Something I like to do when I’m traveling is to read books set within the context of the locality where I’m staying, or at least that were written by folks from the area. I did this by reading Shipwrecks, Monsters, and Mysteries of the Great Lakes when traveling in the U.P., and with Under the Banner of Heaven while spending a week in Utah.

This past weekend, my family spent some time in Northern Minnesota, and a few days especially along the North Shore beyond Duluth. We spent much of that time rock-picking, so I probably should have read something like The Map That Changed the World by Simon Winchester, but instead I chose this book, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and another called Distant Fires about a two-man canoe trip from Duluth to Hudson Bay.

I’ve had this book among my belongings for years, tucked away in a warehouse box while we lived overseas. It’s an old book, written less than two years following the tragedy that claimed the lives of 28 sailors and their captain on November 10, 1975. The author is a researcher of shipwrecks who preferred to let some time pass and the investigation to settle before offering his own two cents. For what it’s worth, I think he shares some very credible thoughts about how the ship might have sank, and some honest critiques of the Coast Guard at the time.

I’ll admit it, I haven’t done a lick of research on the shipwreck beyond reading this book. Nearly 46 years have passed since the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald in a wicked November storm, and it’s likely that no mystery remains about what actually happened that night. It may even be that Stonehouse’s recommendations about changes needed in the Coast Guard were heeded and all’s now well. I still enjoyed reading this book as a non-fiction mystery (technical in many parts, yet still quite interesting).

Stonehouse collects the data from the Coast Guard investigation and what I believe is also the shipping company and works out his own theories as to what really happened. Essentially, he believes that, while it’s possible that the boat struck an underwater shoal and quickly sank thereafter, it’s likely that the ship simply took on water without anyone knowing it so that, when the tipping point came, she simply sank like a stone. That she was carrying 26,000 tons of iron pellets in non-watertight holds suggests that tons of water could have sneaked into the holds and buried itself beneath the cargo without anyone ever seeing it—until it was too late.

Stonehouse reserves some choice critiques of the Coast Guard’s level of preparedness during such a dangerous storm as that in 1975, and, while acknowledging that they likely couldn’t have saved any of the shipmen’s lives that day, berates them for maintaining their present level of unpreparedness. They didn’t have the right equipment, their stations were too distant, their safety features were too outdated or broken, and their response time was atrocious. He finishes his section of the book calling for change, and I hope the government heard him.

This isn’t a book of survival, since all of the men aboard died in those frigid Lake Superior waters, but it does discuss how future tragedies such as this might be avoided. Shipping companies need to ensure better maintenance of their ships without cheating their way into hauling more cargo at the risk of safety. The government needs to provide better funding for the Coast Guard, who themselves need to be better prepared. Ship captains and crews need to be more faithful to performing their emergency drills and making sure that their emergency equipment are sound and useable. Nothing could have saved the men of the Edmund Fitzgerald, but lots could have done to have prevented her from sinking in the first place.

I enjoyed this random read, and if you can find it out there and are a fan of maritime history, perhaps you’ll enjoy this technical look at a famous Great Lakes tragedy. Now it’s time for me to go listen to the Gordon Lightfoot ballad of the same title and be thankful I’m safe and warm and on dry land.

©2021 E.T.

Read More about The Great Lakes:

• Great Stories of the Great Lakes by Dwight Boyer (1966)
• The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Frederick Stonehouse (1977)
• Distant Fires by Scott Anderson (1990)
• Shipwrecks, Monsters, and Mysteries of the Great Lakes by Ed Butts (2011)
• The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan (2017)