That Song Stuck in Your Head

That Song Stuck in your head

    Originally written three years ago, I revisited this as I reflected on the death of Gordon Lightfoot, an artist and storyteller whose work I admire. Read it all the way, since I added short "coda."

    Ever have one of those days when you wake up with a song rattling around in your head and which just won’t let you alone? It happens to me often and is usually some classic rock song which has a great hook and catchy lyrics. Generally, the songs tend to be up tempo to the point that sometimes I find myself walking in time to the music in my head. This happens frequently when I’m walking alone at night to “get my steps in.”   If this doesn’t resonate with you, then skip the rest of this, unless, of course, you’re a history buff, in which case read on. Today’s ditty was, uncharacteristically, not a happy feet song. In fact, I’d be willing to bet no one’s ever danced to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”  Yeah, I know, whaaat? For whatever reason, while I don’t usually dwell on it, this song resonates with me.

        Of course, Gordon Lightfoot actually tells a real story, with very little embellishment, about real events. I also guess, for me, it’s a combination of being a bit fixated on history as well as having been at sea a significant portion of my life. Of course my ships were supposed to sink, (and surface later), but the Great Lakes are interesting to me and not a lot is widely known about the Lakes’ navigation and shipping other than those who do it. So……

        Right off the bat, even though the largest ships doing commerce on the Lakes are well over 700 feet long, longer than many ocean going vessels, they are limited to the “upper” four lakes. Lake Superior is at about 600 feet above sea level, and Huron, Michigan and Erie are only slightly lower and the lower three are connected by navigable rivers.  The largest body of fresh water in the world,  Superior is higher, but the Soo locks have allowed the large “Lakers” to transit from Erie to Superior for about a century.  Of course if one recalls their geography, that nasty falls on the Niagara River between Erie and Ontario are a problem. While there are locks in the Welland Canal, which bypasses the falls and lifts (or lowers) ships about 330 feet via 8 locks,  big “Lakers” like the Edmund Fitzgerald, are too long and wide for the locks, so a Laker is built, lives and, sadly, sometimes  dies on the upper four lakes.

       The Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship on the Lakes when she was built in 1957. She was built on order of Northwestern Life Insurance Company, which was heavily invested in metals related industries. At almost 730 feet in length, she was of 24,000 tons capacity. Essentially her entire career was devoted to picking up a load of taconite (low grade iron ore in pellets) in Duluth, Mn., and ferrying it to mills in places like Toledo, Detroit (principally), or sometimes places in Wisconsin. For reference, the Fitz was more than 100 feet longer than a modern Naval cruiser.

         As a modern vessel, the “Fitz” made the return run, empty, in record times. She was actually called by some Lakes men, the “Toledo Cannonball,” or “Queen of the Lakes,” and, ironically, since Lightfoot uses this nickname in his song, “The Pride of The American Side”  One of her early Commanding Officers, Capt. Peter Pulcer, aka the "DJ captain,"   fostered this fascination with the Fitz by piping music day or night over the ship's outside intercom system while passing through the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers between Huron and Erie. Usually While navigating the Soo Locks (Huron to Superior) he would come out of the pilothouse and use a bullhorn to entertain tourists with a commentary on details about Edmund Fitzgerald.

 SS Edmund Fitzgerald

      November storms on Superior can reach Tropical storm force winds with waves as high as 25 feet! Fully loaded, a Laker, like the Fitzgerald, is far from the most navigable vessel afloat. What is not well known is that in storm season, Lake Superior is capable of towering seas nearly as bad as the North Atlantic. At sea, sailing into the wind is the usual tactic.

         On the night of November 9, 1974, Fitz left Superior, Wisconsin, at 2:15 p.m. under the command of Captain Ernest M. McSorley, heading for a steel mill near Detroit. She was carrying 26,116 tons of ore pellets. About 5 pm, she was joined by another, slightly smaller, Laker, the Arthur M. Anderson, headed for Gary, Indiana. The weather forecast, not radically drastic for November, predicted that a storm would pass just south of Lake Superior by 7 a.m. on November 10.

        As it turned out, however, by 2:00 a.m. the National Weather Service upgraded the forecast “gale” to “storm,” forecasting winds of 40-50 mph. Until then, the Fitz had been following Anderson, travelling at 12.7 knots (about14.7 mph). About 3 am,  Edmund Fitzgerald pulled ahead . At 2:00 pm the Anderson had logged winds of 50 knots (58 mph), wind speeds again picked up rapidly, and it began to snow at 2:45 p.m., reducing visibility. At this point, Anderson lost sight of the Fitzgerald, which was about 16 miles  ahead at the time.

        Just after  3:30 p.m., Captain McSorley radioed the Anderson that his ship  was taking on water and had lost two vent covers and a fence railing. The vessel by now, due to the influx of water, had also developed a list.(leaning to one side)  Captain McSorley radioed that  he would slow Fitzgerald so the Anderson could close the gap between them. Just after 4:10 p.m., McSorley again radioed Anderson, reporting that his radar had failed and asked Anderson's, captain to keep track of her.  Fitzgerald, now essentially blind, slowed to let the Anderson come within a 10-mile range so she could receive radar guidance from the other ship. This "blind in a blizzard" scenario had to be absolutely terrifying for all hands on the Fitzgerald.

        For a short time, Anderson’s navigator directed Fitzgerald by radio toward the relative safety of Whitefish Bay. A short time later, still radar blind, Fitzgerald contacted the Coast Guard station in Grand Marais, Michigan, to ask if Whitefish Point light and navigation beacon were operational. These should have come into view in another 10 or 15 miles. In what has not been mentioned to any degree in either Lightfoot’s ballad or in the news at the time, the Coast Guard replied that their monitoring equipment indicated that both instruments were (inexplicably) inactive! While this probably would not have saved, Fitzgerald, since it was still some distance away, it all but guaranteed that it wouldn’t.  

Captain McSorley then desperately hailed any ships in the Whitefish Point area to report the state of the navigational aids, receiving an answer, that the Whitefish Point light was on but not the radio beacon. Some time later, McSorley radioed, "I have a 'bad list', I have lost both radars, and am taking heavy seas over the deck in one of the worst seas I have ever been in."

        The last communication ever sent from Edmund Fitzgerald came at approximately 7:10 p.m., when the Anderson notified Edmund Fitzgerald of an upbound (approaching) ship and asked how she was doing. McSorley reported, "We are holding our own." She sank minutes later. No distress signal was ever received.  Ten minutes later, Arthur M. Anderson lost the ability either to reach Edmund Fitzgerald by radio or to detect her on radar.

        There are several schools of thought regarding the loss of this vessel, but theories range from navigational error to mechanical failure of hatch covers (most likely, but, of course, vigorously denied by the Fitzgerald’s builder.) Sometime later a badly damaged lifeboat was found, but there were no survivors. Somewhat later, The Navy, Jean-Michel Cousteau, and several others dived the wreck site based on the Navy’s magnetic dipping sonar having located it. The ship’s bell and several other artifacts have been salvaged. One crew member’s corpse, still in a lifejacket, was found, but no other remains of the Fitzgerald’s 29- man crew have been located.

         It is worthy of note, that Lake Superior is “only” about 530 feet deep at the wreck site, but the lake is, In fact, the world’s largest freshwater lake in surface area and has depths of over 1300 feet. For a bit of perspective, Lake Superior at its deepest is 4 times the average depth of the North Sea, which can also get “a bit rough” in winter.  

                  

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

 The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead

When the skies of November turn gloomy

With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more

Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty

That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed

When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side

Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin

As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most

With a crew and good captain well-seasoned

Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms

When they left fully loaded for Cleveland

And later that night when the ship's bell rang

Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound

And a wave broke over the railing

And every man knew, as the captain did too,

T'was the witch of November come stealin'

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait

When the gales of November came slashin'

When afternoon came it was freezin' rain

In the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin'

Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya

At seven p.m., a main hatchway caved in, he said

Fellas, it's been good to know ya

The captain wired in he had water comin' in

And the good ship and crew was in peril

And later that night when 'is lights went outta sight

Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay

If they'd put fifteen more miles behind 'er

They might have split up or they might have capsized

They may have broke deep and took water

And all that remains is the faces and the names

Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings

In the rooms of her ice-water mansion

Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams

The islands and bays are for sportsmen

And farther below Lake Ontario

Takes in what Lake Erie can send her

And the iron boats go as the mariners all know

With the gales of November remembered

               Enhanced photo of the wreckage of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Note that that it actually broke in half. 

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,

In the maritime sailors' cathedral

The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times

For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee

Superior, they said, never gives up her dead

When the gales of November come early

         

Gordon Lightfoot

1938-2023

The church bells at the Detroit Mariner's Church have been rung 29 times yearly, on November 10th, ever since, with one exception. On May 2nd, 2023, the bells were rung 30 times, The last peal was in memory of Gordon Lightfoot.