Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Nov 10 1975

No one gives a chit… ph uck this is posted 3-4 times year PH UCK!!!!


Nugget apologizes in advance

Anyone ever work on an ore boat, or sail on the Great Lakes?

This isn’t 1929

Well - today's the day they left Superior WI about 47 years and 90 minutes ago.

I live on the lakes but never sailed on them.

Family friends have, uncle worked in the shipyards a little on them. I'm about 35 miles from Sturgeon Bay where a lot of them lay up for winter and get repairs. I've seen the Anderson here in port and I used to work with a guy whose dad was on a ship out there looking for her that night.

Because people always ask - I don't buy the shoaling theory, I'm a 3 sister's believer.

Ore boats and the product they move still are a thing here on the lakes. Quite regular to various ports actually.

Seas on Lake Superior

Lake Huron

Some scale- lots of freeboard on these before loaded.

Grew up in Duluth, saw the Fitzgerald many times. A good Nor'easter, Lake Superior can get really nautical.. Even worse than a big ocean, 20 years in the Navy, a Typhoon is about the same as the Lake really riled up,

You're a day early

It was and remains a great tragedy.

bwhahahahaha


lmfao

I discovered this article on the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald only a few months ago. I don't know how widespread this theory is, but it's very interesting and I think it's correct.

Not a long read.

Interestingly enough - the Anderson is currently downbound for Detroit - should be there 1600 tomorrow. She's just off Rodgers City

Worked on fishing boat out of Milwaukee for a few summers.The Great lakes can be far more treacherous then
Cape Hatteras in a very short time.Working on ore boats was not for pussies.

Teal;
Good afternoon my old cyber friend, I hope the day has been treating you well.

Thanks for the additional information on the lakes and the ships.

Until we started visiting family on Vancouver Island 40 years back I'd not seen a ship "in person" and as it did then, it still blows me away how massive they are.

We were on vacation on the Sunshine Coast watching them load barges with gravel and when my wife pointed out that the little thing we saw walking back and forth on the barge was a human, it sunk in just how huge it was. Apparently that gravel pit supplies concrete plants down as far as Seattle as well as Vancouver.

Anyways I believe I can recall the sinking being reported when it happened, but it was understandably a good long time ago and I might be confusing it with another event. Somehow 1975 was a memorable year for me, not necessarily in good ways for much of it.

Being a Canuck of course the song got a lot of airplay on the radio and it'd play on the anniversary of the tragedy most years.

Thanks again, all the best and good luck on your hunts.

Dwayne

My wife's grandfather did as did his brother. Many men around our hometown "worked the boats" as they called it.

My wife's grandfather had sailed with Earnest McSorley at times. McSorley was from nearby, originally and his nephew was a good friend of mine with whom I fished and hunted quite a bit. He's always been quite a trapper, too.

The boats were an everyday presence in my life when I lived up there, not just the big dry bulkers, but also international shipping from all over the world would pass by. As teenagers we would run the river nights in the summer in our 12 and 14 foot aluminum boats (without lights, of course). More than any other kind of vessel, when you ran alongside a big, heavily laden, dry bulker, as close as you dared, you would be overcome with the sense that this thing was much more than the sum of its parts. Often they'd have a hatch open to the engine room at night and looking in as we went by was like a puick glimpse into another world.

Now, here in Charleston, I have to be content with the company of container ships and RORO's. I miss the boats.

As someone who has spent time on Lakes Huron, Michigan and Superior in some very shiddy conditions, I have huge respect for the Great Lakes. I had my boat out on Lake Michigan a handful of times this summer and it's always a mixture of exhilaration, awe and fear.

Sailed Ontario and Huron. Far more dangerous than most ocean sailing.

Fitz may have been the hatch dogs or she may have hit bottom and been holed.

Lightfoot is great singer, this is just one of his great ones.

I believe that about the hatches. I either read something or saw a documentary about the sinking and I thought they said her hatches needed repair and leaked.