We're Holding Our Own: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald; No. 1

This is a quasi Wisconsin public radio special we're holding our own. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald high-Strung Front actually ran through Marquette and through the extreme extreme end of next superior through cableway, which gave us heavy winds out of the northeast. I mean, I was I was registering 70, steady, 70, not steady with gusts up to 100, just huge seas. I was completely awash in water, was flying right over the top of my bridge. I started shaking and I just knew Mike had always said the water is so cold in Lake Superior in the fall that if you ever fall overboard, you may as well forget it. And I just I knew it was over at that minute, just turning on the TV to watch Monday Night Football. And I got a phone call from my body that said a ship was missing in the lakes and I couldn't believe it. So I called Cleveland myself and they said, yeah, and they gave me the story about,

you know, her going into the snow squall on the Anderson behind them. And they wanted me to get underway as soon as possible. And an hour and 14 minutes later, we sailed with all hands except a third class cook. And of course, it takes I think it was 21 hours later, we were actually on the site of the reported sinking or loss, just as we got on station, a life ring popped up. And that was the last thing that we know of that came off of her to me, working at the in the newsroom of the Herald News Tribune in Duluth, it was just another routine night, as I recall. I got a telephone call from Liz Shuffle by and she was kind of a boat watcher and she operated the bar in downtown Superior, which was frequented by a lot of Great Lake sailors. And she told me that she had heard on her scanner that there was a lot of Marine

radio traffic. It sounded very much like a vessel had capsized, was lost at sea. Nobody realizes that that there are survivors. I mean, my kid's father is on that ship and my husband's on that ship. And people just think of it as a shipwreck that happened so long ago. And it's not. On the ninth day of November. A straight steamer loaded down the path that departed from the Burlington's River Duffed. Steaming eastward towards Detroit on Suffuse Philco. The savage Great Lakes Nodine unleashing all its post

breaking seas across the when Fitzgerald called the coast totally of the Canadian show, the master and his crew braved the deadly waters near the shore, Cariboo. Fighting season behind Fitz-Gerald running down to. The steamer, Arthur Andersen, the master and his crew. Received a call from overhead, Fitzgerald Holt listed a fence, rail had been torn apart and two ballast tank thens, miss. The radar systems of Fitz-Gerald field against the. The Andersen assistant has this southeast where the seas were climbing higher as the icy northern blue,

the ocean beautiful, the rocky shore. Three ocean vessels traveled about passing in the night and they had passed the radar screens, showed nothing left inside, the master of the Anderson reported grave concern. Unknown to him, Fitz-Gerald. But never return. And Crystal Waters. Six fathom shows by waiting off the end of the. And now the first watch, part one of this three part radio documentary, we're holding our own one bell. The ship.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was launched in the summer of 1958 at 729 feet, the largest air carrier on the Great Lakes and the flagship of the Columbia shipping lines. She would set speed and cargo hauling records with her 7000 horse steam turbine, pushing her through the Great Lakes at a clip faster than any other carrier and service. And she would be the last disaster on the Great Lakes, a ship that went down with all hands without warning, without a distress call, without witnesses, without survivors and without knowing why. Good evening. I'm Mike Simonsen. Welcome to We're Holding our own. Fred Stonehouse is perhaps the most noted author to write about the SS, Edmund Fitzgerald. Other books have been written about other Great Lakes wrecks, and certainly more lives have been lost in some of the terrible storms the lakes have thrown at Mariners for centuries. But those wooden ships are smaller steel vessels and there were usually survivors or witnesses. There was always a reason when the 427 foot steamer Henry Steinbrunner went down in 1953 during a May storm on Lake Superior, 14

of her crew of 31 were rescued. And Steinbrunner captain Albert Stigman was not only able to call for help, but also issue orders to abandon ship. Even the Carl Bradley, which lost 32 men when she founded in 1958, had two survivors. Eight years later, in November of 1966, the Daniel J. Morrell was lost on Lake Huron. One of a crew of twenty nine lived to tell the tale. What in those three instances, the morale and the Bradley and the Steinbrunner, they all were relatively old vessels. The morale was 60 years. Steinbrunner had put fifty two years in. Even the Bradley had thirty one. But the Fitzgerald at a mere 17 years was an adolescent on the Great Lakes, and the news of her disaster shattered the Great Lakes maritime community. Stonehouse says the Fitzgerald case, Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, eight point four million dollars to build in 1958, named after the insurance company's chief executive officer, Mr. Edmund Fitzgerald, would

outlive his own ship by 10 years at 729 feet. The Fitzgerald would undergo regular maintenance and improvements, but she was never lengthened, as were many other carriers. Fitzgerald was one piece the original product. Stonehouse says the last Coast Guard inspection was just 10 days before she was lost October 31st, 1975. Inspectors at that time discovered some hatch damage, but allowed her to sail with the stipulation that the repair be completed during the off season. This was quite common. It is very rare indeed for an air carrier to be taken out of service during the operating season for repairs especially. That type of repair, after all, modern day shifts just don't sink unless they collide with something, unless something explainable logical happens, these great or carriers have pumps that spit out water as fast as it comes in. Jimmy Hoba was the captain of the Coast Guard. Cutter would rush the rescue vessel stationed in Duluth in order to search for the carrier once. The Coast Guard realized the ship was nowhere to be found when they

examined the vets with special underwater gear the next spring. The questions only multiplied. The thing that that we, I think the board concluded was that the people that were on the bridge were the only ones that actually were not on board the ship. They were probably blown out by water pressure. There was no one on the in the pilot house and everything. It looked like the pressure of the water going through had blown out the windows and probably shoved everything out the back portion of the bridge. So we actually searched the bottom for a body just to, you know, the emotion of the time from the civilian community and the pressure on us to to discover anything. So we searched the body for about a mile around a mile radius around the vessel and found absolutely nothing.

Fitzgerald carried with her 250 person lifeboats aft and 225 person capacities, self inflating life rafts in the Bougnat sections. Her crew was experienced and well qualified. Captain Ernest McSorley sailed the Great Lakes for 44 years. 38, a ship's master first mate, John McCarthy, was a licensed master for 34 years. Even the second and third mates, James Pratt and Michael Armacost, held their pilot's licenses. A good ship, a good crew would encounter a terrible storm, and a voyage from superior to Detroit would be forever cut short, ending about seven fifteen p.m. Eastern Time, 500 feet below the waters of eastern Lake Superior. Searching for the S.S. Fitz-Gerald expeditions to the wreck of the Edmund

Fitzgerald, or rare, expensive and difficult even in the summer months, the weather can threaten the safety of submarine dove teams. But 1994 saw increased interest in the ship's remains. In late July, Michigan explorer Fred Shannon and the Cruise and the Elgon Lady and Delta Submarine would be the second expedition that month to probe the mysteries of the Fitzgeralds. I'm starting to see bottom, seen bottom. Hang on, hang on. We're right over the wreck. We're right where the wrecking ball of oil. Boy, man. Hard to believe and get some shots of that, too. Still, whatever happened to the vessel happened to it right here. This is ground zero. As we look it over. It's just phenomenal to see twisted metal and like this.

It was Fred Shannon's dream to Dove Fitzgerald someday he would pay for this three day expedition with its own money, shooting video and taking pictures they would use for a book and documentary to be released in 1995, the 20th anniversary of her sinking. It's just unbelievable that steel can be bent that way and still remain, you know, one solid piece. It's almost as though they that they they made it that way was a feeling when you went and saw it for the first time. When we first went down, we descended right on top of the stern section, the inverted upside down stern section. And from there, we worked our way down the bow to the propeller and to the rudder. And the propeller is so immense that you really get caught up in how small the submarine really is and how small you are when you look at it. It was Shannon's intent to approach this expedition as methodically as possible, treating it as he would say, as a crime scene.

His plan was to shoot the wreckage itself, but to also shoot the debris scattered far beyond the wreck. For clues to Fitzgerald's end after his first dove, Shannon knew the work and expense were paying off. I have never felt so strongly about a personality to a shipwreck or linked to a shipwreck as I did the Fitzgerald. Well, it is a very foreboding shipwreck, partly because it's so deep. Secondly, because it's damaged severely. And third, because, you know, whether you want to believe it's a legend or not, as you approach the Fitzgerald, it looks legendary. If any shipwreck in the world ever looked like a like the mystique that has surrounded the Fitzgerald, it's that hall. When you're down there, you feel that that you're intruding in a realm that you're not supposed to be. Fitzgerald allows you to look at it, but it's not happy with the intrusion. It's a dangerous shipwreck because at any moment it could strike out and take another life.

Cables, wires, wreckage are everywhere. Delta sub captain David Slater, a veteran of many ocean dives, says to see the wreck of the Fitzgerald is to believe it, beginning with a massive structure that suddenly emerges from total darkness 500 feet deep on any wreck dove. It's difficult and somewhat spooky at first because you don't know what's down there. You don't know what's around limited visibility the more and more we do it. This my third dove this morning, I'm quite comfortable with it. Know my way around and becomes you have more time to watch and see and view and have emotions about it other than adrenaline rush. Slater is a veteran of many shipwreck dives, including the Lusitania. But he says the Fitz is the most recent shipwreck. His crew has explored the modern ness of the Mr. Fitzgerald makes you pause and consider the tragedy and tragedy that was involved there. That can still happen today, the most certainly. What do you think when you are looking at it? Anything particular grab by the first thing that comes to mind is how large it is is just

huge from the perspective of a small submarine. Is a mountain of steel impressed? But also we don't dove in fresh water, so there's no marine growth down there, which is quite unique for us and bases in good shape. But to see the physics involved is something that large, that much steel crashing and twisting and turning. It's quite phenomenal. Shannon began to find clues in the debris field right away, telling a new version of a 19 year old story finding intact Hatch covers with a large piece of deck, which was thought to have disintegrated during the wrecking because these were within that debris field we were looking at originally. The Coast Guard report, it looks like a fairly small debris field, but it's but it's not. It's made up of much larger pieces. And because these things do have a pattern to them, it would almost indicate that the failure of the center section happened almost at once.

So if I were to draw a scenario, this vessel would be straining on top of the water and. At some point, the center of the vessel would give way, rip the ball would go under and then attack and I would be strewn all over, is out here. Well, the taconite seems to be dumped in two particular areas, although it's scattered throughout the wreckage. It seems to be that when you get into an area close to the broken portion of the bow, in the broken portion of the inverted stern, that there is mounds and mounds and mountains of taconite, that it indicates that it was dumped there trying to gauge such immense wreckage from a porthole the size of a person's face in a two person sub is difficult to put in perspective. But Shannon's methodical crisscrossing of the wreckage did find three open doors. Heretofore, it was always thought of that the ship was completely closed and locked up and it could be pressure blowing. The door is open. It could have been an attempt to exit the ship.

Photographer Jeff Deal looked through one of the open doors and this upside down stern area. You can see there's an open door that leads into the aft deck house and you can see the white overhead, the lights upside down and actually facing up and you're looking in the deck house. That was something that's really never been seen as being in a spot that closely. The wreck was even on the stairwells, even with mud line. Get down in there. You can actually see inside there. And Shannon believes these open doors are significant finding. I know if if this ship was going down right now, my probably my reaction would be to run to a door, even though it would be, you know, futile. I would want to get out. And I'm sure that that probably happened with the Fitzgerald. The widely scattered taconite pellets spill the zip through the holes of a giant pepper shaker. And the open doors are clues that Shannon didn't expect to find and would contribute to a new theory about Fitzgerald's fate. The dove was also unnerving. At times, Shannon found constant reminders of the human

toll of this disaster. A belt, shoes, towels, a pale shower, sandals, coffee, cups with the letter C for the Columbia line. A haunting sight but never so haunting as the stunning news on day two of the expedition found on the last dove of the first day. Shannon held the news until the next day, at approximately six 18, we discovered eight crew members body. The body was not in the wreckage, but in an area near the wreckage near the the mile section. We're also not releasing the exact location of the of the body. We were not really looking for bodies. We did not anticipate really finding a body on the tape of that area is under the control of the expedition and will not be released at this time. Shannon notified the Canadian government a requirement of his permit to dove Fitz-Gerald.

He then put the area off limits and asked the reporters to handle the news with care. This was the first of the 29 to be found. Expedition videographer Rick Mixter says the finding changed the course of the expedition when we all heard it. I mean, everything stopped, everything stopped. And I mean, it was just disbelief. And I think that it's a very, very tender ground that any diver who dives shipwrecks will run into. There are still several shipwrecks in the Great Lakes that have bodies on them there. Some people exploit it. Some people say, you know, they'll they'll use that to go see it. Well, that wasn't our choice. We are here because of the folklore involved in the Evan Fitzgerald. We weren't here for a tour of bodies and we fully didn't expect it. But it certainly, certainly changed the mood and how dives afterwards were. Also, there was a level of excitement before. I mean, I think there still is of wonderment of being able to see this in the body of it. But there is certainly now a more somber mood to every minute that spent down there. How the family takes it will also be reflected

on how the media handle handles this, too. If they know how we felt when it was found and if they know that we weren't looking for this, this just happened. I think that a lot of the bearing of what happens from here also is on the Internet. I'm a journalist as well. It's also balanced on how we treat this. The remains are off the bar wearing the life jacket, which was standard issue on the fits, this body metal of the last moments on board ship, the distance that the crew member lives from the different bow section, the angle in which the body lies on the bottom of the lake. Everything goes together to tell a story and the crew member is speaking from the grave. We consider him a real hero because. He has been actually the first voice out of the veil of secrecy from the Fitzgerald to actually speak to somebody and

say this is what happened in the last minutes of the Fitzgerald and the last hours of the Fitzgerald, nothing could be confirmed of the suspected crew member, not his identity rank features. Sharna believes he was in the pilot house and was thrown from it or escaped. And Fitzgerald's final moments, this crew member physically exited the vessel. It doesn't appear to be that it was blown out through any of the the windows because there is very little injury or tearing on the body once, once outside or at least once in the doorway of the pilot house. You know, we don't know if the Fitzgerald was on its way down at the time or as I speculated, it was still floating or nearly floating. But obviously that that crew member was was trying to save himself and possibly trying to reach a life raft. There was an inflatable life raft located opposite the port

door. That would probably be his first inclination or possibly he was trying to reach a life ring. There was several those also in that area to later, Shannon would receive criticism for this discovery, but insists the feelings of the families mattered to him and his expedition. They're not out for the quick buck or sensational coverage. This expedition was more of a human interest thing and that everybody connected with it was very much aware of our responsibilities and the sensitivity factor involved in possibly finding crewmen people. The Canadian government, upon issuing the permit, was also aware of the possibility and the and that's why they addressed that in our license. So it's not surprising. It's just surprising that it happened at this time. This expedition's findings of the first of Fitzgerald's crew was very disturbing to crew families. The widow of a third mate, Michael Armacost, Janice Armacost says it reopened old wounds for her and other family members that wish expeditions

would stop. I don't understand the fascination for shipwrecks. I wish that there would be some law that would prohibit any more people from going down. Arbogast says finding a member of the crew makes them feel vulnerable to what should be a grave, a final resting place. What bothers me immensely is that that body is in view of any other person that will go down there in a submarine. That bothers me immensely. It scares me to think that someday somebody might take a camera down there and that this will end up on the front page of the National Enquirer on board Delta and 500 feet of water at the wreck site Chanute and the Expedition 94. By placing a white marble plaque in front of number 10 hatch the disintegrated part of the ship between the stern and bow sections. Whatever happened to the vessel happened to it right here. This is ground zero. And the clues really lie in this of this in this mystery mystery area.

As we look at over, it's just phenomenal to see twisted metal. And I like this. Memorial plaque has been set just to the outside of the mile section of Fitz-Gerald down in the debris field by No.10 Hatch in Hatch, combing part of the missing Spartech that we discovered at our first dove on the Edmund Fitzgerald plaque sits upright about four feet off of the very sandy bottom that is littered with taconite pellets in a very quiet place. Be a lasting memory and a tribute to the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Well.

Three. Three Belles. The law of Lake Superior, as in any catastrophic event, a certain myth or legend grows from it, Lord has been with us as long as sailors have slipped through the seas and lakes, most admit to superstition. At least doing things a certain way is to not tempt fate or the waters

SS Edmund Fitzgerald carries with her unproven and unexplained tales and an atmosphere perfect for our imaginations to spin law. This law grows to fill gaps that out the Fitzgerald's last hours, perhaps a sailor's effort to fill in the blanks to deal with a tragedy to give it a reason. The SS Fitzgerald, after all, was the flagship for the Columbia shipping lines of Ogleby Norton. Her crew experienced her master skilled to explain then the last words from the Fitzgerald. We are holding our own, not words of danger, only some top side damage and a list. Captain McSorley never asked for help except to guide his course since he had lost radar if he knew his ship and crew were in peril. He never radioed it to the Coast Guard at the nearby zoo. And how could a ship the size of two and a half football fields just slip away? No last word about breaking up or going under or abandoning ship. Only the last five words to the Arthur Andersen.

We are holding our own minutes after that message, the Fitzgerald would plunge to Lake Superior's bottom in a monstrous, twisted wreck that tells of the power of the lake and storm that night. Yet no one made it to a lifeboat. No remains were ever found that night, that week or the next 19 years until the Shannon expedition discovered one body, one crew member outside the bar area resting on the lake's bottom. It was Captain Jimmy Habas mission to rescue the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The problem was his Coast Guard cutter would. Rush was in Duluth, adding to the mystery of the night was at the other Coast Guard rescue vessels were not able to respond from the nearby CEU. They were in Charlie status up for repairs during the stormiest, the most dangerous part of the shipping season. The wood rush would reach the Fitzgerald site 24 hours after she sank, finding only debris and oil slick and an odd shine over the wreckage area. What his crew would describe later as an eerie sensation.

The Wood Rush crew members couldn't put their finger on it, but they felt the presence of the Fitzgerald crew. The next spring, Hoba and the Wood Rush would assist the investigation by the United States Navy, which used a remote unmanned submersible to photograph the pits to probe the ship's wreckage for clues. And as we made the first dove with curve three, the first thing we saw was the. Upside down stern section, and it was we didn't really understand what we were looking at, you know, in the first couple of minutes because we were reading the letters Fitz-Gerald upside down. So it took us a couple of seconds to figure out what that was. And it indeed was the Fitzgerald. The survey was extensive, 900 pictures were taken, hours of video. We looked in every porthole we did. We were out there for about ten days, diving every day, taking pictures, videotapes, looking

at specific things that the Marine Disaster Board wanted to look for at the National Transportation Safety Board was there also. They had certain certain things that they wanted to look at. And after 10 days, we hoist anchor and came back in. But this time, the more information they obtained, Hoba says, the more it fueled the legend. That was just another theory. Interesting, you know, eerie feeling and interesting thing. We, as we would swim curve three up to a porthole. In, say, one of the crew's compartments, you know, it was like the whole crew would hold their breath thinking that we were going to see a person there and our sailors are a suspicious lot or superstitious lot to start with. I am. We look into every porthole and we didn't see anyone

or anything that resembled a body, which was. I don't know, you got a different feeling, you you kept thinking that there was nobody there. I mean, they were, but we saw no one. It seems every expedition that is probed, Fitzgerald has come back with an unsettling, unexplained phenomenon. Some even take it as a sign to get out, to leave her alone, to let her rest in peace. The Cousteau project sailed the Calypso on to Lake Superior in September of 1980 for the first manned submarine. Look at the bits and of the wreck for a mere 30 minutes, little more than the time needed to find the ship and resurface. Legend has it that the submarine crew was spooked by a purple light coming from a Fitz-Gerald porthole in 1994. Fred Shannons expedition also encountered an eerie presence in the deep on one dove. The sub camera picked up a very strange occurrence somewhere below the sub to two small particles.

About the size is the size of maybe two inches ascended in front of the cameras burning. They were they were on fire. They were actually emitting smoke. They come across the the sub video camera as they were ascending. And this is near the bow section of the Fitzgerald. We were never able to determine what those were. What out of out of nowhere, these small particles come up, they're on fire or appear to be on fire, and they float over towards the the from the bow, they float towards the Fitzgerald pilothouse and then they simply disappear, almost like miniature meteorites. And to this date, that is the spookiest revelation that our video footage has given us. And we cannot explain that. It's it's a mystery. Shannon says they checked the sub and didn't see how this fire could have come from it. And the foreign National Geographic expedition to recover the bell this summer has

stories to tell from its crew. Scott Erlanger is a Chicago freelance photographer working for National Geographic. He says there's plenty with this tragedy to fuel the imagination. I think it's moons you out of the dark and all of a sudden there's the ship that everybody's been talking about. And, you know, clearly right on the side, Edmund Fitzgerald. This is pretty amazing. Her Majesty's Canadian ship, Kormoran Crew, is used to duty on the Atlantic Ocean and not usually probing shipwrecks. It went down with all hands. Kormoran Seaman Charles Pelchat admits to superstition on the seas, guys that run late 4th century that night. They felt they felt like there was a whole bunch of stuff going around. You know, they were pretty spooked. So, yeah, by all means, the whole crew is pretty apprehensive about that, plus being in the Navy there. So there's a whole bunch of traditions and legends about, you know, messing with shipwrecks and stuff like that. So we've got to be really careful. So you feel like you're on the gravesite memorial?

I feel like I guess we must respect what we're doing. You know, it's a good thing. You know, it's like putting a headstone on an unmarked grave, you know, because that bell has all the sailors names on it and stuff like that. And it's the final chapter. Right. But we have to be really careful and make sure that we don't upset any of the greater powers, you know, hovering over. Fitzgerald Felt told our Matt Gauke that he says his mates felt the presence of the 20 year old catastrophe without a doubt. I don't know if you heard about the story that I have with our bell on board our main area of operations, the North Atlantic. We've been going across the whole 33 foot seas. The whole front of the ship has been actually buried under water and come slamming out of the water and knocked us around pretty good. Every one of our messes have has a little bell that you ring. You know, if you want to buy a round of refreshments for the crew or whatever. And one night we're sitting over the rack and, you know, the water

was just like a bowl of jello, you know, just really been an eerie fog came rolling in and the bell fell right off the wall in the officers mess. That's just unheard of because like I said, we've been beaten around really good. The bells never fallen off or anything like that. But sure enough, the bell came screaming right off the wall. Maybe that apprehension of this unusual mission played a part in an incident that was a talk of the current crew. This is Second Lieutenant Coffee. Yeah, we were approaching the ship for the first time, the Fitzgerald for the first time. And it just fell off the wall for no apparent reason. It was securely fastened and it just tumbled down, much to the shock of everyone in the room. I was a sweetest thing that's happened so far, Duluth News Tribune reporter Dick Pomeroy at work the port beat since the 1940s and is now retired and living in Superior. He may have been the first reporter to be on to the sinking after getting a tip from a Port Tavern owner that a ship was missing on Lake Superior.

But in spite of the scope of the event, little was known about a 729 foot ship that slid from all radar screens. Pomeroy says the Associated Press had no information. Coast Guard would only tell them that they were searching for the Edmund Fitzgerald and feared she may have been lost. I recall as little bits and pieces of information came in, we probably changed that story, made running makeovers at least three or four times. I think the whole story ran only about 10 inches of coffee at the time. We had very little information, but it was and it was very obvious that the FETs had been lost. The twist to the story is that Pomeroy had been working on a Gales of November feature story at that time for the Sunday edition detailing the ferociousness and danger of storms that modern shipping and the public seemed to have forgotten. Some of those were very serious. I know there was one in 1913. There were 12 lake carriers were sunk, seven of them there. No trace ever found.

16 others ran aground and seven of them were so seriously damaged that they were put out of service. And that storm claimed some 269 lives. You've got to remember, Fitz was, I think, seven, 30 or somewhere in there and carried a crew of twenty nine. But in those days we're talking about 1913, the vessels were probably 430 to 450 feet in length were smaller vessels. Must have taken an awful beating. When you get into storms that where you got 75, 78 mile an hour winds and gusts that could go to 90. And there's 23 year old Oiler Thomas Benson needing just one last trip to qualify for his assistant engineer's license. His last trip was on the fritz and young David Weiss of California, a 22 year old deck cadet on his first Great Lakes voyage on this fatal trip of the Edmund Fitzgerald and on board the Arthur Andersen, a crew member who was

complaining about not getting into any of these famous storms. He'd heard about Arthur. Fred Stonehouse says he got his wish on 10 November. I had an interesting conversation with Captain Cooper, who relayed when he made the decision to turn, one of the cooks came running up to the bridge and said, Captain, we really going back out? Cooper said, yeah, we are. The cook at that point, ran that back down tape, recorded his last will and testament, put the cassette tape into a mayonnaise jar, sealed it shut and threw it overboard. Our deck was coated tons of ice, but not a sailor knew. Some would be frozen, some be drowned of our big freighters crew, the huge seas, reactor four and after the cold wind allowed did roar. We struck Stern on and swung broadside to our doom on superior.

I like Song of 1894 Duluth songwriter and poet Jerry Willette, there are the ballads, the poems, the storytellers that have been with us through the ages. Best known, of course, is Canadian balladeer Gordon Lightfoot, whose affinity to the Great Lakes inspired him to write the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Lightfoot refuses to give interviews about the song anymore, but did say in earlier interviews printed in this month's edition of Lake Superior magazine that the song consumed him during the three days he was writing it, that he lived on that iron ore carrier that night and that he had no idea it would be more than a cut on one of his albums, let alone an international hit. Lightfoot's agency in Toronto does say some of the proceeds was recording Go to the Mariners Chapel in Detroit. Lightfoot says it's good the world knows of this story of the sacrifice Mariners make on the Great Lakes. Willette degrees through time. These stories cry out to be told, and the crews be remembered. There's always that sense of mystery. There's the official report. There's the semiofficial complaints about the official report.

There's lots of theories by knowledgeable people. But nobody has it this this is it, and Lake Superior, perhaps most of all, confounds our abilities, that our technologies, we can't master this bit of our environment. And we had already sent people to the moon, but we can't cross that lake anytime we want to. This year, a West Hollywood writer is marketing a movie script about the Fitzgerald Crushable is originally from Michigan's Upper Peninsula, but he, too, felt moved to tell this tale. Well, that wrote The Gales of November mystical side of a lake that echoes with lore from the first Americans who called her get gumi referred to. There's no an angel or a devil on your mast as you would view it. Like the Indians, the believed that there were Indians, that the evil spirit lived under the water like the cold, evil fingers just reach up and snatch these lives away.

So remembering is important to remember, to respect the lake, to respect nature, to remember is why he wrote The Gales of November. Don't go out there, don't go in the cold. Don't push this, don't sell in the snow. Whose ship is stronger than the forces that rise sail in November? Such a long ride. Winds with the waves touch travel to the heart of the forces that you face, boy and start, voices are ringing in your head, calling from the past sale in November and you may sell your loved. The scenes of a young lady, you would strengthen

the boy to change and jump the gun. The scene is. It is gone before that, I know the story, a story never told. The sternest part, the strongest hand wisdom from the season's past venture, from the harbor and the sea to task on the devil or an angel on your nice sail in November and you may save your life. The sea is sending your. You would strengthen the the boys change and jump the gun. The fear is that.

It is gone before the storm story, he's never told. Nothing is of a young lady, you would strengthen the boy of change and jumping on the sea of a. It is gone before the a story he's never told. Tomorrow night, we're holding our own. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald continues with the survivors of the tragedy, the families and the expedition to recover the bell of the Fitzgerald. Join us tomorrow night at seven o'clock on KUOW for Mike Salmonsen, this is your announcer, Tony Jazmyne speaking.

Good night.