Posted on 11/10/2005 1:43:45 PM PST by apackof2
DETROIT (AP) — It has been described in many ways: Haunting. Comforting. Powerful. Educational.
But one thing is certain. Gordon Lightfoot's song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," has kept alive the memory of 29 men who lost their lives on Nov. 10, 1975 when the ore carrier plunged to the bottom of Lake Superior during a nasty storm.
"In large measure, his song is the reason we remember the Edmund Fitzgerald," said maritime historian Frederick Stonehouse. "That single ballad has made such a powerful contribution to the legend of the Great Lakes."
Three decades after the tragedy, the Fitzgerald remains the most famous of the 6,000 ships that have gone down on the Great Lakes.
Many owe their awareness of the Fitzgerald's fate to Lightfoot, whose own initial knowledge of the sinking came from a magazine.
Lightfoot read about the Fitzgerald in a Newsweek article and used it as the inspiration to pen what would become one of his signature songs.
Clocking in at 6 1/2 minutes, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" appeared on the 1976 album "Summertime Dream" and eventually made it to No. 2 on the pop charts.
The song remained on the charts for 21 weeks and has never really gone away. Lightfoot still performs it at concerts, including a show at Detroit's Fox Theatre over the summer.
Meeting him backstage that day was Ruth Hudson, whose son Bruce was working as a deckhand on the Fitzgerald when it went down. Lightfoot and Hudson have become friends over the years.
Hudson, who lives in North Ridgeville, Ohio, and saw Lightfoot perform near Cleveland the year the song was released, said the song has been therapeutic to the families of the crew.
"It's meant a lot. It's kept the men and the memorial to the men alive," she said. "I think it's been good for the families. They have felt comfort in it. I have talked to just about all of them, and I haven't talked to anyone who didn't like the song."
Lightfoot declined to be interviewed for this story, but he told The Associated Press in 2000 that "Wreck" is "a song you can't walk away from."
"You can't walk away from the people (victims), either," he said. "The song has a sound and total feel all of its own."
The structure of the song is simple: 14 verses, each four lines long, and the 450-plus words are carefully chosen and accompanied by a haunting melody.
The song tells the story of the Fitzgerald's fatal voyage, which began Nov. 9 in Superior, Wis., where it was loaded with 26,116 tons of iron ore and ready to set sail for Detroit.
A day later it was being pounded by 90-mph wind gusts and 30-foot waves.
Ernest McSorley, the ship's captain, radioed a trailing freighter, the Arthur M. Anderson, and said that the Fitzgerald had sustained topside damage and was listing. At 7:10 p.m., he told the Anderson: "We are holding our own."
A short time later, the ship disappeared from radar without issuing an SOS. After a few days, a vessel with sonar was able to locate the Fitzgerald only 15 miles from the safe haven of Whitefish Bay.
But Lightfoot's song does more than tell the story, it transports the listener on board the Fitzgerald that fateful night:
"The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait/When the gales of November came slashing/When afternoon came it was freezing rain/In the face of a hurricane west wind."
And then the crescendo:
"The captain wired in he had water coming in/And the good ship and crew was in peril/And later that night when his lights went out of sight/Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
Several memorial events are planned to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the sinking, including a ceremony at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point and a service at the Mariners' Church of Detroit.
And undoubtedly "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" will be heard and discussed.
"Any bit of literature, prose or poetry that magnifies the loss of loved ones is so dramatic. That is comforting to those people. That means that someone else is sharing your grief. We bear one another's burdens, so that helps," said Bishop Richard W. Ingalls of the Mariners' Church. Ingalls tolled the church bell 29 times the morning after the sinking.
"Gordon Lightfoot's song definitely has given it a life that seems not to end."
True - we had a neighbor who worked as a delivery type guy - slipped on the ice while working and sued the store -what a wuss - funny but soon after that he sued for a traffic accident then his wife had an accident - Their new house is beautiful though -
Good life lesson there, if you don't want to end up wrecked, never turn your back on an accountant.
"Unfortunately, some of the best artistic talent lives right at the edge of mental health."
A stable, normal life doesn't provide much in the way of unique insight, to fuel artistic endeavors.
There are harbor pilots who work the Great Lakes but they are reserved for the "salties" that come into the lake system from the St. Lawrence Seaway. I knew one of these guys who made a great living on merchant ships from all over the world, bring them into Duluth/Superior, usually for grain. The American and Canadian boats do not have to have harbor pilots since its assumed they know how to get in and out.
I'd chime in with you and the others--one of mine too.
Now you got me in tears.
I'm sorry. :( I'm actually starting to get weepy myself.
It's amazing, the contribution Lightfoot made with this song. People who create things that move people so deeply / make a deep cultural impression probably don't even realize what kind of impact they will eventually have.
I think the word "lake" is a misnomer.
Likewise, much of the fire within us is hidden by the face we show the world. If the fabric of that face is frayed, the fire starts to peek through.
Across the continent off the northern Atlantic Coast, powerful Nor'easters form. These storms can lash the coastline and offshore waters for days with a fierceness equal to the hurricanes of earlier months. To make their signature unique, these storms add ice, snow and frigid temperatures to the deadly mix of wind and rain, wave and storm surge.
But our weather eye this month focuses on an area in mid-continent, the Great Lakes region. Here over the largest bodies of fresh water in the world, two storm tracks converge in November. One brings storms south from Alberta, the precursors to the Alberta Clipper blizzards. The second track shoots storms from the lee of the Rockies near Colorado toward the Great Lakes region. When these storms cross the region, the waters of the Great Lakes often put an even more deadly spin on the cyclonic systems.
Many great storms have been borne over the Lakes during November of the Mothers Superior, Michigan, and Huron, and their toll on Great Lakes shipping has long been the subject of story and song. In his classic ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, folksinger Gordon Lightfoot sang of the "bones to be chewed when the gales of November blow early." At least 25 killer storms have greeted November sailors on the five Lakes since 1847. The storms of November have brought death to more sailors on the Great Lakes than any other agent.
In Herman Melville's classic whaling novel Moby Dick, the narrator Ishmael tells us that "these grand fresh water seas of ours...are swept by Borean and dismantling waves as dire as any that lash the salted sea...they have drowned many a midnight ship with all its shrieking crew."
The Lake waves do pound. Strain gauges mounted on the ore-carrier Edward L. Ryerson measured a stress of 23,000 pounds per square inch on its hull during a 1966 Lake Huron gale. Though the Ryerson survived, the 841 ft (256 m) Daniel J. Morrell broke in two and sank in 61 metres (200 ft) of water. And the winds do blow. Storm winds frequently exceed hurricane force on the open waters. In fact, mariners have called such autumn storms Great Lakes hurricanes.
Wind and wave are not the only weapons of the November Storm King, for driving rain or snow, ice and freezing temperatures are also hazards that Lake mariners must face. Although storms can sweep across the Great Lakes region during any month, November is the month most honored in memory and song. What then is the reason for this infamy?
The Great Lakes play a major role in determining the climate and weather of their region. The reason for their large influence lies in their waters. Water, you see, gains or losses heat much slower than air or land surfaces. Thus, the large volumes of water in the Great Lakes cool so slowly that the water temperatures of all the Great Lakes are out of step with the seasons by several months.
As autumn progresses, the lake waters still retain much of their summer warmth. When the first cold, northern air masses move out of the arctic and across the Lakes, they are warmed by the waters below. This added heat tempers the arctic outbreak thus postponing the first frosts along the southern and eastern lake shores by several weeks. The fruit belts of Ontario, Michigan and upper New York State are made possible by this moderating influence on autumnal cold air outbreaks.
But by late September, the contrast between the cold, dry air moving down from the Canadian North and the warm, moist air flowing up from the Gulf of Mexico can cause great storm systems to form along the polar front. These storms move along several storm tracks of which two cross the Great Lakes basin in November. As these storms move across the Lakes, they receive heat energy from the warm waters below, which provides additional fuel to run the storm engine.
When a developed or developing storm system moves across the relatively warm waters, it can intensify with explosive speed. The resulting storms produce hurricane-force winds reaching 160 km/h (100 mph), large waves that at times exceed 15 m (50 ft) in height, and heavy precipitation over the water and along the shoreline. A few of these storms stall over the Great Lakes basin, voraciously feeding and growing on the warm-water energy below them. While spinning in place, such storms may ravage the Lakes and surrounding shoreline for days.
Ships caught on the Great Lakes during such fierce storms can be tossed like toys in the fury of wind and wave. As early as 1835, a November storm "swept the lakes clear of sail." In 1847, a major storm claimed 77 ships on the Great Lakes. Ten years later, 65 vessels went down as a storm crossed the Lakes. A gale on Lake Superior in 1905 wrecked 111 ships and sent 14 steel carriers ashore. In 1958 and 1975, powerful storms also caused shipwrecks and damage over the Great Lakes. In the latter storm, the giant ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald went down with all 29 hands.
The king of Great Lakes storms, however, struck Lake Huron and Lake Erie in 1913 when wind and wave sent 12 vessels to the bottom at a cost of more than 230 lives (some estimate as many as 300) and pushed 20 additional ships aground. The winds on Lake Huron on November 9, 1913 blew from the north at speeds steadily exceeding 110 km/h (69 mph) with gusts in excess of 139 km/h (86 mph).
Low visibility due to the heavy snow and freezing spray added to the dangers of winds and waves on the waters. The steamer J.F. Durston crossing Lake Huron arrived at Mackinaw covered with 1000 tons of ice. At Port Huron, Michigan at the southern end of the lake, trees were uprooted, roofs ripped off buildings and the shoreline severely eroded. Sand driven by the waves swept over a protective breakwater and into the mouth of the Port Huron canal, completely blocking it with an estimated 18,000 cubic metres (640,000 cubic feet) of sand.
As the storm, known historically as the "Ultimate Storm" and the "Big Blow," moved across Lake Erie, the barometer dipped to 96.9 kPa (28.61 inches) in Erie, Pennsylvania. Buffalo, New York measured winds of 100 km/h (62 mph) and 56 cm (22 in) of snow fell on Cleveland, Ohio after a day of freezing rain.
The winds blowing across Lake Erie from the west caused the lake level to drop up to 1.8 m (6 ft) in the western basin, leaving several boats sitting on the muddy bottom of Maumee Bay. As the storm moved across Lake Erie, it blasted Ohio residents with wind and snow and cold temperatures. Even today the storm is considered one of the most severe winter storms in the state's weather history. In its wake, 98-year-old John Williams of Sandusky remarked to the Toledo Blade: "Whenever some old-timer tries to tell you that the old-fashioned winter was worse than the sample we've just had, put him down as an imaginative chap."
The beat of November storm wind and wave has been heard by a good many Lake mariners. Among the many ships lost on the Great Lakes waters when the storm winds of November blew deadly were: the schooner Black Hawk (1847), the schooner Persia (1869), the ore carriers Charles S. Price and the James B. Carruthers (1913), the steel freighter Novadoc (1940), the limestone carrier Carl D. Bradley (1958), and the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald (1975). The legends live on; the story continues. Mariners still face the Great Lakes and their angry, stormy moods, but modern communications, advanced weather forecasts and radar provide some degree of warning when the angry gales of November come slashing.
Great Lakes vessels are made to flex quite a bit. Even in moderate weather, you can watch a ripple run from the forcastle, along the deck, back to the ship's funnel. If they didn't flex, they'd break.
LOL
sheesh...next time I'll wait another 1 hour 1 minute and 1 second to make sure its on the appropriate day.
I only posted the link for interest.
The Ryerson, owned by Inland Steel, was probably the most beautiful laker ever built.
Sad anniversary ping.
Thank you for your post... what horror.
It's interesting you brought this up--today I was chatting with a D-Day Navy vet (the Canadian Navy) and he had a book signing. It was against the rules :) but he kept a diary all throughout the war and put it all together in a book. It was used by the CBC, PBS, and the BBC for various documentaries on the battle for the North Atlantic.
ANYWAY, the point of this is, he had some pictures of life on the ship--old black and whites.
They were several of the ship being covered in what looked like inches of ice. He was telling me how sometimes, the ice would get thicker on one side and the ship would list "lee" or "starboard" (? I think those are the terms?) and they were afraid that the ship would start to roll over sideways, like a ball rolling down the street.
They had to chip the ice off every day.
At the end of our talk, I shook his hand, thanked him for his service, and he saluted me. :)
The wreck of the Patrick Fitzgerald, coming soon.
Apparently Superior is the worst (?) but all the Great Lakes are dangerous.
I grew up in Chicago and one of my relatives drowned after he was standing on a pier during a storm and the waves crashed over him and dragged him out into Lake Michigan.
And sailboaters drown, too. IIRC, there was a famous Chicago doctor or surgeon who was out sailing and drowned, a couple of years back?
It's probably just me but for years I always assumed that song described something that happened a *long* time ago - like the Titanic or that era. I think it's only recently that I realized that the events are recent and I guess the song came out only 1 year after the ship went down. I guess typically these type of songs are "folk" songs that are passed down from generation to generation (maybe like the wreck of the old '97). But not in this case.
apackof2 must have thought you were a member of the "duplicate post police". I've seen them swarm in faster than one of those November gales.
"Gordon must not have been a member of Mensa, when he attacked Mrs. Clemenza"
IIRC that was what happned to "Torey Canyon."
Not disputing you, just sayin'.
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