27 Facts About Edmund Fitzgerald

SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10,1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men.

Edmund Fitzgerald was located in deep water on November 14,1975, by a US Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies, and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces.

Marie, Ontario—a distance Edmund Fitzgerald could have covered in just over an hour at her top speed.

Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, invested in the iron and minerals industries on a large-scale basis, including the construction of Edmund Fitzgerald, which represented the first such investment by any American life insurance company.

Edmund Fitzgerald had attempted to dissuade the naming of the ship after himself proposing the names Centennial, Seaway, Milwaukee and Northwestern.

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When Elizabeth Fitzgerald, wife of Edmund Fitzgerald, tried to christen the ship by smashing a champagne bottle over the bow, it took her three attempts to break it.

Edmund Fitzgerald was a record-setting workhorse, often beating her own milestones.

For 17 years, Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite from Minnesota's Iron Range mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo, and other ports.

In 1969, Edmund Fitzgerald received a safety award for eight years of operation without a time-off worker injury.

Edmund Fitzgerald was en route to the steel mill on Zug Island, near Detroit, Michigan, with a cargo of 26,116 long tons of taconite ore pellets and soon reached her full speed of 16.

Until then, Edmund Fitzgerald had followed Arthur M Anderson, which was travelling at a constant 14.

Edmund Fitzgerald is among the largest and best-known vessels lost on the Great Lakes, but she is not alone on the Lake Superior seabed in that area.

Edmund Fitzgerald said that he commonly sailed in fine weather using the minimum number of clamps necessary to secure the hatch covers.

NTSB conducted computer studies, testing and analysis to determine the forces necessary to collapse the hatch covers and concluded that Edmund Fitzgerald sank suddenly from flooding of the cargo hold "due to the collapse of one or more of the hatch covers under the weight of giant boarding seas" instead of flooding gradually due to ineffective hatch closures.

The stern section acted as an anchor and caused Edmund Fitzgerald to come to a full stop, causing everything to go forward.

USCG cited topside damage as a reasonable alternative reason for Edmund Fitzgerald sinking and surmised that damage to the fence rail and vents was possibly caused by a heavy floating object such as a log.

Edmund Fitzgerald theorized that the loss of the vents resulted in flooding of two ballast tanks or a ballast tank and a walking tunnel that caused the ship to list.

Edmund Fitzgerald therefore chose a route that gave Wilfred Sykes the most protection and took refuge in Thunder Bay, Ontario, during the worst of the storm.

The NTSB Edmund Fitzgerald investigation concluded that Great Lakes freighters should be constructed with watertight bulkheads in their cargo holds.

USCG had proposed rules for watertight bulkheads in Great Lakes vessels as early as the sinking of Daniel J Morrell in 1966 and did so again after the sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald, arguing that this would allow ships to make it to refuge or at least allow crew members to abandon ship in an orderly fashion.

Fathometer was not required under USCG regulations, and Edmund Fitzgerald lacked one, even though fathometers were available at the time of her sinking.

Edmund Fitzgerald had no system to monitor the presence or amount of water in her cargo hold, even though there was always some present.

The Marine Board noted that because Edmund Fitzgerald lacked a draft-reading system, the crew had no way to determine whether the vessel had lost freeboard.

The loss of Edmund Fitzgerald exposed the USCG's lack of rescue capability on Lake Superior.

An anchor from Edmund Fitzgerald lost on an earlier trip was recovered from the Detroit River and is on display at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum in Detroit, Michigan.

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Later it was determined that the life ring was not from Edmund Fitzgerald, but had been lost by the owner, whose father had made it as a personal memorial.

Piano concerto titled The Edmund Fitzgerald was composed by American composer Geoffrey Peterson in 2002; it premiered by the Sault Symphony Orchestra in Sault Ste.