Everything I read about the sinking indicates that it was a relatively quick event. It didn’t drag on for hours like the song indicates. If they knew that the ship was in real danger, it would have been only for a few minutes.
Yes, that was the impression I got from the documentary I watched. I was also surprised to see what a large ship it was. It’s really scary to think that can happen on a lake.
At 3:30 that afternoon Capt McSorley reported that he had taken a sudden list, and that he had his pumps working at maximum capacity. Later he reported to Capt Cooper, who was trailing the Fitz in the Arthur Anderson, that the pumps were making no headway; the water was rushing in as fast as it cd be pumped back out. They certainly knew they were in trouble.
As to the sinking itself, however, it was obviously ‘sudden and catastrophic’ [to quote Cooper]; they didn’t even have time to pick up one of the ship’s many phones & issue a May Day alert. When you realize that wd have taken only a couple of seconds, you get a sense of just how fast the ship plunged, once the bow went under.