FTV: Gales of November
‘The church bell chimed until it rang 29 times, for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.’
It hardly seems possible that Gordon Lightfoot’s ode to the Fitz turns 50 this year. Of the thousands of ships that have gone down in the Great Lakes, none are as universally known as the Edmund Fitzgerald. When the Fitz disappeared in one of Lake Superior’s notorious ‘gales of November’ in 1975, it was by far one of the fiercest storms I have ever seen in the 73 years I have lived on its shores. When I began reading John U. Bacon’s 2025 book The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Liveright Publications), I was expecting another blow by blow narrative about the tragic loss of the Great Lakes equivalent of The Titanic. Bacon’s account was a deeper dive into the entire history of shipping on the Great Lakes intercut with profiles of ‘that good ship and crew (that) was a bone to be chewed’. The legacy and humanity of those proud sailors made this one of my favorite accounts of the many Fitzgerald books that have been written in the past 51 years.
The night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, I happened to be in Marquette for the weekend. I was only two and a half months into my new career teaching seventh grade Geography / Earth Science in Ontonagon. As we had done many times when I was growing up in Marquette, we drove down to the harbor at Presque Isle Park to watch the waves thundering over the breakwall.
My buddy shook his head and said, “Man, I would hate to be out there in this weather.” These words came back to me when the news reports about the Fitz began coming in.
The entire episode came back in full force the next fall when Lightfoot’s The Ballad of the Edmund Fitzgerald was released as the lead single off his Summertime Dream album. John Nakas, our Elementary / Jr High Librarian, was a big Lightfoot buff and he had already loaned me enough of Gordon’s albums to make me a fan. Summertime Dream and the Ballad of the Fitz raised his profile and attracted a whole new batch of the record buying masses. A lifelong sailor himself, it was obvious Gordon put a lot of thought into the lyrics to give the chilling tale the right amount of historical authenticity. In later years, Lightfoot modified one of the lyrics as we learned more about the sinking, but we will get to those in due time.
Bacon’s first task in The Gales of November is to give people some perspective on exactly how big the Great Lakes are. As an example, one can describe in words the vista that unfolds when one views a natural wonder like The Grand Canyon. The Great Lakes, according to Bacon, can not be described with words alone – “You simply have to see them to believe them.” Their volume can be quantified – the five lakes (HOMES for Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, and Superior*) hold more than 80 percent of North America’s freshwater – 20 percent of the world’s total. If North and South America were flat with sides like a kiddie pool, draining the Great Lakes into said pool would cover the land with a foot of standing water. The physical size of the lakes is also hard to fathom – if one sails along in the middle of Lakes Superior, Huron, or Michigan, one can not see land in any direction. They truly are more like an ‘inland sea’ than a ‘lake’. *(If I may make a brief editorial comment here: Besides the obvious wrong-headedness of trying to rename Lake Ontario, the proposed name would change our lake name memory hack to SHAME – and yes, that would be a shame).
Bacon reaches back to the French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville who traveled and wrote about the United States in the 1830s. He described the Great Lakes in Democracy in America: “This lake without sails, this shore which does not yet show any trace of the passage of man, this eternal forest which borders it; all that, I assure you, is not grand in poetry only; it’s the most extraordinary spectacle that I have seen in my life.” This led the author into a discussion of the vital role the lakes have played in the history of first North America (and later the United States). Bacon goes on to compare the difference between oceanic waves to those generated on the big lakes. How local weather patterns can whip the lake waves into a frenzy that can spell peril for ships trying to ride them out is a key part of why the lakes are so dangerous. With all the perils involved in traveling the Great Lakes, what compelled people to take such risks? To quote one of political strategist James Carville’s three core points that people care about during election cycles, “It’s the economy, stupid!”
The first French explorers began the initial wave of European exploitation of the region when beaver hats were in fashion in Europe. A crew of 16 voyageurs could load a thousand beaver pelts in their 30 to 40 foot long canoes to get them to market. By the time fashions changed in the 1800s, the estimated beaver population of the Great Lakes Region of 200 to 400 million was almost extinct. Attention then turned to harvesting the great northern forests. Logging these virgin forests, “Earned far more than all the gold found by all the miners in the California Gold Rush,” according to Michigan author Jerry Dennis.
Farmers in the GLR found conditions favorable to grow more grain than they could economically ship to eastern markets in any kind viable manner. Turning their bounty into whiskey, however, provided them with a money making product that was much easier to ship. The copper boom began just as electricity was coming into wider use. All of these industries needed cost effective methods for shipping their wares to places like Chicago, Detroit, and other growing eastern cities. Building ships capable of navigating these temperamental waters became an industry unto itself. All of these extractive activities eventually suffered from the ups and downs caused by the depletion of the resource (beaver and trees) or the changing market prices (copper).
Bacon points out that an estimated six thousand ships were lost on the lakes between 1875 and 1975. Some estimates place that number at between ten and twenty-five thousand. This means a minimum of thirty thousand sailors also lost their lives. Bacon writes, “Even the lowest estimate marks an average of one shipwreck per week, and nearly one casualty a day, every day, for a century.” The first economic booms came and went, but the one that really spurred the development of larger shipping vessels was the iron boom.
When the Lake Superior Iron Ranges were first discovered, the amount of iron shipped from the area was miniscule compared to the modern era. When purchasing his brother Frank’s Mesabi mining company in 1887, John D. Rockefeller saw the economic opportunity it posed. John D. pumped $40 million ($1.5 billion in today’s dollars) into the mines and trains needed to get the ore to the docks in Duluth, Minnesota. He invested in improved shipping methods through the lakes to Cleveland and in railroads to get the ore to the Pittsburgh steel mills. The Iron Rush began in earnest and with it, the need for bigger and faster ships. Rockefeller’s investment even gained the University of Wisconsin a mascot: the badger. The tough miners who survived the cold Minnesota winters by living in caves were called ‘badgers’, but apparently UW’s ‘Bucky Badger’ took the image in a different direction.
Once Bacon established why Great Lakes shipping was vital for so many aspects of the country’s economy, he turned his attention to other wrecks that predated the Fitz disaster. One truly horrendous loss was that of the pride of Rogers City, Michigan – the SS Carl D. Bradley. Launched in 1927 and named after the president of the Rogers City based Michigan Limestone Company, the Bradley was a record breaking 639 feet in length. It was the longest freighter on the lakes for twenty-two years and was described by president Bradley himself as, “The last word in freighter construction.” On November 17, 1958, just sixteen days after the Mackinac Bridge opened, the Bradley would drop its last load of limestone in Gary, Indiana before heading to Green Bay to have her cargo hold and bulkheads replaced. U.S.Steel decided to send the ship back to Calcite, Michigan (near Rogers City) for one last load.
A southwestern storm that had dumped six inches of snow in Tucson, Arizona roared into Lake Michigan with winds up to sixty-five miles per hour. The crew wasn’t overly concerned at least until 5:35 p.m. when there were two loud thuds. Frank Mays, a twenty-six year old deckhand, looked toward the stern of the ship but he could not see it – it had begun to break off. Captain Roland Bryan ordered ‘all stop’ on the engines and directed the crew to don life jackets and make for the life boats. They were not able to launch the two at the stern as one was entangled in cables and the other dangled precariously, making it impossible to board. As Mays ran toward the lifeboat at the bow, he looked back and saw a chilling sight: “I could see John Fogelsonger running toward the stern…Then, as if it were paper, the huge steel plates of the deck began to tear apart somewhere near the tenth hatch on the port side…The tear quickly ripped across the deck, As the gash began to grow, I saw John run toward the crack and leap into the air. I didn’t see him land. He just disappeared between the two parts of the ship.”
Right after Fogelsonger disappeared, a huge wave rocked the ship and twisted the bow violently to port. Mays had just climbed in the life raft as the wave launched it twenty feet in the air. Miraculously, it landed upright and Mays was still aboard. Three other crew men managed to find May’s raft and climb in. They watched in disbelief as the Bradey went under just as the boiler exploded. They had three flares, two of which they fired and the third they tried to keep dry. Unfortunately, it was soaked and did not fire when a German cargo ship passed within a hundred yards of their life raft.
Thirty to forty foot waves pounded the four men until a fifty footer upended the raft and dumped them in the frigid waters. It took all their strength to regain the raft and there they hung on for dear life. Mays wrote in his memoirs, “Time has lost all meaning. The night is black as coal, and we get little warning before the monster waves hit us. I’ve never felt so cold and helpless.” The waves turned them over two more times with their fourth crewman, unable to summon the strength to return to the raft, perishing face down in the lake. As dire as the situation was, Mays repeatedly told himself, “If we make it ‘til daylight, we will be found.” As daylight neared, the third crewman could take no more and dove overboard, disappearing beneath the waves. When the Coast Guard cutter Sundew finally found the two remaining survivors, two from their crew had to tie ropes around their waist and be lowered to retrieve Mays and Flemming from the raft – their hands were too frozen to grab the rope themselves. As miraculous as their rescue had been, the news for Rogers City was devastating. Twenty-one of the lost crew from the Bradley were local men.
There are many stories about other shipwrecks and too many about the Fitz and her crew to relate here. I will spend a few words on Captain McSorely as the end of his lake faring life illustrates how fickle fate can be. McSorely was due to retire at the end of the 1975 season but he signed on for one more run. The captain’s wife was ill and no doubt the extra run would have helped with her medical expenses. When the incoming weather reports suggested how bad the approaching storm would be, McSorely altered their route from the normal course around the Keweenaw Peninsula to a more northerly path. Had the captain made the more familiar Keweenaw run, there is a good chance they would have made Whitefish Bay before the worst part of the storm hit. In this case the more cautious approach, choosing the northerly route, may have doomed the ship as they were caught in mid-lake when the worst weather hit.
The less familiar course also placed the Fitzgerald’s path in proximity to the Lake Superior Shoal. This outcropping rising from the depths of the lake was known by the fishermen who plied these waters, but freighter captains were not as familiar with it. Some had suggested that the Fitz may have struck the top of the shoal in the unusually heavy seas. Of course, this was just speculation until a dive expedition to the very same shoal by famed nautical investigator Dick Race found the distinctive red-orange paint common to most lake freighters. Race had signed a non-disclosure document with Oglebay Norton Company (the ship’s owners) and never broke that agreement. Three of his close friends that he did confide in later said Race confirmed he had found paint on Six Fathom Shoal consistent with ore freighter red/orange.
What if McSorely had stayed the course and beat the storm to Whitefish Bay? What role did his failing navigation gear play in bringing the Fitz over the shoal? What if the navigational data about these shoals had been more specific about the danger they posed? In the final outcome, these questions are all moot. There were many hands of fate at work in the sinking of the Fitz.
When Gordon Lightfoot wrote the lyrics about the demise of the Fitzgerald, his only source of information was the original assumptions made by the Coast Guard. They suggested that improperly secured cargo hatches may have allowed water to penetrate the hold and doom the ship. Knowing how professional the ship’s crew was, relatives of the Fitz’s crew dismissed this line of thought immediately. When actual footage of the wreck was obtained by a robotic vehicle, it proved that the hatches were properly secured and had played no part in the sinking. In deference to the families who were stung by his song apparently laying blame on the crew, Lightfoot altered one lyric when he performed the song live. The original lyric was, “When supper time came, the old cook came on deck / he said ‘fellas it’s too rough to feed ya / At 7 p.m. a main hatchway gave in / He said, fellas it’s been good to know ya.” While he never re-recorded the song, he did modify one line to, “At 7 p.m. it grew dark, it was then / He said, ‘Fellas it’s been good to know ya.”
Bacon’s book is available at the Ontonagon Township Library and even if you have already read other accounts, I highly recommend you check this latest take on the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald.
Top Piece Video: A live version of – what – you did not think Gordon would get the last word here?