The Wreck of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald
             On November 10, 1975 the bulk freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior with all 29 men aboard. The Fitzgerald cleared Superior, Wisconsin, on her last trip on November 9, 1975, with a cargo of 26,116 tons of taconite pellets to Detroit. Moving down through Lake Superior she encountered heavy weather and in the early evening of November 10th, suddenly sank approximately 17 miles from the entrance to Whitefish Bay. Captain McSorley had indicated he was having difficulty and was taking on water. She had two of three ballast pumps working to try and remove the water that was moving into her belly. She had lost her radar and damage was noted to ballast tank vent pipes and he was overheard on the radio saying, "don't allow nobody on deck." McSorley said it was the worst storm he had ever seen. All 29 officers and crew, including a Great Lakes Maritime Academy cadet, went down with the ship, which lies broken in two sections in 530 feet of water.
             Surveyed by the U.S. Coast Guard in 1976 using the U.S. Navy CURV III system, the wreckage consisted of an upright front section, approximately 275 feet long and an upside-down back section, about 253 feet long, and a debris field comprised of the rest of the hull in between. Both sections lie 170 feet apart from each other.
             The Edmund Fitzgerald was removed from documentation January 1976. The National Transportation Safety Board unanimously voted on March 23, 1978 to reject the U. S. Coast Guard's official report supporting the theory of faulty hatches. Later the N.T.S.B. revised its verdict and reached a majority vote to agree that the sinking was caused by taking on water through one or more hatch covers damaged by the impact of heavy seas over her deck. This is not what the Lake Carriers Association's said caused the accident, they said it was caused by flooding through bottom and ballast tank damage resulting from bottoming on the ro...