There are a number of websites devoted to the Edmund Fitzgerald.

This one http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/wxwise/fitz.html gives a farily
succinct timeline of the boat's last voyage (query: is the Arthur M
Anderson, which was one of the last boats in contact with the Fitzgerald,
named after the accountant?).

This site http://www.ssefo.com/ has photos and a lot of links.

There are a couple of theories as to why she sank. One is that she was
swamped, another is that water flooded in through damaged hatchways,
causing her cargo to shift toward the bow, which pitched down. There seems
to be no support for the idea that she snapped in two after being suspended
between two giant waves.


At 11:30 AM 6/5/2002 -0500, Jerry Fochtman wrote:
>At 11:32 AM 5/28/02 -0500, Tom of Bunyon wrote:
>>I actually remember that as a kid - whole Ore freighter just vanished
>>without a trace in a great-lakes storm. Turned out to be a combination of
>>cold water brittleness, and the fully loaded freighter being cantilevered
>>between two giant waves. Snapped in two, went down in minutes.
>
>In November, 1958 the limestone carrier Carl D. Bradley went down in a similar
>fashion off Gull island west of Beaver Island in 360 ft of water.  However,
>it was empty at the time, after unloading at the docks in Gary, Ind.  I
>remember this well, as the Coast Guard cutter  'Sundew' in my home town of
>Charlevoix responded to the distress call.  With a skelton crew (most were
>on leave), when the Sundew left the harbor many folks feared that it too,
>would not return.  The Sundew was a 180 ft. buoy tender/ice breaker.  As we
>watched it clear the piers in Lake Michigan, the waves/swells were so large
>that it was dipping the outside ends of its bridge in the water.  If I
>recall, there were 2 survivors from the Bradley, with 33 crew members lost.
>Witness accounts were that both bow and stern were lifted on waves and it
>broke it's keel, splitting the vessel in half....  This was because it was
>empty.  Had it been loaded, it would have rode better in the water and
>been fine.  There was another ship nearby whose crew actually saw it happen
>but was unable to assist due to the heavy seas.
>
>While I'm sure there is a more definitive report on the Fitzgerald, I thought
>it had lost some hatch covers and took on too much water, causing further
>problems.
>
>Oh well, just back from vacation and too many things to catch-up on and
>not a lot of time to search...
>
>FYI...ore carriers are not the only vessel's of its type on the lakes.  There
>are other bulk carriers as well.  They can be easily identified because their
>superstructure is over the stern of the vessel.  However, they also may be
>ocean-going as well because a number of ships come up the St. Lawrence
>Seaway and around the lakes to Chicago, etc.  This is probably why we
>always referred to the larger vessels as 'ships'.....

--------------------------------
Tom Brandt
Northtech Systems, Inc.
313 N. 1st Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
http://www.northtech.com/

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