I just got done reading “The Night The Fitz Went Down” by Dudley Paquette.
He was an ore boat captain and was out on the lake that night. He left Superior only a few hours after the Fitzgerald did.
He had a suspicion that the approaching storm was gonna be much worse that what the Weather Service was forecasting. He stayed along the North Shore and temporarily laid up in the harbor at Thunder Bay. His ship, the Wilfred Sykes, went back on to the lake as thewind shifted from the northwest. He knew it’d be rough but he thought that with the wind at their back, that they’d have a safer trip. He was wrong.
In short, he believes that negligence on the part of Captain McSorley, led to the Fitzgerald sinking. He believes, on the basis of people he spoke to who had served on the Fitzgerald as well as supporting documentation that the ship was fatally flawed because of improper construction and that Captain McSorley disregarded the weather warnings.
All in all, it’s an interesting book. A really interesting book.
The Wilfred Sykes was a steamer with Inland Steel Company of Chicago. I put fuel on this old girl many times, along with her sisters, the Edward L. Ryerson and Joseph L. Block when they called for ore in Duluth-Superior.
btw, The Ryerson was probably the most beautiful steamer ever built.