Fifty years after the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald sank with its 29-man crew on storm-tossed Lake Superior, shipwreck buffs and maritime archaeologists still debate what caused the tragedy on Nov. 10, 1975.
Some claim the big ship capsized and sank. Others think it bottomed out after straying onto “6 Fathom Shoals,” rocks 36 feet deep that punched mortal wounds into its hull. Still others think the Fitzgerald’s bow rammed into the back of a giant wave, driving its 26,116-ton load of iron ore forward and nosediving the ship into the bottom. And still others think three successive giant waves (“The Three Sisters”) overwhelmed the Fitzgerald while rolling down its deck from the northwest.
If you hang around, you’ll even hear folks debate whether ancient Chippewa people really passed down the legend that Gitche Gume “never gives up its dead” in November. True or not, singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot made it folklore in his classic song immortalizing the shipwreck.
And when they can’t agree on that, they’ll nitpick other Lightfoot lyrics. For instance, the Fitzgerald was bound for Detroit’s Zug Island, not Cleveland; the “Maritime Sailors Cathedral” is actually the Mariners Church of Detroit. (And by the way, it’s now rustic, not musty.) Finally, as you’ll read below, Lightfoot got it right in his original lyrics when singing, “At 7 p.m. a main hatchway caved in.”
Through it all, no one can debate a core maritime principle long instilled in sailors: A ship’s captain is solely responsible for its welfare, mission, and crew. Captains can delegate specific jobs to others, but they can’t delegate the responsibilities inherent to those jobs.
Therefore, even though Captain Ernest M. McSorley was generally liked by the Fitzgerald’s crew, mostly respected by his peers, well-honored by his employers, and widely recognized as an expert helmsman and navigator, he’s also responsible for the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinking 17 miles short of safety in Whitefish Bay. That’s the code ship captains live by, whether they master a merchant vessel or command a navy warship.
Placing that blame isn’t blind adherence to custom. McSorley took pride in delivering cargo on time and on budget, no matter the weather, wind speed or wave height. But he repeatedly ignored or disregarded storm warnings and the Fitzgerald’s frailties and vulnerabilities when steering expedient courses. His “time is money” approach eventually doomed the 729-foot freighter and its crew when the ship died in in 25- to 35-foot waves, spewing debris and cargo across the silt and clay 530 feet below Superior’s surface.
Respecting History
As the big freighters go, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in its adolescence, only 17 years and five months after its June 7, 1958, launch. Though some Great Lakes freighters work over a century, most stay in service 40 to 50 years, with many lasting far beyond five decades. The SS Arthur M. Anderson, for example, was launched February 16, 1952 — six years and four months before the Fitzgerald. It remains in service today, nearly 74 years after its launch (though it carried no cargo in 2025). The Anderson, you likely know, accompanied the Fitzgerald on its tragic trip, and heard McSorley’s final words, “We’re holding our own.”
The Edmund Fitzgerald was also younger than two Great Lakes freighters that sank during its brief service. The 639-foot SS Carl D. Bradley was 31 years, 7 months old when it sank November 18, 1958, in northern Lake Michigan, killing 31 of its 33-man crew. And the 603-foot SS Daniel J. Morrell was 60 years, 3 months old when it sank November 29, 1966, on Lake Huron off Michigan’s thumb, killing 28 of its 29-man crew.
Like the Fitzgerald, the Bradley and Morrell broke up in ferocious November storms. The Bradley’s master, Roland Bryan, was called a “heavy-weather captain,” which also fit McSorley. Before the Bradley’s fatal trip, however, Bryan wrote a friend that its cargo hold needed work, and that it shouldn’t go out in storms. And yet Bryan tried crossing Lake Michigan in winds gusting to 65 mph and waves some said were 40 feet high.
Eight years later, on Lake Huron’s western waters, the Morrell’s captain, Arthur I. Crawley, could have sheltered his ship on the St. Clair River on its way up from Lake Erie. Ignoring storm warnings, Crawley plowed his ship northward onto Huron. By night, the Morrell was battling 70 mph winds and waves taller than the ship’s 25-foot height. The Morrell broke in half after midnight. Its bow soon sank, but its stern section steamed six miles before sinking. Searchers found the stern in 1967 and the bow in 1979.
With over 40 years as a Great Lakes ship’s master, McSorley surely knew the details of both disasters. As Lightfoot sang, he was a “good captain, well-seasoned.” He started as a deckhand at 18 in 1930, and commanded his first ship at 31 in 1944. When he took the Fitzgerald’s helm at 59 in 1972, it was his 10th command.
Heavy-Weather Captain
But those tragedies didn’t slow McSorley. Author Ric Mixter, a diver, filmmaker, and documentarian who dove on the Fitzgerald wreck in a submersible in 1994, said “cautious” didn’t describe McSorley. “He never thought he’d die out there,” Mixter told MeatEater.
In his 2022 book “Tattletale Sounds: The Fitzgerald Investigations,” Mixter quotes George “Red” Burgner, who was Fitzgerald’s cook for 10 years. Burgner also served eight winters (1966 through 1973) as the Fitzgerald’s “watcher” while it laid up in Superior, Wisconsin. Burgner said McSorley never hid from storms and “beat hell” out of the ship. Burgner preferred McSorley’s predecessor, Captain Peter Pulcer, saying he sought the safest, smoothest routes, and often anchored during storms.
Burgner said: “McSorley wouldn’t haul up (seek shelter and drop anchor) for nothing. “He says, ‘We don’t make no money sitting at anchor.’”
Burgner claimed he once called Ogleby-Norton, the Fitzgerald’s parent company, after enduring a nasty gale under McSorley, and told the main office: “Put this on the record. The son of a bitch is going to sink us!”
Other Great Lakes captains also criticized McSorley’s approach. In Hugh E. Bishop’s 2000 book “The Night the Fitz went down,” Captain Dudley J. Paquette said McSorley was negligent that night, saying: “(McSorley) didn’t have enough training in weather forecasting to use common sense and pick a route out of the worst of the wind and seas. … (The route the Fitzgerald and Anderson chose) exposed them to the worst of the storm on every leg of their voyage – the worst of the northeaster, then the worst of the northwest seas when the wind came around from the northwest. … McSorley kept pushing the boat full-speed-ahead much longer than was prudent in the heavy seas he was taking. He had pushed the Fitz through bad weather so many times he just figured the boat would take it and get him through.”
Paquette was commanding the ore freighter SS Wilfred Sykes during that storm, and left the Burlington Northern Dock in Superior about 4:15 p.m. on Nov. 9, 1975. The Sykes departed only two hours after the Fitzgerald left the same dock with its load of taconite ore pellets, which are the size of large marbles. Rather than heading northeast into the main lake behind the Fitzgerald and Anderson, Paquette hugged northeastern Minnesota’s shoreline, steering for temporary anchorage in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
After enduring a rough night in big waves pounding in from the east to northeast, Paquette anchored the Sykes in Thunder Bay at 8:30 a.m., Nov. 10. The Sykes ventured back out after noon as the wind and waves swung around to the northwest. Before continuing across Superior to Whitefish Bay and the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, Paquette checked the seas northeast of Isle Royale around 3 p.m. As he expected, the waves had calmed in this far northwestern corner of the lake. He then set off for the Soo, not realizing the Sykes would spend the next day scouring eastern Lake Superior for the Fitzgerald’s flotsam.
Crippled by Complacency
Mixter said McSorley, 63, probably felt overconfident, given all the gales and storms he steamed through during his long career, including his final year. “The Great Lakes’ 1975 shipping season was rough,” Mixter told MeatEater. Based on the Fitzgerald’s reports to the weather bureau, Mixter said the ship pushed through seven big blows that year, including an April storm on Lake Huron, a May gale with 44 mph winds on Superior, a July storm with 64 mph winds on Huron, and a September gale with 45 mph winds on Superior.
Did that overconfidence breed harm? Mixter believes so. “McSorley was nearing the end of his career,” Mixter said. “He was crippled by complacency.”
And though his many crews spoke well of McSorley and some loyally followed him to his next commands, he apparently wasn’t a taskmaster who kept things “ship-shape.” Burgner said McSorley worried more about saving money.
In “The Night the Fitz Went Down,” Burgner said McSorley was so cost-conscious that if it meant paying overtime, his deck crew didn’t clean up taconite pellets that spilled around hatches as the ship was loaded or unloaded. To avoid slipping on the pellets, crew members moved fore and aft in the ship’s two side tunnels until the cleanup was finished for base wages.
Burgner said Pulcer ran a tight ship on the Fitzgerald, and harassed his crew until they completed maintenance work he demanded. In “Tattletale Sounds,” Burgner said Pulcer even made the crew wash down the Fitzgerald as it left the ore dock, loaded and dust-covered. Burgner said: “He didn’t give a damn whether it was 10 o’clock at night. ‘Wash that sucker down so you don’t track dirt and taconite in the galley.’ … That’s the way he was. He wanted a clean ship.”
That might sound excessive, but it’s a standard often imposed on U.S. Navy ships. The late Admiral Charles F. Horne, who commanded destroyer and swift-boat squadrons in the 1970s and ’80s, stressed details by quoting Leonardo da Vinci: “Details make perfection, and perfection is not a detail.”
McSorley was more lenient about keeping the Fitzgerald “ship-shape.” Mixter quoted Burgner as saying, “He was one hell of a skipper … but he could not look you in the eye, whether it was a reprimand or anything.”
Clamps and Hatches
Burgner said McSorley seemed unable or unwilling to confront mates or make crew members do routine chores and maintenance. That might explain why the Fitzgerald went into that fatal storm with damaged hatches and poorly clamped hatch covers, which investigators believe let water push inside as waves drove up to 12 feet of “green water” across its deck.
As the Fitzgerald left the ore dock after loading up on Sunday, Nov. 9, 1975, Captain Paquette watched from the nearby Wilfred Sykes.
“(McSorley’s) deck crew was still placing hatch covers as the ship went out the Superior Entry onto Lake Superior, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they fastened a minimum number of clamps as each cover was placed,” Paquette told the author Hugh Bishop. “I’ve done that myself when the ship was empty and the weather was going to be nice. … But (they were fully loaded,) they were late in getting their hatches covered up, and they … should have known by then that more severe weather was forecast. I think you’d have to call it negligence if he sailed into a storm front on Lake Superior with a minimum number of clamps dogged down.”
The Fitzgerald’s 21 hatch covers over its massive cargo hold were 5/16-inch-thick metal plates. Each cover measured 11 by 48 feet, weighed 7 tons, and was secured by 68 clamps spaced every two feet. The No. 1 hatch was up front, directly behind the bow’s forward house; and the No. 21 hatch was near the stern, just ahead of the deckhouse.
A May 1978 report on the sinking by the National Transportation Safety Board didn’t question McSorley’s competence. It noted, however, that “a number of competent Great Lakes cargo vessels” did not maintain watertight hatches, even with every clamp fastened. Coast Guard inspectors found that many clamps on those ships “were tightened to the point of failure” without making the cover watertight. To be effective, clamps must be properly adjusted and maintained.
“Captain McSorley may have ensured the Fitzgerald hatches were dogged closed … but evidence of improper clamp adjustment (was found) at hatch No. 5, where the hatch cover is missing, and only two of 16 consecutive hatch clamps are damaged. Had (those 14 undamaged) clamps been properly adjusted, they would have all been damaged or the hatch would have remained in place.”
The 1978 report also noted that Great Lakes captains in that era generally “believe the weight of the hatch cover alone, about 14,000 pounds, would make the cover watertight. Calculations indicate more than 178,000 pounds is required.” To properly seal a hatch cover’s gasket, “each of the 68 clamps on Fitzgerald’s covers must apply about 2,400 pounds of force.”
A July 1977 Coast Guard report also noted this: Although the Fitzgerald’s system of hatch covers, coamings (18-inch walls surrounding each hatch), gaskets and clamps required regular maintenance and repairs, such work was not regularly done. The report said the company (Ogleby-Norton) never provided guidelines or requirements for the crew to follow. Instead, it typically waited until the ship’s winter layup for repairs and maintenance.
Mixter said Coast Guard Commander C.S. Loosmore, who served on the Marine Board of Investigation into the sinking, believed flooding through the hatch covers alone was enough to have sunk the Fitzgerald. “They looked at lots of hatch covers and coamings on several ships — including the Herbert C. Jackson, a sister ship of the Fitzgerald — and they found gaps with light coming through when hatches weren’t dogged down or improperly dogged down,” Mixter told MeatEater. “Loosmore’s calculations showed enough water would have gotten through in that storm to sink the Fitzgerald in three hours.”
Added Weight and Strain
In addition, the Fitzgerald was riding 3 feet, 3.25 inches deeper in the water in November 1975 than was specified in its original construction. According to the May 1978 NTSB report, the Fitzgerald was built to provide at least 14 feet, 9.25 inches of “freeboard” — the distance from its waterline to main deck — when fully loaded in late fall. But from 1969 through 1973, the U.S. Coast Guard granted freeboard reductions three times for the Fitzgerald, putting its main deck within 11.5 feet of the water when it left the ore dock on its final trip.
Paquette estimated those heavier loads totaled roughly 4,000 more tons (8 million pounds) than the Fitzgerald was designed to carry. The extra weight made the ship ride lower and respond more sluggishly. It also strained its metal hull, welds, and keel, the latter of which long worried some crew members.
All metal ships flex somewhat in heavy seas, but the Fitzgerald apparently flexed more than most, and the extra weight made it worse. A former second mate, Richard Orgel, who served on the Fitzgerald in 1972-73, told the Marine Board the ship acted unusual even in relatively moderate storms, making the ship bend, whip, twist, and spring “like a diving board after somebody has jumped off.”
Orgel said when McSorley left the bridge during a November 1973 storm with 10-foot waves, the captain told him: “If she starts doing that wiggling thing, let me know. This thing scares me sometimes.” Sure enough, the wiggling began, and Orgel notified McSorley, who ordered him to change course and reduce speed.
And yet in a 1977 deposition, Burgner, the ship’s former cook, testified that McSorley typically ignored reports of a loose keel, and that his inattention rubbed off on the crew and caused low morale in 1975. Burgner claimed that when a work crew reported a loose keel section that summer, McSorley said: “All this SOB has to do is stay together one more year. After that, I don’t give a shit what happens to it.”
Captain Paquette theorized that the Fitzgerald’s flexing and “wiggling” not only caused metal fatigue, but also hull cracks that eventually helped flood and break the ship apart. Either way, if the wiggling worried McSorley enough to reduce speed in 10-foot waves, it was his responsibility to find the problem and fix it.
“But there’s no indication he made any effort to do that,” Paquette told the author Hugh Bishop. “The first thing I’d think of would be a keel problem. The keel is the boat’s backbone and holds everything in place. … But with a relatively new ship like the Fitz, which had not really been modified from its original design, you wouldn’t expect that sort of thing unless something was wrong. … If any boat scared me, I’d have laid it up until somebody found out what was wrong and fixed it.”
What Probably Happened
So, what sank the Fitzgerald? A 2018 forensic investigation by Sean Kery at the CSC Advanced Marine Center in Washington, D.C., and Ben Fisher of SAFE Boats International in Bremerton, Washington, basically confirmed what the NTSB reported in June 1978, concluding that “a succession of failures eventually added up to the final sinking.”
Kery and Fisher presented a “plausible scenario that takes all of the known facts into account.” The Fitzgerald was taking on water at least three hours before it sank, with water slowly flooding two starboard-side (right) ballast tanks alongside the forward-most No. 1 cargo hold. The Fitzgerald’s massive cargo hold measured 580 feet long, 70 feet wide, and 14.3 feet deep. The hold had three compartments, but the two bulkheads (partitions) between them were screens and not watertight.
Kery and Fisher believe this initial flooding of the two ballast tanks came through at least one missing topside vent cover near hatches 3 and 4, causing the list McSorley reported to the Anderson at 3:30 p.m. on November 10. At that time, McSorley reported topside damage to the Fitzgerald, including two missing vent covers and a section of the deck’s fence rail.
Further, because the ship then had 3 feet less freeboard, greater loads of water broke over the ship and washed over its decks. Those waters added even more weight to the ship, and increased flooding to the ballast tanks and cargo holds.
Sea conditions grew worse throughout the afternoon. Although McSorley ran the pumps to dewater the ballast tanks, the list only worsened, indicating the pumps couldn’t keep up. The cargo hold was also likely flooding, but McSorley had no way to verify it because the hold had no sounding tubes or other system to monitor flooding. And once loaded, the Fitzgerald’s cargo of ore pellets covered and absorbed incoming water, making it impossible to dewater the hold because ore debris would clog the pumps.
When McSorley talked with another ship, the Avafors from Sweden, two hours later at 5:30 p.m., he said the Fitzgerald had a “bad list,” had lost both radars, and was taking heavy seas over its deck.
McSorley’s final communication was with the Anderson at 7:10 p.m., when he signed off with, “We’re holding our own.” At 7:20 p.m., the Anderson’s radar screen no longer showed the Fitzgerald.
Kery and Fisher think the “final sinking” began after the Fitzgerald’s No. 1, and possibly No. 2, hatch covers directly behind the forecastle collapsed. The hatch covers were designed to withstand up to 4 feet of standing water without buckling, but some estimates said up to three times more water washed across the deck during the fatal storm. Kery and Fisher note that those weight estimates don’t account for the punishing force unleashed by breaking waves.
Photos of the wreck show the No. 1 hatch cover “punched down inside the hold,” presumably by one or more violent waves quartering forward from across the ship’s listing starboard side. The impact(s) also destroyed all but two of the rectangular windows on the back of the forward house, blowing their glass inward. Further, the sun visor atop the pilothouse was mangled and crushed downward, and the radar antenna atop the forward house was broken.
“The slap from a breaking wave can exert thousands of pounds of force over an area the size of the rectangular windows on the back of the house, so it is not surprising that they were blown in,” the researchers wrote.
A joint Navy/Coast Guard survey of the wreck in May 1976 found that most of the hatch covers visible in the wreckage were not secured to their coamings on each hatch. In addition to the failures noted earlier on the No. 5 hatch, most of the visible hatch-cover clamps weren’t damaged, suggesting they had never been secured to make the hatches watertight. Further, a Coast Guard inspection 10 days before the tragedy found “minor” damage to hatches 13, 15, 16, and 21 (the aft-most cover), with no plans to repair them until after the shipping season.
After the forward two hatch covers collapsed, massive flooding quickly swamped the cargo holds. Kery and Fisher believe the Fitzgerald’s bow then dropped into the trough behind the passing wave as a second wave lifted the center of the ship, causing extreme hogging (upward bend amidships) and sagging, which cracked the hull. The next wave pushed the ship’s center to port (left), and the bow section accelerated downward as the fractured hull tore from the 253-foot stern section. As the 276-foot bow section tore free to starboard, it pulled the stern onto its starboard side, causing it to flood and capsize.
The upright bow section hit bottom first, evidenced by abundant taconite pellets that fell atop its deck after dumping from the shattered amidship and stern cargo holds still sinking.
Conclusion
That May 1976 survey also found no gashes, damage, or other evidence of grounding on the Fitzgeralds’ overturned stern, suggesting the ship never struck a shoal, as some speculated. In fact, a subsequent, more precise hydrographic survey of the area along the Fitzgerald’s route found the infamous “6 Fathom Shoals” were an error on earlier nautical charts, and didn’t exist as shown. Further, the Coast Guard reported no shoal water within 3 miles of the Fitzgerald’s track. Still, many Fitzgerald buffs keep pushing this unfounded theory.
None of that surprises Mixter, who has long dismissed the shoaling theory. “It’s ridiculous to suggest that ever happened,” Mixter told MeatEater. “Those captains (McSorley and the Anderson’s master, Bernie Cooper) didn’t make a wrong turn. Besides, not a single ship has ever hit a shoal in that area.”
Mixter thinks today’s technology and new explorations of the wreck could quickly answer lingering questions and validate plausible assumptions about the Fitzgerald’s sinking. The trouble is, the Canadian government has jurisdiction over the site and, in response to the victims’ families’ concerns, forbids exploring the wreck site.
“I don’t agree with that, and wonder what Canada could actually do if anyone sent down some $300 robotic submersible to look for answers,” Mixter told MeatEater. “It’s an illogical law that flies in the face of discovery. We’ve explored the Bradley and nearly every other known wreck on the bottom of the Great Lakes, so why not the Fitzgerald?”
Feature image via Wikicommons.
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