By By JOHN EBY / Dowagiac Daily News
Thirty years after the wreck of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald and the loss of the Great Lakes ore carrier's 29-man crew in Lake Superior, its demise after 17 years of no more than mild mishaps and 748 voyages remains shrouded in mystery.
Fascination with this modern tragedy on Nov. 10, 1975, spawned books and videos theorizing what happened on the last voyage.
The ship encountered severe sudden storms of the kind which fuel Lake Superior's lore, captivate historians and the general public alike and has even been immortalized in a hit song by Canadian Gordon Lightfoot: "The legend lives on/from the Chippewa on down/of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee/Superior, they said/never gives up her dead/when the gales of November come early."
Of the 29 sailors lost, all but three (California, Florida and Pennsylvania) hailed from Great Lakes states, but only one from Michigan, Thomas Bentsen of St. Joseph.
Six trips to the wreckage included Jacques Cousteau and the Calypso in 1980 and 1995's reclamation of the bell and its replacement with a replica.
That fateful Sunday saw inland temperatures in the 60s.
Azevedo, a teacher for 32 years and a member of the SMC museum's advisory committee since its inception, said, "I remember hearing on the radio how a ship had gone missing and I kept thinking, 'How could that be in this modern day and age with all the electronics and the size and the strength of the equipment?' It seemed beyond belief."
Driving home from Ohio after visiting her mother, Azevedo heard Lightfoot's song, replete with "lilting maritime music" - though she would correct his diction (she thought he was singing about a "witch of North Ember") and takes issue with his "poetic license. It wasn't Wisconsin, it was Minnesota and it wasn't going to Cleveland, but Detroit doesn't have the right number of syllables."
Ironically, the namesake of "Big Fitz" or "Big Red" wasn't a mariner, but the chief executive officer for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. which had the $8 million vessel built in the River Rouge at Detroit in 1957-58 to make money.
Inside, it was more elaborate than other ships of its era. Detroit's J.L. Hudson Co. decorated with tile bathrooms and plush carpeting.
Fatal splash
ominous omen?
Azevedo said by June 7, 1958, the launch of the ship's hull into the water attracted 10,000 people to the christening ceremony, where the CEO's wife Elizabeth broke a champagne bottle over the bow.
Intimidating
dimensions
Azevedo said the Fitzgerald was a coal-driven steamer, later converted to oil. It traveled at 16 knots. The 23-ton rudder "looked like the side of a barn. The brass propeller screw was almost 20 feet in diameter and weighed six tons. The main engine weighed 140 tons. There were two 84-ton boilers. The horsepower was 7,500. She was known as 'The Pride of the American Flag,' sometimes 'The Pride of the American Side.' We know it was operated by the Oglebay Norton Co. under its Columbia Transportation Division, so when the sad news came, the information didn't just come from a ship, but the company. At first they only wanted to say 'presumed lost,' but it only took a day and a half for an oil slick to be picked up by its traveling partner," the Anderson. "They left within hours. The captains know each other and are friends, so there's plenty of conversation among them."
In the 17 years "Big Fitz" plied the Great Lakes, she set cargo-carrying records, such as July 1968's Sault Ste. Marie mark for ore transport - 30,260 tons; or September 1969 exceeding the previous high with 30,690 tons.
She showed a video in which shipwreck historian and author Dr. Julius Wolff Jr. recalls the warm, sunny, shirtsleeve weather he took advantage of to go duck hunting while his dad flew down to the Notre Dame football game.
Wolff was to meet him at the airport. "When it came time to pick him up, the beautiful weather had left. It started to drizzle and turned to snow. It went from 60 degrees to 30 in about six hours," kicking up monstrous waves on Lake Superior.
Lake Superior resembled the "high seas," with 80-foot waves eventually crashing across the deck. "That leads to a lot of other concerns and theories as to why the ship actually went down when it did. Both American and Canadian maps were incorrect on where the shoals were."
One possibility is that the Fitzgerald could have been damaged scraping across shoals when they were "almost dry with the water moving as it was" - unbeknownst even to the crew.
The snowstorm eventually subsided and conditions cleared enough to search, turning up only debris.