Edmund Fitzgerald: Why this tragedy sticks with us after 40 years

MARQUETTE, MI -- "What if" scenarios don't get much more fanciful than the one maritime historian Fred Stonehouse has been envisioning the past four decades since the Edmund Fitzgerald plunged to the bottom of Lake Superior with its captain and crew.

Stonehouse likes to imagine a lone survivor escaped the boat and beat the freezing waves on the night the witch of November came stealing. In this fantasy, the man struggles ashore and decides to start a new life with a slate wiped clean.

The impossible premise seems tantalizing enough for the pages of a fiction novel.

"The story becomes a deathbed confession about what happened to him since the Fitzgerald," said Stonehouse, author of the definitive non-fiction book on the famous 1975 shipwreck. "I think it would be fun to write, but I haven't done it because I thought it might be somewhat insulting to family members."

That clash between fact and fiction has been central to the Edmund Fitzgerald legend in the 40 years since the mighty iron ore carrier sunk with all hands aboard during a hurricane-force gale on Monday, Nov. 10, 1975.

Thanks to Gordon Lightfoot's popular folk song and an enduring mystery that is debated to this day, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald -- surpassed in maritime notoriety perhaps only by the Titanic -- has become an American cultural touchstone in a way that no other Great Lakes tragedy has before, or likely ever will again.

The Fitzgerald legend has become a proxy of sorts for all Great Lakes shipwrecks and the sailors who died while serving on them. In places like Detroit, Traverse City, Two Harbors and Whitefish Point, annual memorial ceremonies this week will honor the 29 men who died when the Fitzgerald submarined underneath the big lake they called Gitche Gumee.

Related: 17 miles to safety: Numbers tell story of Edmund Fitzgerald

Elsewhere around the region, folks will drink "Edmund Fitzgerald" beer, play Lightfoot's famous ballad; and men, women and children will pilgrimage to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point and the Valley Camp Museum in Sault Ste. Marie to see the Fitzgerald's bell, lifeboats and, frankly, little else of a vessel that vanished almost without a trace.

"It hangs with us because the Fitzgerald has become part of the lore of the lakes," said Stonehouse. "The books, videos, Christmas cards and souvenirs are enablers that keep it going in the realm of legend -- not necessarily reality."

'We are holding our own'

Although legend is what thrives, the reality is no less compelling.

Basic facts of the ship's final voyage are well documented. On Sunday, Nov. 9, 1975, the 729-foot Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior, Wis. with a load of taconite pellets (iron ore) downbound for the Zug Island steel mill in Detroit.

The ship, captained by veteran skipper Ernest McSorley, was joined by the freighter Arthur M. Anderson a couple hours into the voyage. The two ships encountered worsening seas as they steamed east along a northern route across the lake. Battered by 60-mph sustained winds and 25-foot waves during the final hours, the Fitzgerald vanished from radar sometime around 7:15 p.m.

Of the 29 men aboard, none survived. No bodies were ever recovered. No distress call was made. The Fitzgerald was simply there one minute and gone the next. The last words from Capt. McSorley were succinct: "We are holding our own."

But this highly condensed summation doesn't begin to tell the whole story.

Radio back-and-forth between McSorley, Capt. Jesse Cooper of the Anderson and other ships out that evening indicate the doomed ship was struggling mightily through, in McSorely's words, "one of the worst seas I've ever been in." The 63-year-old captain was sailing blind, so to speak, as both of the Fitzgerald's radars were out, the Whitefish Point light and radio beacon were down, and the ship had no depth-sounding technology in 1975.

The Anderson -- a now 63-year-old freighter still in active service -- was relaying navigation instructions to the Fitzgerald, which reported a broken fence railing, a bad list and both pumps working in the hours before the end.

The ship had no watertight bulkheads and was taking heavy seas across the deck. Both the U.S. Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board investigation reports pinned the likely sinking cause on massive hold flooding due to faulty cargo hatch covers that went unnoticed by the crew and captain.

There are other theories about what caused the sinking, ranging on the credibility scale between UFO-related nonsense, defective construction and the very possible grounding on a shoal the ship had passed over earlier in the voyage.

At this point, given the depth and condition of the wreckage, the lack of witnesses and a prohibition placed on diving the wreck by the Canadian government at the behest of lost crew families, the mystery is unlikely to ever be solved.

"Nobody is going to find the smoking gun," said Stonehouse. "It really is solely a historical oddity at this point."

A tangible legacy

Why are people still entranced by it? That's really no mystery at all.

The Fitzgerald was not the only major iron ore carrier to sink during the latter half of the 20th century. In 1958 -- roughly two months after the Fitzgerald's maiden voyage -- the 639-foot freighter Carl D. Bradley sunk in Lake Michigan off Gull Island during a Nov. 18 storm. Two men survived, 33 died.

About eight years later, the 580-foot Daniel J. Morrell sunk in Lake Huron off Pointe aux Barques during a Nov. 29 storm in 1966. One man out of 29, Dennis Hale, survived the wreck and lived another 50 years. He died this Sept. 2.

Loss of the Morrell, the Bradley and another ship, the Henry Steinbrenner, which sunk May 11, 1953 in Lake Superior south of Isle Royale, were tragic modern-era wrecks that devastated families and added to the list of 30,000-some sailors who have died on the Great Lakes. But they are hardly remembered as well.

And, well ... they just weren't The Mighty Fitz -- a favorite of boat watchers and mariners alike. It was a Michigan ship in many respects, although she was home-ported in Wisconsin. The 13,632-ton laker was built at Great Lakes Engineering Works in River Rouge and spent much of her time in Michigan waters -- steaming 748 total round-trips between Superior, Wis., and Detroit's Zug Island mill.

The Fitzgerald was 17 years old when she sunk. By contrast, the Bradley was 31, the Morrell was 60 and the Steinbrenner was 52 years old at the time of their wrecks. Nobody wrote a hit song about those shipwrecks, though.

"For a ship to disappear with all hands is very rare," said Admiral Jerry Achenbach, superintendent at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy.

The Traverse City academy -- which had a cadet on the Fitzgerald when she sunk, David Weiss -- is peppered with bits of Fitz memorabilia. There are framed photos and drawings of the ship on the walls, an autographed photo of Gordon Lightfoot and a plaque honoring Weiss. Every Nov. 10, the school holds a solemn memorial service.

Students learn about the Fitzgerald in courses on damage control and vessel construction. They are taught about the history of Great Lakes maritime safety regulations, many of which trace directly to the Fitzgerald sinking. Mandatory depth finders, survival suits, positioning systems, emergency beacons and higher freeboard requirements were rules passed in the Fitzgerald's wake.

Captains are now, generally, more cautious in heavy weather, said Stonehouse.

"If you talk to the guys driving the boats today, they will tell you the Fitzgerald happened yesterday," he said. "To them, it's still very alive and real."

In Achenbach's office at the academy, one picture grabs the attention of almost every person who enters the room. It's a framed photo of Mr. and Mrs. Edmund Fitzgerald, namesake of the ship, standing on the deck of the doomed laker.

Achenbach's predecessor John Tanner, who personally drove cadet David Weiss to the Fitzgerald for his 1975 training assignment, left the photo upon retirement. Many things in the office have changed, but the photo remains.

"That's one thing I've not touched," Achenbach said.

Garret Ellison covers business, environment & the Great Lakes for MLive/The Grand Rapids Press. Email him at gellison@mlive.com or follow on Twitter & Instagram