caused her to sink."

"Nobody will know exactly what happened," Frisk said. "People can draw their own conclusions from what they've seen in this documentary."

http://www.grossepointenews.com/Articles-i-2011-03-31-244302.114135-Edmund-Fitzgerald-forum-tells-of-investigations.html

[Libertarian_Guard]

Services are planned around Michigan today to remember the 29 lives lost when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior 36 years ago.

• Family members, the last living person to see the ship on radar before it disappeared during a storm in 1975 and workers who helped design and build the 729-foot Fitzgerald will participate in a ceremony 6-8 p.m. in River Rouge, organizer Roscoe Clark said.

The ship was built in River Rouge in the 1950s.

Roy Anderson, 88, of Marquette saw the ship on the radar while on the Arthur M. Anderson vessel. He said he thinks all through the year about the 29 men who died and plans to participate in the service, held at Belanger Park, by telephone today.

A bell will ring 29 times during the service in honor of each man.


http://www.freep.com/article/20111110/NEWS06/111100447/Events-remember-sinking-Edmund-Fitzgerald

[BabushkaLady]

I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I have the original Detroit News article from the shipwreck! I came across it earlier this year when I was cleaning out my archives.

Something about Gordon Lightfoot's song still gives me chills.

[Libertarian_Guard]

Bump it up!

TWO HARBORS, Minn. - The Split Rock Lighthouse will light its beacon Saturday to mark the anniversary of the sinking of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald.

Every year, the landmark lighthouse along Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior commemorates the Nov. 10, 1975, sinking of the Fitzgerald. All 29 men aboard died when the 729-foot ore freighter sank in stormy Lake Superior.

The ceremony begins at 4:30 p.m. with the reading of the names of those who died, the ringing of a ship's bell and the lighting of the lighthouse beacon.

A film about the Fitzgerald will be shown in the Visitor Center theater throughout the afternoon.

This is the only time each year when visitors can climb to the top of the tower and see the beacon lit and revolving.

http://www.startribune.com/local/178340451.html?refer=y

[Libertarian_Guard]

Self serving bump.

[gunDriller]

i didn't know Gordon Lightfoot was that old.

as for Taconite, i found 2 definitions -
1.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Taconite.jpg
2. if you're a beaner, every night is Taconite ? (cheap shot, that was too easy, i apologize.)

[chad]

split rock is a cool park, i go there about 10 times a year.

[Cebu_4_2]

There are a buttload of sunken ships around that area, I don't remember the reason. They had a map at the museum in the northern tip of MI.