#Edmund fitzgerald lifeboat full#
#Edmund fitzgerald lifeboat free#

“I had the sense,” he said, “that this is a historic event.” Anderson: “We are holding our own.”įrom his booth seat on a rainy day in Duluth, McKenzie wondered aloud if the transmissions kept coming as a way to respect the families who’d lost so much.īecause after considering that “jeepers, maybe she ran aground on the Canadian shore,” as the Naugatuck made its way toward the Fitzgerald’s last known location, McKenzie needed little further evidence once he’d arrived to see the busy scene with his own eyes. Ernest McSorley’s final transmission to the trailing steamer Arthur M. 13, 1975 - more than 72 hours after the Fitzgerald had last been heard from with Capt. The radio transmissions both calling for the Fitzgerald and urging others to report sightings of survivors lasted until about 9:30 p.m. Marie before it went to a warehouse in Cleveland for the investigation that followed the wreck. The accumulated wreckage was taken to a shed in Sault Ste. “I’m glad I didn’t have to go in and take a look.” “Of course, they didn’t find anybody in there,” McKenzie said.

#Edmund fitzgerald lifeboat free#

The rafts come encased in hard plastic and are designed to pop free in the event of a ship’s sinking. Making their way aboard a Naugatuck motor boat toward the shoreline, McKenzie and a boatswain’s mate were waved off a directive by a beach party that had also spotted a canopied canister raft washed up on the Canadian shore.

McKenzie recalled seeing the bow of a Fitzgerald lifeboat strung to the side of another impromptu recovery vessel the lifeboat had been torn apart like an aluminum beer can and is now a museum piece in Sault Ste. 9 bound for Detroit, it had more than 26,000 tons of taconite iron ore pellets and the equivalent of almost 1,200 barrels of fuel oil on board. When the Fitzgerald left Superior on the afternoon of Nov. The crew tracked oil throughout the Coast Guard ship on their boots. The collected debris was strewn about the deck of the Naugatuck over the course of three days. The Naugatuck was quickly dispatched to its own section of the search grid and came upon oil slicks and wreckage from the Fitzgerald’s weather decks - life rings and jackets, a propane tank and oars, anything that blew off the ship or would float. McKenzie even spotted a B-52 from nearby Kincheloe Air Force Base in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. By the time it arrived to the scene just after noon the next day vessel traffic was crisscrossing everywhere, including aerial support. But circumstance and mechanical hang-ups rendered that mission moot. Marie, Ontario, and had been considered the primary rescue vessel to the tragedy that started to unfold on Nov. “I can’t believe it’s been 40 years,” McKenzie said in a booth at a downtown Duluth diner, across the bridge from his Superior, Wis., home. But the morning after, there was hardly any wind at all. 10, 1975, had reached frightening levels, requiring lines to be tripled up at the dock lest the 110-foot Naugatuck blow away. The spinning anemometer readings of wind velocity the day and night before, Nov. A 20-year-old apprentice quartermaster in the pilothouse of the vessel, McKenzie remembered the reflections in the glassy water that swelled like “taking a piece of sheet metal and bumping it,” he recalled. Mary’s River and headed west out into the wide expanse of the lake, a young Shawn McKenzie took stock of the day. Coast Guard Cutter Naugatuck turned the corner at Pointe Louise on the St.

Everybody out there 40 years ago this week seemed to know the ship was gone.Īs the U.S. Coast Guard immediately.īut the scene on the remote eastern neck of the lake belied the hope inherent in the radio communications. If anybody sighted the ore carrier or her survivors, they were to contact the U.S.

#Edmund fitzgerald lifeboat full#

The day after the SS Edmund Fitzgerald vanished from Lake Superior with her crew of 29 men and a full cargo of taconite pellets, the haunting aftermath was in full bloom for those involved in the search.Įvery hour, two or three times an hour, there were radio calls for the Fitzgerald and scratchy broadcasts explaining she was overdue.

Edmund Fitzgerald in mind, scientists confirm rogue waves on Lake SuperiorĭULUTH, Minn.

From the archives: Edmund Fitzgerald’s bell tolls, soothing crew’s survivors.