Yes, It’s That Time of Year Again

Time to remember the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If you’ve never seen one of these tankers steam down a river on it’s way to the ocean or one of the Great Lakes you can’t quite picture how massive they are.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was 729 feet long, 75 feet wide, and 39 feet high. When launched, it was the largest ship on the Great Lakes and had a gross tonnage of 13,632 tons

The thought of a monster that size going down in a storm is inconceivable  And yet it did, in a sudden storm generating winds of over 100 MPH.

One computer model drawing on historic weather data, shows how frigid air coming down from Canada collided with storm system coming from the southwest, creating hurricane-like conditions that turned the water “from calm to ferocious in just minutes,” as Bacon writes, with waves that may have spiked to more than 50 feet.

I‘ve been panicked by storms of far less velocity on the Great Lakes. The crew’s terror must have been unfathomable; they were all aware of the imminent danger.

For enthusiasts, this is a recent, interesting article about the tragedy: In the Wake of the Edmund Fitzgerald 

The mighty ship, immortalized in song by Gordon Lightfoot, sank 50 years ago on Lake Superior. Our reporter spent a week on a Great Lakes freighter that survived the storm.

For Bacon, a veteran journalist from Ann Arbor, Mich., the “untold story” is also the beauty, danger and sheer scale of the lakes.

“Why was I surprised to learn the five Great Lakes are bigger than all New England, plus the state of New York?” he said. “I grew up on these lakes, and I did not know that.”

And now 50 years have passed, Gordon Lightfoot has been lamenting it for 49 of those years. That’s enough time to introduce a little levity; husband-wife text exchange a week ago.