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'.....



>"Jim Phillips" <[log in to unmask]> wrote in message
>news:acpeqc010i@enews2.newsguy.com...
> > As a side note, if anyone is interested in the true story behind GORDON
>(not
> > Godon!) Lightfoot's song, please see:
> >
> > http://www.msu.edu/bell/index.html
> >
> > * To join/leave the list, search archives, change list settings, *
> > * etc., please visit http://raven.utc.edu/archives/hp3000-l.html *
> >
>
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