The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (not the song)

Today Josh and Chuck delve into the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Not the song, but the maritime accident. Though the song makes an appearance.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I
Heart Radio AHOII and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh,
and there's Chuck and Jerry's here with us too, and
this is stuff you should know beginning Oh the year
edition Hainbird here heard Bob? That was great? Was that

(00:30):
the sweetest chef singing? Gordon Lightfoot? I think it kind
of nailed it. You totally nailed hey. Before we get going,
I want to make a quick announcement, very sadly, Emily's
grandmother Mary, as we referred to her as the the
general of the stuff you senior general of the stuff
you should know, Army. I don't like where this is going, Chuck.

(00:50):
I know she finally passed away about two weeks shy
of a hundred and two, so, you know, don't feel
bad about the life short changed. She got every bit
of it and about a hundred and maybe a half
of those years were pretty darn good. I'm not gonna

(01:12):
get on my soapbox about you know the fact that
we live in a state where our loved ones can
just slowly dwindle into nothingness, which is awful to see happen.
But uh, we finally lost Mary and it's always sad,
even though you kind of pre grieve these things, but
I have. It will be up on Facebook now and

(01:33):
the Stuff you Should Know Army Facebook page. Something we
always did for her at her birthday was gave her
a shout out, and she loved more than anything. Sitting
around and reading the hundreds of well wishes from all
over the world just tickled her pink. So we're there's
an in memorium post up. By the time this will
come out, I'm gonna get it up there on the
Stuff you Should Know Army page via Aaron Cooper somebody.

(01:56):
So it would be great if people as a as
a final gesture, I said a couple of words about it. Yeah,
well r I p Mary, Yeah, Steph, you should know
Army general, if not like five star general even maybe
absolutely it was rough at the end. So it's always
good to see someone very old that's not doing great
too to pass along, you know, to go home, that's

(02:19):
what they call it, once you get to that age,
going home, like Motley Crue saying that. Yeah, I think
that's what they were talking about. That wasn't Motley Crue.
Who'saing that? My mom go oh, that was AUSSI yeah,
but Motley Crewe had one about going home to yeah,
Home Sweet Home. We saw them play that. I think
you're thinking of smoking in the boy's room. I was,

(02:41):
wasn't that thin, Lizzie? No, well originally yeah, I think so. Well,
there you go. I'm a O G. Speaking of O
G s Chuck, I feel like we should talk about
one of the O G Iron freighters of all time
that met a tragic end, and it was called the
Edmund Fitzgerald. And I just want to say, I promise
for the rest of the year my segways will be

(03:04):
much better than that. Well, I hit everyone with an
obituary right out of the gate. It's true. I think
you did a pretty good job. Um here's how dumb
I am. I knew about the song because it's a
song I hate more than almost any other song. Why
it's terrible? Why no, it's not what about it's terrible?

(03:24):
You know? Like folk stuff? I love folk music. I'm
not a big fan of sea shanties, and this is
a classic. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon
Lightfoot is a classic sea shanty because they don't have like,
they don't have a chorus. They don't have a hook,
they're not written for that purpose. It's just sort of
this repetitive thing, over and over, take me to the bridge.

(03:47):
There's no bridge, there's no nothing but that repeated Swedish
chef bit that I did. So I knew about the song,
but I never looked closely at the lyrics, um because
I hate it so much. So I so dumb. I
always thought that Edmund Fitzgerald was like the Titanic or
some classic old ocean liner from like the nineteenth century

(04:09):
or something. I did not know that it was a
a you know, fairly modern day uh like metal or
shipping vessel. Yeah, that's exactly what it was. It was
a Great Lakes vessel. Didn't know that. I thought it
was probably like nineteen ten or something. Yeah. No, it's
sunk in nineteen seventy five. And it wasn't even a

(04:32):
twinkle in a um shipmaker's I in nineteen ten. It
wasn't created until I think nineteen fifty eight was when
it was finally launched, so it was fairly recent. I
would say. Yeah, And to my uh defense, I'm gonna
defend myself here because you're not stepping up, uh, when
you raised in Atlanta, you don't like the shipwrecks of

(04:54):
the Midwest of the early seventies. You know, it's just
not something that a kid really learned. So okay, So
the reason I wasn't stepping up was because that it
is what kids learned. When you grow up in Toledo
or Detroit or Cleveland, you probably did right, Like, yeah,
I was raised knowing about the Edmund Fitzgerald anything about it,
And I didn't have a seagoing member in my entire family,

(05:16):
and my whole family knew about the Edmund Fitzgerald for
some reason. Because if you sit down and look at
it on paper, uh, you you will wonder why it
actually you know, it was a very famous shipwreck, and
there was some some things to it. There was a
huge ship. It was a very beloved ship before it saying,
so there were a couple of things that could make it,
you know, memorialized a little more than the average shipwreck.

(05:39):
But it is at least around the Great Lakes region,
it is second only to Titanic as far as shipwrecks
of import go. Like that is how big the Edmund
Fitzgerald shipwreck was around there and still is I think
to this day, and they love that song up there too.
I know that for a fact. So I'm sure there's
people who hated out there though too, that a lot

(06:01):
of people are mad at me. Yeah. He Gordon Lightfoot,
the guy who's who sang the song. He was known
as like the Pride of Canada. I think I don't
know if he's still around or not, but he was
definitely a beloved songwriter. So we definitely have lost a
few Canadian fans. Things to you, I like Gordon Lightfoot.
I liked that other big hit he had, which one?

(06:23):
What was it? I saw that there was another hit
and I could not figure out what it was. Didn't
he sing? Uh Sunday b b d DP dude, dude
to see about even be yes, I don't know if
that was him. I know the song you're talking about,
then that's that's a great song. I agree, clearly don't

(06:46):
know these lyrics. So let's let's get into this, okay,
because there's probably plenty of people outside of the United States,
outside of the northern Midwest, UM and Northeast, who haven't
really heard much about the Edmund Fitzgerald if at all.
So let's talk about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Shall we sure, uh?
And you know, I kind of gave away a little
bit of the story and when I said it was

(07:08):
it carried metal ores, specifically iron ore. They found a
lot of this stuff in the eighteen hundreds in Ontario
and Canada and Wisconsin and Minnesota and the Upper Peninsula
of Michigan, and so all of a sudden an industry
was born where these great lakes all of a sudden
saw these big ships and they were like, hey, we

(07:31):
got these uh, this iron ore. We're gonna ship it
in the form of Taco nite pellets all over the
Midwest to wherever they need steel. And it was so
lucrative that other companies got in the game because they
were like, hey, you can invest in the ship. You don't.
You have to be in that business and you can

(07:51):
make tons of money. And that's what happened with the
Eddie fitz Yeah, because the Edmund Fitzgerald was owned by
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company. Weird, and there's no like,
whoa wait a minute, what's the catch here? There is none.
Northwestern Mutual UH commissioned a ship builders on Lake erie
Um to build a design and build a ship for

(08:14):
them for the purpose of of transporting or across the
Great Lakes, just as an investment. Yeah. And one of
the one of the reasons why it became such a
attractive investment for for anybody, including an insurance company, was
that the St. Lourd's Seaway was opened, I believe in
nineteen nine, and at that point the Great Lakes were

(08:34):
connected to the Atlantic Ocean, so now you had even
more of a market to export to your iron ore too.
So um, it wasn't a bad idea, and there was
really nothing wrong with their ownership from top to bottom.
From what I could tell. It wasn't like some insurance scam. No,
I don't think so. As a matter of fact, it
would have been pretty audacious to have named the ship

(08:55):
after the president of Northwestern Mutual if the whole thing
was a scam. You know that's men Fitzgerald was right, Yeah,
for sure, And apparently the legend goes Edmund Fitzgerald, the
president of the insurance company, did not want the ship
named after him. I could not see why, but at
a board meeting he excused himself to go to the bathroom,
and the board voted and went ahead and overruled him

(09:17):
and named it after him. Anyway, as the legend goes,
it was, he was probably just uh, sort of demurring
and being like, Hey, I'm gonna step out, but make
sure this happens. Oh I heard when he came back
he went and bonkers and broke some chairs and the
water pictures. Now, he seems like a pretty mild bannerd
guy from what I could tell. Sure to have a
ship named after you. Uh So, should we go over

(09:40):
a little bit of the nuts and bolts of the
or I guess not really bolts, because you'll soon learn
this thing was welded man. That was chef's kiss of
the Eddie fits the s s. Edmond Fitzgerald was seven
ft long thirty nine ft tall from the top of
the keel to the bottom of the deck, and had

(10:02):
three and this you know, some of this stuff you'll
you want to put a pin in. Um had three
cargo holds that were separated by bulkheads or they're called
screen bulkheads. In other words, they're they're not watertight. So
if water comes in one of these cargo holds and
fills up enough, it's or tilts a certain way, it
can go into the other cargo holds and you know

(10:24):
there's three of them, and if they you know, it's
just bad news if something starts filling up. But it
wasn't like a weird design screen bulkheads or it wasn't
a weird thing. No, because this ship was designed and
built to sail on the Great Lakes. It wasn't intended
to be an ocean going ship. Um. And on the
Great Lakes, yeah, I think get some pretty bad weather

(10:45):
from time to time, specifically in November. Apparently. Um, it's
nothing like an Atlantic storm or even a Pacific storm,
I'm sure. UM. So yeah, it's not very weird that
it was built like that. Um. It was also designed
to hold up to third thousand tons tons of tack

(11:05):
knite pellets. Um. Normally it would handle something around twenty
six thousand, but it could. It kept getting rated. The
company kept going to the Coastguard and saying, it can
hold more, it can hold more, and the Coastguard kept
signing off on increasing the load limits to up to
I think about thirty thousand tons at one point. Um.
And again this is not this is not unheard of.

(11:27):
It's not super weird. Um. But the Edmund Fitzgerald was
like known as a record breaker, and usually it broke
its own records. So it was a very well known, beloved,
well thought of ship on on the Great Lakes. That's right. Uh.
And I mentioned that it was welded. Most ships at
the time, and I think still most ships are riveted
because you know, welding. Welding is great, but welding doesn't

(11:51):
hold up like rivets hold up. But again, this was
a ship for the Great Lakes. Uh. It was launched
without even being finished completely. It's not like they had
big holes in the bottom or anything like that, but
they it was like, wait, white, we forgot to put
in the plug, which I've forgotten actually on a boat before. Um. Yeah, yeah,

(12:13):
it's no good water comes in. Is that where the
rope trauma came from? But all right, you're getting closer. Awesome, Okay,
we're getting there. That's a big hint. So they had
these um this was sort of unusual for a ship
like this, for an ore shipping ship. Um. They had
a really sort of styled out pilot house and crew

(12:35):
quarters and mess area because and this is the stuff
that wasn't quite finished when they launched. Because this insurance
company owned it. They kind of it was a bit
of a feather in their cap to own this at
the time largest ship on the Great Lakes. I think
for about a year or so it was the largest one.
And wait, I have something about that, Chuck. The ship
that overtook it the next year was one foot longer.

(12:59):
Wouldn't that just dry view bananas? Yeah, that's clearly on purpose,
for sure. Yeah, definitely. Although I'm looking now, the Edmund
Fitzgerald was nine ft long. Maybe they should have just
surrounded that off. I don't Yeah, I don't know why
they did that. Maybe they were like, well, that's how
how much iron we have to build this kind of
asking for that extra foot though, you know, I guess so.

(13:22):
But they could have made it two ft bigger. Yeah,
it's any ten feet bigger, he knows, but one foot
that is a thumb in the I I think. Uh So.
The long and the short of it is these insurance
executives were super proud of this ship. They thought it
was kind of cool and they like to go out
on it and like right along on these runs. So
that's why they had sort of extra nice accommodations for

(13:45):
the ship. That was kind of I mean the welding
design was I don't want to say weird, but it
was definitely not UM what they usually did. But again
it wasn't like some big red flag, No, I was
like an accepted way to build a ship. From what
I could tell, Yeah, those executives would go out on
these voyages because the UM Edmund Fitzgerald was so fast.

(14:07):
One of his nicknames was the Toledo Express because it
could make it from Duluth, Minnesota to Toledo, Ohio and
back in five days. So if you were an executive
could just basically go for a couple of day voyage
and you would be eating like lobster and steak from
what I understand, like they were styled out for sure.
So it's a really fast ship. It could hold a

(14:29):
lot of ore. Uh. There were frequently insurance executives partying
on it. It was. It was again a well regarded
ship on the Great Lakes. I can't stress that enough.
It was very well regarded long before the song. So
these uh. One thing we do mention uh that you
should also put a pin in is hatch clamps. Uh.

(14:52):
They had those three cargo holes and in order to
load the iron ore into the cargo holes. They had
twenty one hatch innings I guess seven apiece and they
were very very large hatch openings eleven ft by forty
eight feet and the doors were made of a single
steel slab and they had a rubber gasket to keep
it watertight. But there were sixty eight clamps per hatch

(15:15):
and you had to manually like crank these things down.
So every time you're loading unloading these things, that's almost
fire clamps that have to be engaged by human power.
And we say that because apparently when uh the day
of the Faithful Voyage, it was reported that they don't

(15:37):
think all those hatches were completely down and if like
the weather was really good, it sounds like they did
that kind of thing where you're like building ikea furniture,
you know, like I don't need all eight screws. I
can probably just get by with the three, right. I've
seen both. So this is a really big point of
contention because it it either places the blame on the

(15:58):
crew for their fate or unfairly places the blame on
the crew for their face. UM it does seem like
it was totally within the role of possibility that UM
under fair Weather. The captain of an iron carrier or
carrier um would have set sail without all the clamps done,
but they wouldn't have been like just forget, let's go

(16:20):
watch some MTV. They would still they would just be
putting the clamps on while they were setting safe that
then then they would finish as they were making their
way out to sea. So it's possible that they did
leave port that day, I think November nine, Sunday, November
without all of their clamps hatched um or all of

(16:42):
their hatches clamped, But that doesn't mean that they weren't
clamped within the next couple hours exactly. One other thing
we'll mention before we go to break is that, uh
and this this kind of is somewhat noteworthy. A lot
of times you'll have if you're building a ship, you
build a couple of them because you're already building that,
we might as well build another one. And that's called

(17:03):
a sister ship, and it means it's the ship of
basically the same design and materials that you're just knocking
out in tandem. And even though the Eddie Fits did
not have a an actual true sister ship, there was
the Arthur B. Homer that was built at the same
shipyard about a year later, and they were designed very similarly.

(17:24):
And we bring this up because it's the kind of
thing where, you know, if you look at the sinking
of a ship, you might look at the sister ship
and say, well, we're their design flaws, like why didn't
this one sink? If this one didn't sink? And the
Homer never had any problems it. It fared well until
when it was uh scrapped and out of service. But

(17:45):
it will come up a couple of times here and there. Okay,
nice set up, man, I think it is bring time.
All right, let's do it, so Chuck, I think I

(18:17):
don't know if he was the original captain, he was
certainly probably one of the most well known captains of
the Edmund Fitzgerald, the guy named Peter Pulser, and he
was well known for going through these locks, like this
ship was designed to just barely squeeze through the locks,
so it was an enormous thing to see um coming, like,
you know, you could reach out and touch it basically
as it was going through the locks. And then to

(18:40):
make it even more impressive, Captain Pulser would alternately play
music from speakers to basically give everybody a show. Well,
the Edmund Fitzgerald was going through the locks, or he
would use a bullhorn to shout facts about how amazing
the ship was. Yeah, he was pretty cool. He was
not the ofen when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down instead. Uh,

(19:03):
that captain was Ernest m McSorley. And much like the
Edmund Fitzgerald, McSorley was well regarded on the lakes as well. Yeah,
and McSorley was sort of known, as we'll see later
as someone who would kind of kind of go through
a storm if at all possible. Um. It didn't seem
like he was reckless or anything like that or would

(19:24):
you know, relish in putting his crew in danger. But
there were, you know, there were times where certain boats
would pull back and say, hey, maybe we should wait
this one out. The other boats would push through, and
he seemed to be the kind of captain that would
generally try and push through. Yeah. So, um, if there
was a faithful day in the history of the Edmund Fitzgerald,
it was Sunday, November because that was when the fits

(19:50):
the Toledo Express set sail from Superior, Wisconsin, carrying twenty
six thousand, one hundred and sixteen tons of aconite pellets.
And I did some math, pretty sure it's right here
we go. But that's fifty eight and a half million
pounds of muskeet sized pellets of iron ore, or for

(20:12):
our friends outside of the Imperial System world, twenty six
point five million kilograms. That's a lot. And add on
to that fifty gallons of fuel oil. Ye, that that's
a lot of weight itself. So but it wasn't, you know,
technically overloaded. It's just it was well loaded, yes, And

(20:33):
it left it set sail at two fifteen in the
afternoon for Zug Island in Lake Michigan, and I was like,
Zug Island, Zug Island, it's off off Detroit. But I
was like, but that's not what I know it from.
And then I remembered, do you remember our episode on
the humm people can just hear some people here at
home and it drives them crazy. Well, there's a windsor hum,

(20:54):
and I remember they associated with Zug Island, and I
looked it up and it turns out that during the pandemic,
uh U s Steel Company, who had a steel plant
on Zug Island UM basically shuttered their operations just for
do due to lack of um um availability of raw materials, right,
and the HUM vanished. That's right. So they figured it out.

(21:18):
It was US Steel, one of their one of their
UM components of their whole setup. Like that I knew too.
I thought it was definitely worth mentioning. All right. So
they're headed towards that island, which is in Lake Michigan.
H Like you said, it was two fifteen, About two
hours and fifteen minutes later, at four thirty, the s

(21:38):
s Arthur M. Anderson set sail from Minnesota headed to Gary, Indiana.
And they're going to two different places, but they took
a similar route, which we'll talk about why here in
a minute. UM. But uh, the sort of again along
on the short of this is that there was another boat,
another ship nearby kind of for this whole route, and

(22:01):
nearby meaning under twenty miles and sometimes even as close
as like twelve to fifteen miles away, which is which
is not tailgating someone, but as pretty close as far
as ship travel goes. Yeah, I mean they could keep
their their lights in sight the whole time. Basically, UM,
and the Anderson would end up basically being like the
the hero of the story. UM. So we just keep

(22:23):
that in mind. So, UM, a couple of things about
the Great Lakes themselves. Like I said, UM, ships designed
to travel the Great Lakes are probably not quite as
as hardy as a sea going vessel, but they're still
pretty tough because the Great Lakes has some pretty bad weather,
particularly in November. UM. And when storms start blowing across

(22:45):
the Great Lakes in November, the sailors up there called
the Witch of November, and usually November is the end
of the season. They'll have their last runs of the
year in November, try to get as much shipping in
as they can before the weather turns. And when the
weather turns, it really really turns, especially on Lake Superior,
because Lake Superior is huge and long, and there's a

(23:07):
lot of room for that wind to blow un unobstructed
across the lake and really pick up some steam. Yeah.
You know, we've we've talked about this in our hurricane
episodes and tsunami episodes. Anytime you have long stretches of
water that a storm is riding across is gonna pick
up energy from that water and moisture and wind is

(23:28):
going to create bigger and bigger waves. I think we
did one on rogue waves, which is really cool. And
this large stretch of Lake Superior was uh. I mean,
it wasn't the most well traveled area. And and it
seems like at least at the time, Lake Superior itself,
despite being h massively huge, was one of the least

(23:50):
traveled of the Great Lakes, at least as far as
these shipping lines go. Yeah. I guess just because there
were there was more action on the other Great Lakes maybe. Yeah.
Think only about three hundred and fifty shipwrecks uh in
Lake Superior out of the and we saw different numbers.
I think six thousand is what most people around. Six

(24:10):
thousand shipwrecks and all the Great Lakes, I saw a
size ten, but I think it might depend on that
might be like all boats or something. I don't know. Yeah,
I'm not sure either. I definitely saw both um, but
still that's a pretty low ratio UM. And it's because
it's just not quite as traveled. Um. It's in addition
to being huge and wide, it's also really deep. I

(24:31):
saw somewhere that it's about feet deep, but it's at
this point it's also extremely cold. Where on the lake
bottom a few hundred feet down, um, there's there's basically
no aerobic um life down there. It's it's just devoid
of It's like basically a freezer. It hovers at about
thirty two thirty three degrees just above freezing um or wait,

(24:55):
zero degrees is just above freezing, but still it's really
really cold. Thirty two degrees is um and so anybody
who falls in the water is going to catch hypothermia
pretty fast. It's just one of the parts of the
lake like it's always cold basically year round. You just
have to know that about it, all right. So I
think that's a great setup for what's going on. What

(25:15):
these lakes look like. It sounds like I'm going to break,
but we just did that. So they they set out
the Anderson and the Fitzgerald, and they decide because of
this weather coming in, I believe the most dangerous weather
there at Superior comes from the northwest. North by northwest,
is that right? So they decide, all right, this weather

(25:38):
is coming, We're gonna take what they you know, people
that sail that area jokingly called the scenic Route, which
was basically two to try and stay as far away
from the meat of this storm as possible, and it
would take a little bit longer, but it was supposedly
a safer route if you have bad weather coming in. Yeah,

(25:58):
but as we'll see, it would be a very fateful decision.
And this was a this happened to be a voyage
chuck full of fateful decisions. But that scenic route, and
they purposely took the scenic route because the weather was
supposed to be bad. I think they left at two
thirty pm and by seven pm there was a gale
warning for the entire lake. So that's a big storm.

(26:19):
I think this one actually came up from Oklahoma, they said,
across the plains, hit the lake and just started messing
things up. Um, So they took this northern route to
try to stay away from the weather as much as possible.
But like you said, McSorley was known as a heavy
weather captain, so he was definitely the type to push ahead.
He wasn't the only one to push ahead through this
this storm. There were plenty of others the Arthur Anderson

(26:42):
among others, who were just making their way through the
storm because they had ships they believed in. But they
also passed a handful of different places where they could
have stopped and waited out the storm in safety, and didn't.
They pressed on another handful of fateful decisions. Yeah, because
you can like pull behind an island or sneak into

(27:03):
a bay or something like that and ride it up
for a little while. Uh. Instead they traveled along that
north shore and then made about a seventy degree right
turn down the eastern shore toward Whitefish Bay. And this
is where, like, if you got to Whitefish Bay, then
you were kind of in a safety zone even if
it was bad weather. Uh. And then that would like

(27:24):
kind of send you on to what's called the Sioux
Locks s o O. But in order to get there,
they had to cross a big stretch of open water
with all this weather hitting them broadside. It was a
sort of a dangerous sprint to try and get to
Whitefish Bay. And the weather started getting worse and worse

(27:45):
throughout the day and they went past. Uh. And I
looked this up too, so I hope I get it right, Uh,
MITCHI Pecotton Island very nice, and that was where you know,
they could potentially find some safe harbor there. But they
didn't stop there. They just kept going. Yeah, they kept going,
and that was probably the last place that they could
have stopped. Um. There was another small island called Cariboo Island,

(28:07):
and if you look at it on the map, you're like,
I don't think that would help very much. So, um,
Mitch Pecoten Island is probably the last chance that they had.
And again MC's oiley said, no, we can make it.
But when they made that right hand turn um and
started heading along parallel to basically the eastern shore, the

(28:28):
weather that hit the far western shore of Lake Superior
could have made a straight line right to them unobstructed.
So they were turning um their side, the weakest part
of their ship into the worst weather of the storm
that had picked up in the worst month for storms

(28:49):
of any given year. Um, that's what they did when
they took that right turn. Uh. So MC sorley radios
at three thirty the other ship that Anderson and says
a few things that we're going to break down here
says I have a fence rail down. I've lost a
couple of events and have a list. So the fence

(29:09):
rail is what you think it is, and it's held
up by cable. Um, you know, going along the perimeter
of the deck, and we don't know exactly what happened.
There are a few theories it could have just snapped
because the the ship might have been flexing at this
point along its length, and this is where if a
boat is riveted, it's going to be a little stronger.
If the ship is twisting, then if you have it welded,

(29:33):
like a weld could break loose and not hold. Uh.
Rivet is supposed to hold. That's why they make, you know,
big ships and jumbo jets out of them, right, And
it's too basically put up with a certain amount of
flex right, Yeah, absolutely, like you can. For my understanding,
like if you lose a rivet, it's not the same
thing as like breaking a weld, right, yeah, same same here.

(29:55):
I think that's that's correct. So the the upshot of
it is if they lost their fence rail because a
wave took it off, that's one thing. But if they
lost their fence rail because the ship flexed so much
that it popped off, that's a different thing, especially for
a welded ship. So we don't exactly know what happened
with that, but it was enough that MIxS Ortley mentioned
it and Again, this is a seasoned veteran Great Lakes

(30:18):
pilot Um and anything he mentions or doesn't mention is
significant in retrospect. So he mentions that he mentioned the
vents being gone UM, and the vents were used to
maintain air pressure in the hold, so they might be
open a little bit, closed a little bit depending on
what was in there, how empty it was UM and
that also was to keep the ship intact um in

(30:41):
an event, being gone means that there was now a
hole in the deck where water could slash in, but
it wasn't enough that it was going to sink the ship.
But again that was worth mentioning by Mick Sorley. Uh.
And then the last thing you mentioned is that I
have a list uh. And in shipping, that doesn't mean,
you know, uh, go buy milk and take out the trash.

(31:05):
That means that the boat is tilting to one side.
And that's definitely not a good thing because that means
there's probably water somewhere in the hold, like and maybe
one of those cargo holds, and it's not evenly distributed.
So your your boat is is catti wamp us. Right,
That's a great way to put it. So that was
what do you say, three thirty pm? Right, That's when

(31:25):
he radioed, yeah, okay, so, um, and this was November ten.
I'm not sure if we said they set sail on
November nine, and this is now about twenty four hours
later after they've gone underway, So this is three thirty
on November ten, and they're still making their way. McSorley
told Anderson that, um, I'm concerned enough that I'm going

(31:46):
to slow down to let you catch up, just so
you can be a little closer in case something happens.
That's significant. That's that he's saying, like I need the
help of another ship or I just want to have
another ship around for safety. And then also he may
him that his pumps were running. He apparently said both pumps,
which is quizzical because they had six pumps on board.

(32:07):
They had to two thousand gallon per minute auxiliary pumps.
Just stop and think about that for a second. Then
they had four seven thousand gallon per minute pumps, so
if you put them all together, that ship could pump
out thirty two thousand gallons of water per minute with
its pumps. And he had at least a couple of
them running. So he knew that he had been taking

(32:28):
on water. I just get the impression he didn't know
how much, al right. So less than one hour from
that point, Fitzgerald radios again to the Anderson and said,
I I've lost both of the radar units. And this
just sort of presumed that it was probably just from
these big waves crashing over and smashing them. And he said,

(32:50):
will you please stay close to at this point because
we were gonna need some navigational assistance. We need you
close by. Things are getting really rough out here. I'm
sure the Anderson was like, no, kidding, like we're in
this storm too, but you know, Acquiesced stayed within fifteen
miles of the Fitzgerald and as they were headed toward
Whitefish Point, Um, the points radio beacon wasn't working. This

(33:14):
was later confirmed that it wasn't working, and there was
a ship another ship nearby called the It was a
Swedish ship called the A Before and Fits called them
said hey, I hear there's no radio beacon at the
point at Whitefish Point Um, but is the is the
white House still operating? And oh yeah, that's exactly what happened.

(33:38):
So apparently the lighthouse is still working. But the radio
beacon wasn't. And then the other thing mcsureley very key
told the a before was I've got a bad list
and these are the worst seas I've ever experienced. And
then on a hot mic was heard saying don't allow
nobody on deck. So all of the crew at this
point is like sheltering and working. Yeah, but I mean,

(34:03):
I think sheltering as much as anything. It had a
bad list. It was getting battered by waves that I
think that Anderson later reported were up to ft and
it was taking on water to some degree or another.
We just don't know. Seven ten pm, so this is
this is this. The first time he radioed the Anderson
saying we got some problems was two thirty. They've you know,

(34:25):
made it, made their way all the way along to
seven ten pm, and the Anderson this time got in
touch with the Edmn Fitzgerald and said, hey, there's another
ship heading northbound. Just wanted to give you the heads up.
How are you guys doing And the response from the
Edmund Fitzgerald was we're holding our own. And that turned
out to be the final message from the Edmund Fitzgerald.

(34:47):
That was at seven ten pm a squall whipped up
and temporarily not only um blinded the visuals from the
Anderson of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it swamped their dar too,
so they couldn't catch anything on radar for about ten minutes.
Then the whole thing cleared up and they could see again.
But what they couldn't see was the Edmund Fitzgerald. And

(35:10):
it's not that they couldn't see because they could see
that northbound ship further away. They could see the lights
of Whitefish Point further away. But what they did not
see was the Edmond Fitzgerald. So in that ten minutes,
the Edmund Fitzgerald went from being on top of the
Great Lakes to sinking, which is astoundingly fast for a
seven hundred and thirty sorry, twenty nine ft ship. Yeah,

(35:33):
super fast. Uh. I think that's a great place for
a second break, and we'll talk about some of the
theories and what happened right for this all right, So

(36:05):
the Anderson has uh looked out their front window ten
minutes after they hear that the Eddie fits is holding
its own or her own I guess even though I
did see one of the people referred to the Edmund
Fitzgerald as a he but then everywhere else I look
said she, yeah, maybe they were talking about the actual

(36:26):
president of the insurance company. Maybe so. Uh, so they
get the word ten minutes later, the Edmund Fitzgerald is
no longer in sight. And uh the Anderson captain, Captain
Cooper started to try and get in touch with the
coast Guard and said, hey, that we think this this
boat has sank out here. The ship we can't even

(36:47):
see it anymore, and the coast Guard didn't believe him
at first. I had to get all the way to
Whitefish Point, uh and pull in there, and there was
clearly no Edmund Fitzgerald there at that point. Before they
finally got on the emerge and see response. But again
another like you know, and it may have been futile,
you know, sort of uh in retrospect, considering how fast

(37:08):
this thing went down. Um, maybe there was no chance
of saving any lives. But there wasn't much of an
effort that could be made because the storm was so bad. Uh.
The coast Guard didn't have a rescue vessel available unless
it came from I think Minnesota, which was like twenty
four hours away. Uh. They had search aircraft, but they

(37:30):
couldn't perform rescues. Uh. And they said to the Anderson, Hey,
I know you just came in from this horrible experience
at sea. Would you go back out there in this
weather and look for survivors? And the Anderson, to their credit,
said yeah, well we'll do it. We'll do our best. Yeah.

(37:50):
Super to their credit because they didn't just ask the Anderson.
They asked all ships in the area who would go back,
and uh, the Anderson, I think there was another one
that went back, but a handful of them were like,
now we're not it's just too risky. There's probably no survivors.
Were just not doing it. And I saw that you
really can't fault them, like that's the smart thing to
do if you're a captain. But um, it really is

(38:12):
to the Anderson and the other ship's credit for having
turned around and going back out there just on the
slimmest chance that there was somebody who they could rescue.
And what they found was a couple of battered lifeboats,
little bit of flotsam, and that was it. I don't
even think they found an oil slick um and there
was nothing. There were no survivors. There were there was

(38:33):
no one Um, there were no corpses. There was just
nothing there. Um. What's amazing, though, Chuck, is after just
a couple of days they managed to locate the ship,
and they located the ship in about five and thirty
ft of water about seventeen miles off of white Fish Point.

(38:54):
Right when they got to Whitefish Point they would have
hit the harbor, they would have been totally safe, and
that that boat could go almost sixteen miles an hour
at top speed, So they were roughly an hour away
from safety and they sank. It gets even worse. This
was the last um, the last trip of the season,

(39:18):
and the first mate and the captain were both retiring,
so this was their last, their last sale, their last trip.
So all of those things put together and you're like, man,
that was so close and it went down. But when
it went down, it doesn't matter if you're one mile
or seventeen miles or a hundred miles. That water is
so cold you're you're in trouble really fast. That's that's

(39:41):
the movie trope. If someone mentions retirement, if it's like
a cop or somebody or anyone that drives a large thing,
like well, there that show that you recommended to me
even had that trope. I don't remember that part, but
I'll have to go back and watch the Do you
like the show, Well, we're almost done. We got one more. Uh.

(40:04):
I don't want to give away that part. But we're
talking about the Devil's Hour. It's an Amazon Prime Um
special original. We're way into it. But I don't want
to say anything else. I don't want to give anything away. Well,
you're gonna love the last episode because like there's nothing
that's left, like unbuttoned. It's it's the opposite of severance.

(40:26):
I have a feeling, well, severances continues. But does this
show continue or is this a one off? This is it? Okay,
I'm about to get Scooby Dude tonight then right, Yeah,
you're gonna love it, dude. I'll be very surprised if
you're like, this is terrible. Good show, good recommendation. Thank you.
So the next Spring six that was a one of

(40:47):
those little unmanned robotic diving camera vehicles that did a
big underwater search and survey of the record site and
what they found, which explains a lot, but also not
it doesn't explain really what happened, but they explained how
fast it happened when they found two pieces. They found
Edmund Fitzgerald basically in two big chunks, uh, the bowl

(41:10):
which was upright, but it was listing at about fifteen
degrees and it was buried in thirty feet of mud,
which really indicates how fast it's basically torpedoed to the
bottom into thirty ft of mud. And then they had
the f section about a hundred and seventy feet away,
which was upside down. So this boat essentially kind of
broken half. It did, and um that when it when

(41:34):
it hit that thirty ft of mud. Apparently the reason
it stopped at thirty ft was because it hit bedrock.
It would have kept, yeah, it probably, but it hit bedrocks,
so it stopped immediately. And um, if you believe that
that ship was in one piece as it was going
down and hit hit the bottom, then that means all
of that weight, of the twenty six thousand tons of

(41:56):
tech nite pellets, all the water is carrying all the
fuel it's ill had came barreling towards the front that
had stopped, and that the whole thing just came apart.
And apparently on the wreck site there's about two feet
of the ship missing, and it's not missing, it's just
torn into such ribbons that it appears to just disintegrated.

(42:18):
But that that's that seems to support the idea that
it did go down in one piece, which is there's
a couple of theories on that. Well, I guess we
should talk about some of the theories. Um. You know,
there have been plenty of dives over the years that
went down there. I think the the families are always
worried that just recreational divers, we're going to go down
there and sort of desecrate a sacred spot. So it's

(42:40):
in Canadian waters, and over the years, the Ontario Heritage
Act has been amended a few times to restrict access,
so no one that's not official could get down there.
So that's good. Um. But there's a few theories about
what happened officially, Um, there are a couple of reports. UM.
One was from the TSB. It was inconclusive but basically

(43:03):
said there were heavy seas, there were heavy waves, the
ship basically became a wash what they call green water,
which are waves that are so deep that there they
actually have color to them, and that the deck sides
held all this water there and the hatches were not

(43:24):
fully water tight because those clamps weren't fastened down all
the way, and so you just had water pouring in
there and pouring in there and pouring in there, and
eventually that was enough water to fully collapse one of
those huge steel doors for one of the cargo holes
for one of those hatches, and just massive amounts of
water started pouring in and it sank super fast. Yeah,

(43:46):
and those I saw a presentation by a guy I
can't remember if it's Rick or Bruce mixed r. He's
one of the people who's UM officially been a member
of like dives and expeditions to the admin Fitzger and
he showed pictures of UM those clamps that were still intact,
and he he was he made a really good point.

(44:08):
I thought, UM, if those clamps had been shut on
a hatch that was torn off or popped off when
the UM when the ship like hit that bedrock, UM,
that clamp would be in pieces, it would be all twisted.
But the fact that it's in tact suggests that it
was not attached or clamped at the time that the

(44:28):
ship sunk. So they're probably almost certainly were clamps that
were not attached that we're not clamped down. But whether
that's what caused the problem or not is the that's
a big point of contention because again it says this
guy should have known better, They really should have clamped
the stuff. Maybe they would have survived had they had

(44:48):
they clamped their hatches like they were supposed to. Or
it's you know that this was a force of nature
that was was inevitable. Um, that's kind of what it
comes down to. And depending on who you are, you know,
especially if you're a family member, because there's plenty of
family members still alive. But this is so recent. The
Arthur m. Anderson is still it still works like it's

(45:09):
it's still out there on the Great Lakes today. Um,
and there's plenty of family members who weren't like you know,
great great grandsons these Yeah, there are people whose dad's
they were are alive now and are are you know,
get really upset at the idea that, you know, the
suggestion that this was their fault, so much so that

(45:30):
apparently Gordon Lightfoot in the original version of the song,
he talks about the hatches being unlatched, and um, he
found out how upset that that was making the families, uh,
and that it was possible that wasn't true, and he
went back and revised the lyrics. That is why he's
the Pride of Canada. I think he a couple of
different times revised the lyrics too, sort of more accurately

(45:53):
reflect what may have happened, which, yeah, I mean that's
something that you don't see a lot. Okay, So if
the iches were open, Chuck, that would fully explain how
the ship sunk, because, like you said, these were screen
dividers that that kept them that didn't really separate the
um the holds from one another from water, right right,

(46:15):
So water going in one of these giant by eleven
foot hatch openings would probably be enough to to sink
the ship. That's one. That's one UM idea. There's another
idea that has nothing to do with hatches to right, Yeah,
I mean there are a couple. Uh. The Lake Carriers Association, Uh,
they had a report that suggested that it struck a shoal,

(46:39):
the six fathom shoal at Cariboo Island, UM. And this
is based on some different things. Partially that UM Captain
Cooper of the Anderson noted that that Edmund Fitzgerald was
closer to Cariboo than made him comfortable. He was like,
they're a little too close. So it may have hit
the shoal, but I think they haven't really found shoal

(47:00):
damage at the wreckage site. Uh. And then the other
big one is possibly a series of three rogue waves
that just took this thing down in quick succession. Yeah.
The captain of the Anderson, Bernie Cooper, apparently said later
on that there were two waves that passed him that
were just huge, and he was behind the um the

(47:24):
Eman Fitzgerald, which meant those waves were heading towards the
Van Fitzgerald. And he said it was right at the time,
around between seven ten seven twenty. That would have fully
accounted for pushing the Evan Fitzgerald down. And all it
had to do again was get that bow down underwater
and get the stern up out of the water a

(47:44):
little bit, and all of those tac knite pellets would
have slid forward and it would have just been the
end from that point on, and it would have happened
really really fast too. Uh. If that's exactly what happened.
So it's possible if they did get swamped by a
couple of waves. It was over in seconds basically, Yeah,
I mean they went down in ten minutes. That's that

(48:05):
also helps explain why you know, there was no time
to get into lifeboats or anything like that. Uh, it's
also why they didn't, you know, the only bodies they
found I think we're still in the ship basically. Um,
you know we mentioned earlier than not quite sister ship,
the Homer as far as comparing, like, hey, this thing
was welded and not riveted, and it always did fine.

(48:27):
It didn't go through a storm like this, so it's
you can't make like a direct comparison. Uh. There's also
other theories that like those hatch covers were maybe damaged
by equipment flying around or like a tree, uh you
know there. You know it was along the shoreline, so
there could have been like trees out there being washed aboard. Well.

(48:48):
Plus also they were carrying a spare propeller blade, massive
propeller blade on deck, so it's possible that that got
loose and started sliding around. That would have caused some
pretty big damage too. But you just don't know, like
as not far back in time as this was in
seventy five, Like we have a really accurate records of
it going out and what it was carrying, and how

(49:08):
many people were on board and what time everything happened.
But it's what happened in that that lost ten minutes
that no one will ever really know. I don't think, yeah, no,
And and it's almost certain we won't know because there
were three major expeditions on the wreck, eight nine and
ninety five, and after the ninety five expedition, the families said, okay, um,

(49:31):
we've we've gotten all the evidence we can get. Um,
we don't want anyone diving on the wreck anymore. And
on the people on the expedition promised they wouldn't dive
on the Edmund Fitzgerald anymore. And I think since two
thousand four or five, like you said, it's been protected
by the government of Ontario, so you could get to it,
but you could probably get in trouble. And also you
would be diving on a grave, a grave site basically,

(49:54):
and you're not really supposed to do that, especially when
the family is alive and asking you not to do that.
And there's actually a piece of the Edmund Fitzgerald that
you can go see at the Great Lakes Ship of
Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point. And it's the bell, the
bell of the Yeah, it was raised on that expedition. Um.

(50:14):
There was a huge team of people from all over
the world who came together. Um. The family was there
on eighty five ft yacht that was donated by the
guy who invented the bunt pan and got very wealthy
from that, and I guess Um took an interest in
helping those people out. I can't remember what his name is.
I feel like a jerk for not remembering him. But no,
it wasn't bunt It's a variation of boond Um. Yeah.

(50:38):
They added the T I think to make it less
nazi Ish. But Um they raised the bell, and there
was a lot of controversy about that too, Chuck, because
that's part of the ship. According to some people, that's
the heart and soul of the ship, as the bell,
and the enough of the families wanted it that the
government of Ontario, along humanitarian ground said okay, you guys

(50:59):
can go retreat that and it's now Um you can
see it at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, and they
replaced it with a replica of the bell that has
the inscription of all twenty nine men who went down
with the ship their names on that. Yeah, classy move.
And when they brought it up, they had a big
ceremony where they rang the bell thirty times, twenty nine
for the lost souls, and then one to commemorate all

(51:21):
the other souls lost at sea on the Great Lakes. So, uh,
I don't have any family that was on that ship,
but it seemed like a I think, like a pretty
respectful way to memorialize it. Was. It was, like I said,
it was kind of controversial, but in the end it
seemed like, yes, it was. It was a good way
to do it. And I saw footage from that expedition

(51:43):
where as that bell breaks the water, it started ringing
just from the wave action, and it was like haunting,
you know, just to hear that and it just it
happening on its own like that. It was really something.
So that's it. Now. Do you understand why kids along
the Great Lakes are raised on their story? You understand now?

(52:05):
I hope everybody else understands two and sheds a tear
for the twenty nine souls that went down with the
Edmund Fitzgerald agreed, also, Chuck, we need to hat tip
our good friend ed Grabanowski the Grabster, for helping us
out with us when he did a fantastic job. Great
great article. Ed. Uh, since I just thanked ed, and
since I also previously just spoke like a sea captain,

(52:27):
of course it's time for listener mail. Uh. This guy
just sounds awesome, and so I'm gonna read his email.
Hey guys, I was, as per usual, I greatly enjoyed
your podcast on typewriters. I particularly liked the section on
the IBM S Electric. We got a lot of electric
enthusiasts boomers that wrote in that were just like, oh man,

(52:49):
what a great machine. As one of the earliest personal
computer geeks, I desperately wanted a printer. The cheapest dot
Matrix printers were pouring quality and way out of my
price range. So in I bought a US Electric took
it apart. It was a marvel of mechanical engineering inside,
truly wondrous. I found that I could attach tin solaroids

(53:11):
to the various levers and parts of the whiffle tree
inside to make it fully computer controlled with an altar computer,
and I ended up printing my thesis on it. Glavin
super Glavin two minor additions to your description of this electric.
The typewriter had only one motor uh to power all functions,

(53:33):
and it ran continuously clever clutches and linkage is made.
Everything from keystrokes and tabs to carriage returns run from
that single motor. The second thing to add was the
greatest feature of this electric The golf ball print head
would be swapped very quickly to give you a whole
new font so you could type with the talics Greek letters,

(53:53):
which is useful for scientific papers, even special computer symbols
as for the A p L computer language. Uh. And
that is from Ken Wells, my new favorite listener. Yes, Ken,
hats off like I would be telling everybody that story too,
So I'm glad We've got to spread the news that
you are an awesome engineering type. So way to go.

(54:16):
If you want to be like Ken and get in
touch with us, you can via email. You can make
your own computer if you want to start, but either way,
address it to stuff podcast at iHeart radio dot com.
Stuff you Should Know is a production of I Heart Radio.
For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app,

(54:37):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows,