Including the boatswain, who might have overlooked flaws in the clamps, or the captain or owners, who might have denied the request of the watchful boatswain for new clamps, or the evil owners, who excpected the ship to founder so they could collect insurance money, and planned for it by keeping rusty, cracked clamps in place, or overloading the hold, or both. Everybody who could inform us of these issues is either dead or unwilling to answer.
As mentioned in the documentary, modern cargo ships now have multiple layers of safety precautions. Weather is also much more predictable, and communications are light years ahead of what was available in 1974, before microchips, GPS, AI, satellite networks, and the Internet.
This disaster was completly avoidable.
The weather forecasts were accurate. It wasn’t the stone age, no one wet their finger to test the conditions. There was data, satellite imagery, accurate forecasting etc... were they ignored? I doubt that. A decision to proceed was foolishly reached. It was a gamble and not a surprise... and conclusively a stupid business decision.
Being out to sea, for long durations, I can understand shipping getting caught in adverse weather scenarios, but in the Great Lakes, there’s no excuse.
SS Edmund Fitzgerald departed from Superior, Wisconsin, on the afternoon of November 9 and was expected to reach its destination of Detroit, Michigan, on November 11. This means the trip was scheduled to take approximately two days.
The old saying that “a ship in harbor is safe, but that’s not what ships are for” applies to navel warships, not commercial shipping on short runs down to Detroit.
Two days. Remaining tied up at port would have been the prudent choice.