Transcript

5.15.26 · History Hour

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Speaker 1: Hello and welcome. This is radioi's History show and I'm
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your host and reader for today, Joseph Bolt. Happy to
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be with you. And before we begin, we need to
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remind you that Radio I is a listener driven and
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So call us at eight five nine four two two
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intended for people or a blind or have other disabilities
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and make it difficult to read printed material. Sources for
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today's program will be cited as we go along. So
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let's today talk about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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By the day he died, Ernest Mick Soorley had built
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a reputation as the captain who could weather any storm.
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He was one of the best sailors on the Great Lakes,
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where he had been assigned to pilot the Edmund Fitzgerald.
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At seven hundred and twenty nine feet long, the American
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freighter was among the largest ships in the region. Mc
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sorley pride himself prided rather himself on his efficiency, and
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he always delivered his cargo on time, navigating skillfully through
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dangerous waters. We have no record of him ever turning around,
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says John U. Bacon, author of The Gales of November,
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The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Bacon goes on
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to say he always went, which is why the company
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loved him. Of course, he was very aggressive, but by
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late nineteen seventy five, the sixty three year old captain
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was ready to retire. He had been sailing for more
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than forty years, and now his wife, Nellie, was in
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poor health. After the Fitzgerald met its quota for the season,
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McSorley would receive a bonus for any additional cargo delivered.
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He hoped one final voyage would cover the cost of
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Nellie's care. On November ninth, the Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin,
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carrying around twenty six thousand tons of iron ore. Its
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destination was Detroit, and the temperature was unseasonably warm, an
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early sign that something was amiss. The longer winter takes
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to arrive, says Bacon, the angerier it shows up. At
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seven p m. The National Weather Service issued a gale
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warning for Lake Superior, predicting waves of up to ten
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feet tall. Mcsarly had two options he could sail straight
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across the lake to Whitefish Bay, a familiar thirty hour journey,
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or take the so called Northern Route, a forty four
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hour passage that hugged the Canadian shore, which would protect
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the vessel right up until the final stretch of the voyage.
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McSorley had initially resolved to sail the shorter passage, but
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as conditions deteriorated, he changed his mind. The captain, known
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for his boldness and efficiency, made an uncharacteristically cautious decision,
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opting for the longer Northern route. Around three pm on
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November tenth, Captain Bernie Cooper of the Arthur M Anderson,
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a freighter traveling nearby, noticed something alarming on his radar screen.
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Look at this, he said to the first mate. That's
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the Fitzgerald. The vessel appeared to be nearing six fathom
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shoal ageriously shallow reef near Lake Superior's Cariboo Island. Minutes later,
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the Fitzgerald radio the Andersen, reporting trouble. I have sustained
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some top side damage. McSorley said, I have a fence
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rail laid down, two vents lost or damaged, and a
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list I'm checking down. Will you stay by me till
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I get to Whitefish end quote. Soon after, mcsorly learned
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that both of the Fitzgerald's radars had stopped functioning and
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the lighthouse at Whitefish Point had gone dark. Despite his
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decades of experience, McSorley reported over the radio that he
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was witnessing one of the worst seas I've ever been in.
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End quote. Just after seven PM, the Anderson checked in
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again and asked how the Fitzgerald was faring. The captain's
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We're holding our own. After that final transmission, the FitzGeralds
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stopped answering calls from the Andersen and disappeared from the
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radar without ever sending out a distress call. The ship
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went down about seventeen miles from safety, taking all twenty
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nine crew members with it. Decades after the FitzGeralds slipped
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beneath the surface of Lake Superior, the tragedy has become
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deeply embedded in the popular imagination. While its depth toll
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is eclipsed by those of calamities like the Titanic and
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the Lusitania, the doomed freighter easily ranks among history's most
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famous shipwrecks, known as the Titanic of the Great Lakes.
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The vessel is a reminder of maritime disasters enduring power
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to captivate, regardless of their scale. But why are ship
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made so uniquely compelling? What motivates someone, for Instances, to
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pay more than one million dollars to purchase the violin
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that played as the Titanic went down. Perhaps shipwreck stories
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resonate because anyone can picture themselves as central characters. These
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tales pull from a menu of familiar narrative beats, such
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as passengers sacrificing themselves to help women and children into lifeboats,
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says Bruce Lynne, who is the executive director of the
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Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, Michigan. He goes on
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to say, it's the romance of the story. What would
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I have done? What would I or rather, would I
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have survived? The lucrative shipping industry has long been central
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to the economy of the Upper Midwest, but that prosperity
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came with a cost. The Five Lakes stretch across ninety
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four thousand, two hundred and fifty square miles, about the
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size of the United Kingdom, making them the largest body
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of fresh water in the world by surface area. Between
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October and December, the cold air masses from the north
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collide with the warm air masses from the south, the
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lakes can erupt with hurricane force winds and waves as
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tall as buildings. There's a character to the lakes that's
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not predictable, says Lynn. It is so amazing sometimes how
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it can go from glassy, smooth, amazingly calm one minute,
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and then it can suddenly be this roaring, amazingly strong
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wind six eight ten foot waves crashing into the shore.
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Nobody knows exactly how many shipwrecks lie beneath the lake's waters.
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Bacon estimates that between eighteen seventy five and nineteen seventy five,
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a total of six thousand commercial wrecks killed roughly thirty
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thousand mariners, which amounts to about one death per day
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for one hundred years. Of those six thousand wrecks, the
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Fitzgerald was the most notorious, and it's also the last.
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Since nineteen seventy five there have been any major industrial
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wrecks on the Great Lakes. What changed. Advances in weather
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forecasting and communication technologies have certainly done their part to
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keep ships afloat, but so of evolving norms in commercial shipping.
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The Fitzgerald's downfall sent shockwaves throughout the whole industry, says Bacon.
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It was so cataclysmic that they finally woke up. Bacon
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was at Lake Superior last November, and when the weather
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turned angry, every single ship was anchored in Whitefish Bay,
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he says, and fifty years ago, trust me, none of
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them would have been the Fitzgerald. A lure also comes
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from the enduring mystery. While numerous theories have attempted to
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explain the vessel's rapid demise, the cause of the wreck
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has baffled experts for half a century. We may never
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know what happened in its final moments. And then, of
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course there's the song. Nine months after the disaster, Gordon
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Lightfoot released The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The ballad
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became one of Canadians singer songwriter's career defining hits, topping
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the charts in both the United States and Canada. If
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shipwrecks captivate because of their human dramas, Lightfoot captured the
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narrative stakes with poetic precision. He also gave voice to
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its characters, even writing in imagined dialogue between the crewmen.
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It has the ring of authenticity, says Nicholas Jennings, a
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journalist to published an acclaimed biography of Lightfoot in twenty seventeen.
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You hear in Lightfoot's voice that he's mourning the loss
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of these young men in quote. On the night of
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the end of the Fitzgerald. On the night the Fitzgerald sank, Lightfoot,
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a recreational sailor himself, was working on music at his
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home in Toronto. He was struck by the storm's power.
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He actually told me that he thought, Wow, I wonder
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what it's like to be out on Lake Superior, Lake Huron,
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says Jennings. And then he heard about the sinking of
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this ship, and it captured his imagination just how horrific
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it must have been. In quote. Lightfoot followed the news
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coverage in the wake of the disaster and was particularly
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moved by an article he read in Newsweek. It began
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with the words, quote, according to a legend of the
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Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitchigumi never gives
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up her dead. Lightfoot adapted these lines into his opening verse,
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and his song goes like this. The legend lives on
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from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they
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call Gechigumi. This lake, it is said, never gives up
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her dead when the skies of November turned gloomy. Newsweek
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went on to describe how the vessel went down just
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fifteen miles from the relative calm of Whitefish Bay, a
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figure that Lightfoot adapted into his line. The searchers all
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say they'd have made Whitefish Bay if they'd put fifteen
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more miles behind her. The article ended with a scene
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at the Mariner's Church of Detroit, where a minister quote
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toiled the church bells twenty or rather told the church
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bells twenty nine times in grim tribute to the unslaked
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furies of Lake Superior, details Lightfoot incorporated into his final verse,
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which reads, in a musty old hall in Detroit, they
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prayed in the Maritimes Sailor's Cathedral. The church bell chimed
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till it rang twenty nine times for each man on
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the Edmund Fitzgerald Lightfoot was always meticulous about researching his
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subject material, says Jennings. He was also obsessed with historical accuracy.
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He decided to pair his lyrics with a melody. He
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had already started working on finishing the song in just
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a few weeks. The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was
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a huge success, clocking in it more than six minutes long.
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It doesn't have a chorus, and yet I think what
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makes it work is that it has a very hypnotic quality,
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says Jennings. The drone and the rhythm, the push and
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pull of the song's rhythm, it really does give a
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whole feel of being out on the water and of
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the surging waves in the wind. The victim's families also
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embraced the song. Jennings says, it was a very intimate
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kind of relationship he developed with that whole community. The
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singer took his role as the documentarian of their pain,
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seriously meeting with them backstage at his concerts and mourning
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with them at memorial events. When Jennings visited Lightfoot's home
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for the first time, he noticed that the living room
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walls were decorated with Fitzgerald related momentum. Those paintings, photographs,
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sculptures that he had acquired as thank you gifts, which
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he displayed prominently in his home for the rest of
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his life. Jennings says, nothing has done more to keep
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the memory of the shipwreck and his victims alive than
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that song when While Lightfoot's lyrics were based on meticulous research,
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the fourth verse ventures into contested territory the mystery of
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why the ship went down, and it reads when supper
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time came, the old cook came on decks, saying, fellas
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it's too rough to feed you. At seven pm, a
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main hatchway caved in. He said, fellas, it's been good
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to know you. The Fitzgerald was built on twenty one
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openings known as hatches, which crew members used to load
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and unload cargo. Each of these openings was covered by
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a heavy steel hatch cover, which deckhands secured in place
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using sixty eight clamps, meaning a total of one thousand,
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four hundred and twenty eight clamps needed to be secured
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during each voyage. Three years after the wreck, the Coastguard
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published a report suggesting the vessel most likely sank due
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to flooding caused by ineffective hatch closure, the same theory
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that Lightfoot based his lyrics on. However, the report included
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important caveats without witnesses or survivors. The actual final sequence
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of events culminating in the sinking of the Fitzgerald cannot
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be determined it cautioned. Whatever the sequence. However, it is
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evident that the end was so rapid in catastrophic that
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there was no time to warn the crew, to attempt
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to launch lifeboats or life rafts, to don life jackets,
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or even to make a distress call. Investigators reached their
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conclusion using the limited evidence available to them. In May
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of nineteen seventy six, the Navy had used an unman
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submersible to capture images of the wreckage, which rest some
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five hundred feet below the surface of Lake Superior. These
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photos show the stern of the ship the words Edmund
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Fitzgerald still visible upside down on the lake bed. The
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bow was positioned right side up one hundred and seventy
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feet away, while the middle of the vessel was missing.
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The images also showed that only a few of the
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clamps appeared to be damaged. Authorities reasoned that if the
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hatches had been properly secured, the clamps would have sustained
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more damage during the trauma of the disaster. The ineffective
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hatch closure theory has been controversial ever since the report's publication.
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That is not only almost certainly inaccurate, but also unfair
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to the deckhand, says Bacon, who interviewed two men who
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had worked aboard the Fitzgerald before its final voyage. These
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men knew the first mate, John McCarthy, who died in
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the wreck, and they insisted that he would never have
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allowed the ship to sail in November without all the
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clamps secured. The Coastguard's conclusion also bothered some of the
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victim's families, including Ruth Hudson, whose only son, Bruce Lee Hudson,
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had died in the disaster when the ship went down.
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The twenty two year old Bruce was one of the
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Fitzgerald's three deckhands, the men responsible for securing the hatch covers.
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Since the nineteen seventies, many competing theories have emerged to
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explain why the ship sank. About fifteen years ago, for instance,
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a documentary television program reasoned that a rogue wave, rather
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than improperly secured hatch covers, was responsible for the wreck.
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Lightfoot watched the program and found its argument convincing. There's
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no hatch cover trouble involved, so a couple of guys
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are off the hook. There he told the Connect Savannah
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newspaper in twenty ten. Eager to correct the record, he
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explained that he would change the lyric in his song
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the very next time I sing it, he said, and
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he hoped Ruth, who had worried all her life about
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the hatch covers, would be able to hear the amended
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version true to his word, and every live performance thereafter,
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he removed the line about the hatchway caving in. In
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recent years, researchers have provided new insights into the weather
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that night. Computer models have suggested that the Fitzgerald was
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caught in the storm's worse conditions while other ships managed
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to avoid them, and experts have calculated that the vessel
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might have faced two or three fifty foot waves and
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potentially even one or two sixty foot waves. Bottom line is,
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and we tell this to people that visit the museum
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every day. We don't know, said Lynn. We do not
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know why this ship sank. Bacon says that it's possible
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that several cascading disasters doom the Fitzgerald, though he's especially
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intrigued by the theory that it bottomed out over the
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sixth fathom shoal not long after the disaster diver Dick
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Race was hired to investigate the area. Bacon was able,
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or rather wasn't able to locate the report, but he
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interviewed three of Race's friends who said that he'd found
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the Fitzgerald's red paint on the seabed at six fathom shoal.
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Without the report, Bacon says, it's impossible to draw any conclusions,
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but the sixth fathom shoal theory would explain water coming
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in to create a list. Bacon also thinks mcsorley's decision
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to take the longer northern route could have worsened the
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ship's odds. The longer route provided more shelter though much
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of the trip through much of the trip rather, but
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it allowed the storm more time to catch up and
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gather strength. It also meant that rough waves would have
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been hitting the vessel from the side during the final
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stretch of the journey, when the ship was unprotected from
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the elements. Bacon says, quote, I think if he went
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straight across, he would have gotten there fourteen hours earlier,
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before the worst of the storm. You're not going over
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six fathom shoal and you're not getting hit broadside. I
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think they make it end quote in the first and
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final verse of the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Lightfoot
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sings that Lake Superior never gives up her dead. The
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lyric perhaps the song's bleakest, it's also rooted in fact. Normally,
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a body submerged in water will eventually float to the
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surface once the bacteria inside the torso produces enough gas
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to increase its buoyancy. But Lake Superior so cold that
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bacteria often doesn't grow in the first place, leaving the
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bodies motionless beneath the waves. The twenty one men are
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twenty nine men rather who died in the Fitzgerald, or
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likely all still inside the wreckage. Initial investigations didn't capture
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any images of the victims at the bottom of the lake,
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but in nineteen ninety four, businessmen Fred Shannon organized seven
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dives to the site, and his video footage included an
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image of a crewman who appeared to be wearing a
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life jacket. The families of the victims protested, eventually convincing
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the Canadian government to protect the area as a grave site,
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but the families did advocate for one last dive to
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the wreck, which was arranged by several organizations, including the
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Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, the National Geographic Society, and
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the Canadian Navy. In nineteen ninety five, this joint expedition
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retrieved the ship's two hundred pound bronze bell and replaced
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it with a replica engraved with the names of the victims.
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After a careful restoration, the original bell went on display
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at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. Every year on November tenth,
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the victims families come together to ring the bell for
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each of their loved ones, and again for all of
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the sailors lost on the Great Lakes over the centuries.
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Several other organizations also host the annual memorials. The Beacon,
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a split rock lighthouse in Lake County, Minnesota, is lit
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every year and remembrance of the tragedy. Lightfoot's song describes
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a scene at the Mariner's Church of Detroit where the
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bell chimed till it rang twenty nine times following the disaster.
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That ritual has continued annually in honor of all victims
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who perished on the lakes. When Lightfoot died in two
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thousand twenty three, the church rang its bell a thirtieth
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time in his honor. Over the years, Lightfoot has attended
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some of these memorials, including the fortieth anniversary events in
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two thousand fifteen. When he arrived, he asked after Ruth,
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then ninety, who had sent her niece in her place.
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Ruth's health was rapidly deteriorating, and she had declared her
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intention to die just before the November tenth anniversary so
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she could spend it with her son. When Lightfoot learned
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of Ruth's condition, he called her aunt. Ruth on her
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death bed on November ninth, two thousand fifteen. Is taking
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or talking to Gordon Lightfoot on the phone, says Bacon.
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That's how close they were. In twenty twenty five, an
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extensive itinerary was planned to mark the fiftieth anniversary, including
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commemorative events organized by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society,
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the Mariner's Church, the Minnesota Historical Society, the Troit Detroit
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Historical Society, and University of Detroit Mercy School of Law,
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and Toledo's National Museum of the Great Lakes. Over that summer,
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sixty eight participants swam the final four hundred and eleven
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miles of the Fitzgerald's journey, which was supposed to continue
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through Lake Huron and end in Detroit. Turnout was in
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the thousands. But while the devoted families were among those
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in the crowds, many of the spectators had no connection
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to the Fitzgerald. What drew them to a maritime tragedy
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that happened a half century ago. It's not always something
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we can explain, Lynn said, but certainly people feel like
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they have a connection to it. As one of Lynn's
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colleagues had theorized, everyone's lost a loved one. Not quite
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in the same public way that these families did. Who
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lost a loved one on the Fitzgerald when it sank?
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But everybody had that loss. Perhaps some unknown share of
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the people who gather each year to memorialize the wreck
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are carrying their own personal griefs, private losses with no
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annual commemorative ritual, And so they come to the shores
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of Lake Superior to hear church bells chime for loved
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ones lost in an impenetrable expanse of cold, unforgiving darkness.
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That story came from smithsonianmag dot com. Nobody knows what
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sank the Edmund Fitzgerald, but its doomed final voyage will
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always be America's defining shipwreck, written by Ellen Wexler in
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November twenty twenty five. Well that's about it for now.
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I sure hope you enjoyed today's program. Thank you for
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listening and giving me your time. I'm your host, Joseph Bolton.
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I'll be back another time with Radio Eye History. Until then,
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happy trails,