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    How the SS Edmund Fitzgerald Became Shipwrecked

    By Denise Nuttall | Yahoo! Contributor Network – Tue, Oct 26, 2010
    This story comes from the Yahoo! Contributor Network, where individuals publish their unique perspectives on some of the world’s most popular websites.
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    The gales of November sealed the fate of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior on the night of November 10, 1975 during a violent storm. One moment she is plowing through the waters which were recorded to be 3 stories high and the next moment she is swallowed by treacherous lake and sent to the graveyard of ships.

    The ship disappeared off the radar mysteriously from nearby vessels approximately 17 miles from the entrance to White Fish Bay. The Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew of 29 men seemed to have just vanished. To this day not one body has come to shore.

    I can recall still the tone in my father's voice as he tells of the demise of the ship he once worked upon in the seventies himself. The tone was of absolute shock and disbelief.

    The Edmund Fitzgerald was a mammoth vessel that had ran the Great Lakes since its maiden voyage in June of 1958. The ship was 729 feet long, 75 feet wide and weighed over 13632 ton empty. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship to operate the Great lakes waterways at its time. It had broken its own records for the most cargo carried in one year.

    The November winds are famous around the Great Lakes for being violent and having no mercy. This storm reported by the captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald, was the worst he had ever seen. He reported thirty foot wave breaking the bow and winds greater than 60 miles per hour. The water pumps and the life rafts had been damaged by the strong winds of the storm. The final word from the captain was that they were holding their own.

    How it happened that this gigantic ore carrier came to be split in half and end up 530 feet into the deep and icy waters of Lake Superior is still a mystery. And why was there no distress signal ever sent. Several theories have been touted but still no firm conclusion has been found as to why the huge ship went down.

    If it had not been for the song from Gordon Lightfoot, "Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald", the Edmund Fitzgerald would have quickly been forgotten, people not familiar with the Great Lakes region do not understand the enormity of the lakes nor the size of theses big cargo vessels. But now because of the song and the mystery behind the ships sinking, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald has now become legend.

     

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