Snow and waves pulverized the well-known Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975, when the shipment was passing through a severe typhoon over Lake Superior. The shipment, which had departed the day before to bring iron taconite granules from Superior, Wisconsin, to Detroit, Michigan. , suffered some damage to its track around 3:30 pm, and sank from bad weather later that night. The 729-foot boat sank in the waters of the lake, taking the 29 team members with it.
Folk singer Gordon Lightfoot’s famous song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” commemorates the sinking of this ship, the largest to cross the Great Lakes at the time. Other shipwrecks also include popular songs, such as “Lady Elgin” and “The Eastland”. , “saluting the storms and voracious currents of those lakes.
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The ferocity of the Great Lakes waters has brought down thousands of other ships, with cold, new water preserving their remains and even holding passengers back, as icy water temperatures prevent bodies from floating after decomposition began. Popular dive sites, while others remain to be discovered in deep water. Although those waters remain violent during typhoon season, protection needs and technological advances have prevented more shipwrecks from occurring in recent years.
The “November gales” aren’t just the lyrics of The Lightfoot song. They are harmful annual weather situations that shake the shores of the Great Lakes and cause large storms with winds of up to 50 miles depending on the hour and gusts of 160 miles depending on the hour. They resulted in wave heights of just under 30 feet on Su Lake, according to predicted wave heights and more than 40 feet.
The cause of those major storms are air systems around the world that combine over the Great Lakes, creating a turbulent battlefield of atmospheric pressure. Moist, warm cells originate in the Gulf of Mexico and head north, while bloodless Arctic systems head south and north. east of the lakes. The two meet in the waters of the Great Lakes in the fall, who have spent the summer sunbathing. The other atmospheric pressures then fight over the relatively warm water, which can further accentuate the storms they create.
In 1903, a bulletin issued through the Met Office, the call of the National Weather Service at the time, described more than 230 primary storms in the Great Lakes region over the more than 25 years. On the list of storms, 45 of them occurred in November, more than in any other month of the year. More than a century ago, the Great Lakes were known for their huge autumn storms.
In the case of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the recorded wind gusts reached 75 knots, or more than 85 miles consistent with the hour, on the night of its fateful sinking. A low-pressure typhoon formula came here to the northeast until it hit the Great Lakes, intensifying as it moved over the waters. According to transcripts that night, fitzgerald’s last communication came here from its captain saying “we stand firm. “The shipment would have sunk a while later, very suddenly. Radio broadcasts between SS Arthur M Anderson, the shipment that eventually led to the search for the Fitzgerald, and the Coast Guard that night painted a picture of fear for the Fitzgerald lost in a damaging time.
The sinking of ships like the Fitgerald is delayed in songs that remind us of the dangerous nature of lakes and how temporarily the waters can change. These folk ballads save the stories of those shipwrecks in the Midwest.
“As you explore those songs and learn more about them, many of them retain a lot of exact details. That kind of goal. It’s a way to communicate,” says Misty Jackson, Arbre Croche’s Great Lakes and Midwest archaeology specialist. Cultural Resources LLC, “to keep reminiscent of those things as they came out. “
The autumn weather situations brought down so many ships, whether one remembers it or while singing, combined with the rush of merchants to get so many ships out of the port to reserve goods before winter arrives. it sank at any time of the year. In one of the deadliest spaces on the East Coast, called the Atlantic Cemetery, it is estimated that around 5,000 ships have sunk in history. Approximately 6,000 ships have sunk in the history of the Great Lakes. those remains lie under new water and without blood.
While the surface of lakes can create a very productive situation to bring down a ship, the waters below offer the most productive situations to keep them intact. Ships descending to the Great Lakes benefit from temperatures at certain depths, according to Kevin. Ailes, a wreck conservation specialist and diver. Cold temperatures, which reach almost freezing below thirty meters deep and beyond, basically prevent the ship’s wood from rotting.
“These ships are most often made from old wood from the world,” says Ailes. “The timber barriers were made, and the trees that were harvested with the forest barriers were of a much higher quality than we have today, so they resist the bloodless incredibly well. “
Divers like Ailes have the luxury of being able to succeed on many of those ships easily, as many shipwrecks have occurred near the coast. Ailes explains that those shipwrecks are more accessible, better preserved and less looted than the shipwrecks on the east coast. due to the temperature of the bloodless water, physical proximity and general respect for the diving community. There’s a “shoot and leave only bubbles” mentality, as Ailes describes it, for top divers.
While ships most commonly come from rot and human intervention, there are other considerations for those pieces of history. One of the latest disorders of those ships are quagga mussels, a local invasive freshwater mussel from Ukraine that attaches to the wood of those shipwrecks.
“When they break, because they have tendrils that have entered the wood, they take some of the wood,” Alas said. “They erode as shipwrecks occur. ” Over time, mussels also cover the main points of the boats at the back of the lake, cutting off the main points that divers can see.
Quagga mussels, however, bring some other curious detail to the table. Ailes explains that because the bivalves feed clearly, they actually helped remove debris from the water. This has much greater visibility for divers, and Ailes compares the clarity to that of salt water. even 50 or a hundred feet below the surface.
However, visibility can be greatly affected by algal blooms, which are a growing fear as water temperatures rise, even deep in the Great Lakes. Warmer temperatures in turn can lead to more algal blooms. accumulating sediment and dust at the back of the lake, which can even bury the wrecks.
Existing laws in the Great Lakes region protect those historic pieces, and new shields continue to be placed in Great Lakes spaces, adding Wisconsin’s newly designated Wreck Coast National Marine Sanctuary. A square-mile segment of Lake Michigan protected in June, and dozens of shipwrecks are expected to be shown here using photogrammetry, a type of three-dimensional modeling that is now within budget after the designation allowed access to federal funds.
“You don’t want to have a permit just to dive, look and take pictures,” Jackson says, “or technically even to do any kind of non-invasive research. “
The non-invasive techniques researchers use to record some of those shipwrecks, in addition to photographing and filming them, also come with a side-scan sonar, which photographs debris that may be deep underwater. since cutting fast artifacts or entire boats, requires a little more planning. Permits must be obtained for excavation, but Jackson says it can be incredibly complicated and expensive to maintain wreckage once it is reassembled.
“These ships are much larger if they’re kept underwater,” Jackson says. For this reason, boats are in their maximum resting position underwater.
Despite other major hurricane-force storms that continue to occur for more than 25 years, the Great Lakes have not lost a single advertising ship since the sinking of the Fitzgerald. it helped decrease the number of shipwrecks, among other factors. Other smaller ships have been lost, but the number of shipwrecks has been shrinking since the 1950s. Of the ships lost between 1950 and 2000, only 6% were lost in the 90s.
Traffic systems in more congested spaces also help keep ships safe, such as boat traffic service in Michigan’s Sioux Saint Marie domain. Coast Guard members monitor vessels in this domain and can carry out their instructions and operations as needed.
“If it’s mandatory for vessels because of poor visibility or fog, they’ll put it in place,” said Lorne Thomas, external affairs leader for the Coast Guard’s ninth district, which covers the Great Lakes region. for example, restricting or slowing down the access of poor vessels.
Thomas explains that there is no traffic control at the great lakes maximum outside the gates of some of the choke points, however, all vessels over three hundred gross tons will need to have qualified pilots on board. This requirement means that at least one user on the board has been qualified through the Coast Guard in navigation and is adept at navigating and crossing dangerous waters. Canadian ships lease from a qualified American pilot, while American ships usually have a qualified captain or other team member.
In addition to having pilots for navigation, today most ships use GPS to cross lakes, but navigational aids such as lamps and buoys help in their travels. Gone are the days of relying on maps and lighthouses, and even radars, because ships have many more functions for navigation. Headlight accessories have even been revamped to keep other people in the water.
“The old headlights with rotating lenses, in the most sensible case, have largely been replaced by much more modern beacons that may be on the property, but more necessarily on the more sensible headlight,” says Thomas.
All of them contribute to greater safety in the waters of the Great Lakes, but it is possible that there are new dangers on the horizon. Climate change is causing warming waters and, in some cases, emerging degrees of water in lakes. Sailing degrees, weather and coastlines are unknown, but it’s possibly the next challenge the Coast Guard will face in keeping ships safe.
The Great Lakes are steeped in history beneath their surface, and those who cross them will never achieve their turbulent nature, but as the generation progresses, more and more people can safely explore those unique waters and the cemeteries they have created.
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