SS EDMUND FITZGERALD

On Nov. 10, 1975, the bulk carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a storm that enveloped Lake Superior - a disaster immortalized by songwriter and singer Gordon Lightfoot.

The crew of 29 perished. There was no time to launch the ship's lifeboats or send a Mayday message. The storm lashed the Great Lake with winds of more than 50 knots and waves of 25 feet or more.

“Lake Superior seldom coughs up her victims unless they’re wearing life jackets. As of this time, we have no reason to believe the men of the Fitzgerald had time to get into life jackets,” said Capt. Charles A. Millradt, commander of the Soo Coast Guard Station, quoted by the Associated Press. 

Coast Guard investigators attributed the Fitzgerald sinking to defective hatch covers on the 729-foot vessel, which was riding low in the lake with a load of taconite pellets for delivery to a steel plant near Detroit.

The Coast Guard launched a search aircraft from Traverse City, Michigan, after the bulk carrier Arthur M. Anderson reported the Fitzgerald missing to the Coast Guard station at Sault St. Marie by VHF radio.

The Coast Guard then asked the Anderson and other vessels to assist in the rough weather as the nearest cutter, the buoy tender Woodrush WLB-407, was 400 miles to the west at Duluth, Minnesota. The Woodrush arrived in about 24 hours, enduring high winds and large waves.

Searchers were "riding flares into the night for illumination," according to United Press International.

U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender Woodrush WLB-407

According to an official report on the sinking, the captain of the Fitzgerald had radioed the Anderson: "I have a 'bad list', I have lost both radars, and am taking heavy seas over the deck in one of the worst seas I have ever been in."

A Navy aircraft with a magnetic detector zeroed in on the wreck about 17 miles northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan, on Nov. 14, 1975, according to an account of the storm by the National Weather Service.

Debris was also recovered, with some washing up on shore.

An underwater vehicle operated by the Navy photographed the site the next year. The Fitzgerald split in half and settled more than 500 feet below Superior's surface.

When the Fitzgerald was launched in 1958, it was the longest vessel plying the Great Lakes. The ship was named for the president of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, which financed its construction.

In July 1994, Dr. Jim Cairns, coroner of Toronto, Canada, said research divers observed a partially decomposed body near the ship, preserved by extremely low water temperature, UPI reported. The body was left in its resting place. 

Fitzgerald's No. 2 Lifeboat recovered from lake

Wreck site

PHOTO GALLERY No. 7

Painting from the U.S. Coast Guard Collection of the cutter Snohomish aiding the lumber steamer Nika in heavy seas off Washington state in February 1922. After rescuing Nika's crew, the cutter proceeded to assist the British freighter Tuscan Prince, grounded off Vancouver Island, and the steamship Santa Rita. Snohomish then made Port Angeles, putting ashore 105 evacuees, according to Coast Guard archives.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
A German U-boat attacked the tanker SS Maine 16 miles south-southeast of Cape Hatteras Light, North Carolina, during World War Two. This is the view from an aircraft assigned to U.S. Coast Guard Air Station, Elizabeth City, on March 27, 1942.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
The U.S. Coast Guard cutter Storis (foreground) was the first American vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. It happened in 1957.

Photo: Petty Officer 3rd Class David R. Marin
Weapons exercise aboard U.S. Coast Guard cutter Boutwell on Jan. 30, 2009.

Photo: U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Coast Guard  cutter Campbell in World War Two.

Photos: Wikipedia, U.S. Coast Guard
"You're in the Coast Guard now." The Coast Guard-manned troopship USS Joseph T. Dickman (APA-33) was launched in 1921 as a passenger liner. She was named the SS President Roosevelt by the United States Lines in 1922. Taken over by the War Department in 1940, the President Roosevelt was re-named and converted to an attack transport in the buildup to World War Two and served in the Atlantic and Pacific.