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Posts: 8792
| 40 years ago yesterday, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, and all 29 men aboard perished. I think about this every time we cross Superior, and just about every time we're out in conditions we shouldn't be out in.
Most of you are probably too young to remember the day or the song. But it's stuck with me for 40 years. And a day...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hgI8bta-7aw |
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Location: varies |
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called 'gitche gumee'
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship's bell rang
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?
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Posts: 4080
Location: Elko - Lake Vermilion | Awesome,,,,
I remember watching Walter Cronkite reporting this as a Senior in High School..
One of the best songs ever written.... |
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Posts: 337
Location: Watersmeet, Michigan | The big lake is certainly nothing to play with. Here's some footage of the 858 foot Roger Blough on a windy day. (You decide: fiberglass or aluminum?)
Fr. K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzi_WI5VWcs |
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| When we first moved to Marquette MI, we rented a house that was across a city street from Lake Superior for about a year and a half. Nothing between the street and Canada but a narrow strip of beach and some scrub brush. Down the road, less than half a mile was the ore dock where the freighters took on their loads. You would see those huge ships, whose bows were less than 100 feet from shore and think, they can handle anything. Then one day we got hit with gale force winds, the sound and the fury of the wind and the waves was stunning. The two ships that had been getting loaded stayed in the harbor until it blew itself out. The break wall was 8 feet or so above the water on a calm day. During the gale, there were waves crashing over the wall by at least 20 feet. The waves were impressive but the sound of that wind was what sticks with you.
When the storm was over, a neighbor who lived right on the shore told me he found two craft on his property and the city property next door. One was a aluminum canoe that had been holed and twisted, the other a 14 foot skiff with holes a foot in diameter. Both had been tossed over 50 feet inland by waves. That storm cured my of my long term desire to live on the lake. |
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Posts: 1276
Location: E. Tenn | Yooper Padre - 11/11/2015 10:32 PM
The big lake is certainly nothing to play with. Here's some footage of the 858 foot Roger Blough on a windy day. (You decide: fiberglass or aluminum?)
Fr. K
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzi_WI5VWcs
be sure to watch the second video.... the wind howling, and the hull flexing is eerie to watch, and it would have been terrifying to have been aboard..
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