The fateful, final journey of the Edmund Fitzgerald (opens in new tab)

Lakers seem to have unusually long lives for ships because of the unique nature of the cargo carried, and the lack of salt water. As far as I can tell, many are retired because metal fatigue reasons, or an ship that cannot be upgraded to diesel propulsion.

> deadliest being the Lady Elgin with a loss of approximately 300 lives (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Lady_Elgin).

The wikipedia page isn't quite clear on the matter:

> Professor Mason and Lieutenant Bartlett asserted that a principal cause of the collision was the lack of a $15 lantern on the Augusta

> The judgement was based on a law that not only gave sail the right of way over steam, but did not require sailing vessels to carry running lights.

It didn't matter that the Augusta was a sailing ship, it still had the right of way over the Lady Elgin, and it was the duty of the Lady Elgin to alter course to avoid the collision. But because the Augusta was a sailing ship it didn't need adequate lighting, so the Lady Elgin didn't see it until it was too late.

By the way, the law [1] right now still gives sailing vessels right of way over motor vessels. The location of the wreck, just offshore from Chicago, 700+ miles from the nearest ocean, is subject to the international treaty governing the avoidance of collisions at sea.

[1] https://www.imo.org/en/About/Conventions/Pages/COLREG.aspx

> Many of these ships were never found, so the exact number of shipwrecks in the Lakes is unknown; the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum approximates 6,000 ships and 30,000 lives lost, while historian and mariner Mark Thompson has estimated that the total number of wrecks is likely more than 25,000.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_the_Grea...

This year fit the pattern quite well. I heard on the radio that there were 20' waves on Superior the other day.

If you’re able to time a visit to the locks in Sault Ste., MI for the last Friday in June you can take a tour that allows you to walk out onto the locks and get up close with the freighters. There are usually some other special tours around town for this “Engineer’s Day” event.

Our visit one year happened to fall on that day and it was an unexpected treat.

The most wild thing about the great lakes for me, is that there's enormous islands in the middle which you can visit.

Beaver Island has an entire year-round community. Farms, wineries, a small airport. It was featured on some survival show I caught late at night once.

The Manitou islands used to be inhabited. They have found arrowheads on the island 7000 years old. They went through a logging colony, to a farming colony, to them mostly just a collection of summer cottages, before the state finally bought them and made them a wild camping nature preserve. 5 miles offshore, and within sight of other massive islands which have their own wild histories.

Lastly - South Manitou island has a shipwreck from the 60's along its shore you can still explore and dive.

Mackinac island is another year-round community. No cars are allowed, and the historical forts from the 1800's have been all preserved. It's the only place I've visited which has a real, "Pirates of the Caribbean" feel to it.

Put-in-Bay, where fishermen go to party. There's a lot of these places!

IANANE (not a Naval Engineer), but that scenario sounds wildly implausible. It's easy to "do" it with a scale model toy, or simplistic geometry - but out in real life, at the size of a lake freighter, the square-cube law is absolutely merciless. Below (very optimistic guess) ~120' depth, the ship's hull can no longer hold air, to provide buoyancy. Recall that the water pressure a few hundred feet down is enough to crush a WWI submarine like an empty beer can in your fist. And lake freighters hulls are not built to anything remotely resembling WWI military submarine standards.

Can you imagine the horror of being on the bridge, thinking that the bow has just submerged into a wave, and only realizing it’s not going to come back up when you feel the ship slam into the lake floor?

If memory serves, the Russian Kursk sank in water less deep than it was long, too. And in one piece.

It's not exactly comforting, but in truth the ship broke in two, so that scenario is unlikely.

You may be right about the liquefaction, but there is zero chance the crew forgot to shut the cargo holds properly. They knew they were heading into a storm and everyone on that ship understood their lives depended on securing all the hatches.

Iron ore liquefaction is still a deadly problem for bulk carriers today and is suspected to be the cause of several recent sinkings.

https://gcaptain.com/cargo-liquefaction-continues-to-pose-de...

I was introduced to this song by a music teacher in elementary school, and I remember being wow'd by the story and thinking the song sounded cool as hell. I've almost never listened to it since then, but it has remained ingrained in my head for almost 30 years. Every couple of weeks it pops into my head, clear as a bell.

Not sure why I'm sharing this, but yeah...

Rheostatics also do a great cover, here’s the version from their live album (studio recording is also good): https://youtu.be/7J5hJQtMlE0

To me, the old cook was the hero of that song.

One of my favorite songs. So many haunting lyrics. I've always been fascinated by "Superior, they said, never gives up her dead..." I've read it is in reference to the fact that because the lake is so cold, sunken bodies will not decompose and resurface. Of course, it could just be folklore.

Relatedly, the Punch Brothers recently cover-albumed Tony Rice's cover of the track:

https://youtu.be/DhTRNU1mnVA

What a song — chills me every time. I can’t think of another historical and/or tragedy song that grips me as much as this one.

I'm not sure if this is a sea shanty, but it reminds me of "Blow the Man Down"[0] which is one.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blow_the_Man_Down

Obligatory link to the Paul Gross song, 32 Down on the Robert Mackenzie, which was composed after the show (Due South) was planning to do a story (featuring the song) about the Edmund Fitzgerald, but was convinced by the families of the deceased that it was better to craft something fictional: https://youtu.be/_d-t0959C3A

Obligatory link to the parody of the Gordon Lightfoot song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udZFnUb4Q6A