(Thank you, Gordon Lightfoot, for the testimony of this horrible tragedy)
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The Great Lakes are an important part of both my heritage and my life. The S.S.Edmund Fitzgerald went down in a violent Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975 with all 29 hands lost. This tragedy was immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot's Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. She was a special boat (and ALL vessels on the Great Lakes, no matter what size, are referred to as "boats", not "ships") to me because I was one of the 10,000 people who witnessed her launching on June 8, 1958. Click on the Fitz for more information about the tragedy and the storm that occurred when the gales of November came early.
Lake Superior is the largest fresh water lake in the world. A licensed pilot is required to skipper any foreign vessel crossing her. Lake Superior was kicking up a storm and when the assigned pilot came onboard a freighter in Sault Ste Marie, on the eastern shore, he told the Captain they would have to wait the storm out before venturing across. The Captain replied, "we go, it's only a lake". Upon reaching Duluth, on the western shore, the Captain said, "that's not a lake, it's an ocean -- I've been in storms on the ocean that weren't that bad."
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On June 8, 1958, I was 10 years old when my father took my brother and I on a "road trip". I had no idea that what I was about to witness would become so ingrained in me for the rest of my life. It was one of those "learning experiences" that Dad was so fond of giving my brother and I. (We also witnessed the burning of the J.T.Wing.) I remember some sort of soft weed that I collected because I thought they looked pretty and were soft to the touch, sort of like a kitten's tail. I remember the acrid smell of the grease used to coat the wood skids holding the biggest boat I had ever seen in my life. I remember the crash when she hit the water. I am proud to remember that I was one of the 10,000 people at the launching of the S.S.Edmund Fitzgerald at the Great Lakes Engineering Works in River Rouge, Michigan. She was hull #301 and at 729 feet 3 inches long by 75 feet wide was the largest freighter on the Great Lakes until the locks at Sault Ste. Marie were enlarged to accomodate the thousand footers.
Years later, on November 10, 1975, a broadcast was heard on the radio that a freighter had gone missing, but wasn't identified yet. I was pregnant with my youngest child at the time, and the first boat I thought of was "my" boat: the Fitz, because every time I saw a freighter going up or down the river, I just HAD to check to see if it was the Fitz. I saw her many times, and was even aboard her once, while she was docked at McLouth Steel in Trenton.
It was around 1984 that the Fitz was weighing heavy on my mind, I had been a boater practically all my life, but had just begun sailing (rag-bagging) and I remember asking my dad why I was getting chills whenever I heard the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", or why I could never bring myself to attend the memorial held at Mariner's Church each year on November 10. I had visited the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Bay, and the Valley Camp in Sault Ste. Marie, where the Fitz's boats (life boats) are kept. I practically became hysterical when I saw what Lake Superior had done to one of the boats. Dad's reply was that I was now aware, thru my sailing, of the respect that one needs to have for what "water" can do, and although I never knew any of the crew members of the Fitz, it hit me just the same. I have, however, met Captain Erikson and spoken with him while he was attending a memorial at Dossin Museum on Belle Isle in Detroit.
Water runs deep in my veins. The pictures below were taken by my father, Ernie Johnson, as she was launched.
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© copyright K.M.J.Knox
Webpage updated 5-21-2006
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