History Book: The gales of November

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MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Monday, November 10th. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Up next, the WORLD History Book.

MUSIC: Does anyone know where the love of God goes / when the waves turn the minutes to hours? / … the church bell chimed / ’til it rang 29 times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

Singer songwriter Gordon Lightfoot singing of the very picture of the proverbial “perfect storm:” a long ship loaded with 26,000 tons of iron ore, facing hurricane strength winds and waves taller than a three-story building, leading to the Great Lakes’ most famous shipwreck, 50 years ago today.

Here’s WORLD’s Paul Butler.

PAUL BUTLER: November 10th, 1975. The National Weather Service has issued a Storm Warning for Lake Superior, with winds greater than 55 miles per hour. Gales this strong often produce waves of 25 feet or more.

It’s a weather pattern known regionally as The Witch of November, appearing with very little warning. When it blows in, no one wants to be caught out on the water, just ask sailor John Lufkins. During the November 10th storm he had to rescue fishermen floundering in the sheltered Whitefish Bay in Eastern Michigan.

LUFKINS: I’ve seen a lot of bad storms…but nothing like that. I mean its hard to describe…the wind just came up horrifically,

The Coast Guard tells all vessels to find safe anchorage until the storm is past, announcing the locks into Lake Huron have been closed.

More than 40 miles to the north, the captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald is struggling to maintain his course. Captain Ernest McSorley is navigating without radar, in blowing snow and rough seas. He decides to try to reach Whitefish Bay.

Not far away, captain Bernie Cooper is piloting the SS Arthur M Anderson. Another huge freighter. The Fitzgerald’s sister ship. It's more than 10 miles behind on the same route. Cooper checks in with McSorley by radio throughout the day.

CAPT. COOPER: And he said, I've got a little problem. He said my fence rail is down. He said, I've got two vents missing, and I've taken a starboard list now…I asked him if he had his pumps on. He said, Yes.

McSorley says he’s going to slow the Fitzgerald down so that Cooper can catch up—hoping they can continue on to the harbor together. About an hour later, Cooper checks back in.

CAPT. COOPER: I said, How you doing? He said, we're holding our own. That was at 7:10, that was the last transmission we had from him, and he showed no signs of panic. I mean, he was calm. So I like, I firmly believe, I think that he thought that ship was going to get him through.

The Edmund Fitzgerald disappears from Cooper’s radar at 7:15pm. No mayday. No SOS. It’s there one moment, and gone the next.

CAPT. COOPER: I think they were going under, and they thought it was a big wave, and I think they just kept going, just plunged.

About an hour later, the Coast Guard calls for a search and rescue. The problem is, the storm is still raging, and no one except Cooper is anywhere close to the Canadian waters. The Coast Guard asks him to turn around and check. Time is of the essence. No one can survive in the frigid water for more than 45 minutes.

COAST GUARD: We have no other vessels in that vicinity right now… We're talking now about a matter of life and death and looking for survivors that might be in life rafts or in the in the water and uh we can only ask the masters to do the best without hazarding their vessel.

COOPER: I’ll turn around. I don’t know…I’ll give it a try.

COAST GUARD: But do the best you can and see if you could find any sign of any lights in the water or any debris or any life rafts or anything that might indicate survivors…

Captain Cooper makes it back to the last known location of the Fitzgerald and finds an oil slick, life jackets, and wood that seems to be from a life boat…but nothing more.

TOM BROKAW: A freighter carrying a crew of 29 disappeared on Lake Superior during a severe storm last night and so far no survivors have been found…

Theories of what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald begin almost immediately, audio here from the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

CBC: We don't know whether the 729 foot carrier the Edmund Fitzgerald broke in half, capsized, or nose dived into Lake Superior but its disappearance last night was sudden.

In 1977 the U.S. Coast Guard concludes that water crashing on the deck and leaking through cracked and poorly sealed hatch covers is the most likely cause of the disaster. It’s the explanation Gordon Lightfoot includes in his musical retelling of the wreck.

SONG LYRIC: 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

But in 1995 a Discovery documentary unveils new findings suggesting the Edmund Fitzgerald likely broke apart suddenly—sinking rapidly. Leading Lightfoot to change the lyric of his famous song:

LIGHTFOOT: So I…changed to a lyric… There's no more broken hatch covers. There was a couple of mothers who were really really happy about that…Ruth Hudson I mean she's like what 80 years old now it kind of made her year knowing that her kid wasn't the guy who didn't seal the hatch cover…

The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald leads to significant safety changes for all ships on the Great Lakes. including mandatory immersion suits to protect crews against extreme cold water, a depth sounder for a constant read out of just how much water is below the ship, and improved construction techniques for the large ships caught by the gales of November.

The bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald was recovered on July 4th, 1995. It is now on permanent display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point. Later today it’ll be tolled 30 times. once for each of the 29 crew members who lost their life. and an additional time for the estimated 30,000 mariners lost on the Great Lakes over the last 300 years.

SOUND: [TOLLING THE BELL OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD]

That’s this week’s WORLD History Book. I’m Paul Butler.

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