The Siren Call . . .
“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee.”
Today, November 10th, marks the 40th Anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior.
After her launch in 1958, at 728ft (some articles say 729ft) she was the largest freighter on the Lakes, and is still the largest to have ever gone down there.
Sunk during a gale carrying 75mph gusts and 35ft waves, she was in communication with a nearby ship only minutes before she disappeared from radar a little after 7pm.
Ironically as the song says “The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er.” And at her top speed that would have only been another hour.
There were no survivors from her crew of 29, who ranged in age from a 22 year old deckhand to the 63 year old captain.
Her wreckage was discovered a few days later by the Coast Guard, and later surveys found her broken in two pieces, lying in a little over 500ft of water, her bow standing upright in the mud.
Despite numerous dives, surveys, and commissions over years, there is still no definite finding to the cause of her sinking. But structural failure during the storm, possibly due to problems with her original design, seems to be the leading suspect.
Gordon Lightfoot, reading this article in Newsweek magazine a couple of weeks later,
“According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee ‘never gives up her dead.'” — Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month, James R. Gaines with Jon Lowell in Detroit, ©1975 Newsweek Magazine
decided to write a song about the wreck to honor the ship and the crew who lost their lives that night.
In 2010, based on new findings about the wreck, Lightfoot changed the lyrics in one line of the song, at least in his live performances.
“At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,”
became
”At 7 p.m., it grew dark, it was then he said,”
Yeah, it doesn’t seem to scan right to me, either.
He said that he always felt bad about that line because he was afraid that it put the blame for the sinking on crew members who had not fastened the hatches down correctly.
And this was thought to be a real possibility at the time, but recent findings had pretty much eliminated this as a cause.
Jan and I visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Bay in July of 2013 and you can check that out here.
https://ourrvadventures.com/2013/07/240-miles-today-and-still-mooseless/
Although focusing on the Edmund Fitzgerald, it also details the many wrecks on Lake Superior going back hundreds of years. Well worth a visit if you’re in the area.
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The smell of pizza must have been in the air, wafting on the breeze, because about 11:30 I headed into Carthage so we could try out the new Little Caesar’s Pizza.
We got the Ultimate Supreme (is there a penultimate, or antepenultimate Supreme?) which had Pepperoni, Italian Sausage, Mushrooms, Green Peppers, and Onions. We dropped the Green Peppers because Jan’s allergic, and added Bacon. Hmmm, Bacon!
This is the first time we’ve ever had Little Caesar’s, and it turned out to be pretty good. Not Grimaldi’s Pizzeria, of course, but then what is.
All the ingredients tasted fresh, the cheese was good (the box says it’s 100% Mozzarella and Muenster) and the sauce was good, not too sweet like some. The crust was a little thicker than we really like, but still had a good taste and ‘bite’.
They only have one size, 14 inches, but it was big enough that we’ll get another meal out of it. Not bad for an $8 pizza, not bad at all.
Today was another nice day, but tomorrow the rain is supposed to return. But then it looks like Thursday is suppose to be nice again. But we know how that goes.
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Thought for the Day:
“At no point in history has any government ever wanted its people to be defenseless for any good reason.”
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