Posted on 11/09/2010 10:33:44 PM PST by prisoner6
After 35 years, wreck of the Fitz still intrigues Maybe it’s because no one knows for sure exactly what happened. Maybe it’s because so many lives were lost in an instant. Or maybe it’s because of the song. It was 35 years ago tonight when the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. A generation has passed. Memories fade. But interest in the “Fitz” is still keen.
DULUTH — Maybe it’s because no one knows for sure exactly what happened. Maybe it’s because so many lives were lost in an instant. Or maybe it’s because of the song.
It was 35 years ago tonight when the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. A generation has passed. Memories fade. But interest in the “Fitz” is still keen.
“It’s not our biggest exhibit, but it’s the one we absolutely have to keep up,” said Thom Holden, director of the Lake Superior Maritime Museum in Duluth’s Canal Park. “We can’t touch the Fitz exhibit without people getting upset about it. We still get a lot of questions about it.”
But most of the people asking the questions are older now.
“When I first got here in 1977, it was the young school children who knew the most, who were most interested, because it was recent history for them. … Now, even the parents of the children who come through weren’t born when it happened,” Holden said. “For the kids now, it’s like the Titanic. It’s ancient history. But it’s still one of our most asked-about ships or events.”
Holden said the haunting 1976 Gordon Lightfoot ballad about the wreck is a big part of the intrigue.
(Excerpt) Read more at grandforksherald.com ...
can’t stand that song!
Interesting theory. The Liberty ships of WWII experienced hull cracks such as this, and helped expand the science of Fracture Mechanics. Such fractures are helped along by cold temperatures and weld flaws. Some think it is why the Titanic sunk, rather than just flooding a few compartments.
Perhaps the song would be more bearable were it shorter. I do not like music that makes me sad, basically. it’s one of the reasons i can’t stand country bc it makes me cry.
I didn't look but I believe it's only 6 or 7 minutes long.
Just seems a lot longer.
As an aside, I was doing reserve duty with VP-60 at NAS Glenview bach in the late 70's when one of the P-3 crews found the wreck of the Lady Elgin. They had been doing MAD runs looking for some WWI German subs that had been scuttled off Chicago when they came across a large contact that was later identified as the Lady Elgin's powerplant. She's a lot further north and west than originally presumed.
This tragedy would not have been remembered by as many if it wasn’t for Gordon Lightfoot’s great song.
From the mid 19th century until its end, the list of ships taken by Lake Superior is quite long. If you’re into scuba diving, you can while away the entire summer exploring shipwrecks in the cold waters around the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. These same cold waters preserve these wrecks quite well in the big lake. The location of a number of these shipwrecks from that century is still to be discovered.
it’s the waves; they turn minutes to hours
that is one of the theories
I have read that the rivets brought up from the wreck of the Titanic appear to have too much slag in their composition and as such, in the arctic cold waters, became brittle and sheared on impact with the ice berg.
The Great Lakes are called great for a reason. They are every bit as treacherous as any sea on Earth.*
Yep. I was around then. It did have a big impact on people in Chicago and Chicagoland. A girl that I knew in high school was the daughter of the captain of a ship on Lake Michigan.
Here is an excellent memorial to The Edmund Fitzgerald - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw = includes inserted radio and TV broadcasts as well as pictures both of the ship as it is launched, sailed, and underwater clips, and “the faces and names” as well. Very well done.
The length of the song is barely sufficient for this video production.
The sailor was a young man at the time. As I recall he decided to go to college or made a job change and avoided that final trip.
Depends on whether or not you like Gordon Lightfoot’s music.
It’s a Seinfeld thing.
Thanks AF. That is one of the best... No, that is the best compilations of audio and video I’ve seen on the Fitz.
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