The Titanic Of The Great Lakes: What Really Sunk The SS Edmund Fitzgerald?

[@Als-lb5kb]

I'm born and raised in michigan and it still amazing everytime I see one on the great lakes. With the mackinac bridge it gets so bad with the wind they will offer an escort car or even shut the bridge down cause it gets so bad. They have had cars get blown off in the past. I consider Lake michigan and lake superior the fresh water Bering sea especially October-march you never know what weather you will get and you can get some monster waves out of nowhere. Beautiful but need to respect them and the water is always freezing

[@sub-zero710]

That last part is not entirely true. I go swimming in Lake Michigan every 4th of July. How could I do that if the water is always freezing?

[@uniform131]

Good grief! I was stationed at Coast Guard Base Sault Ste Marie, there is a freighter next to the base, the Valley Camp, turned into a museum. In the bottom of her, there are items from the Edmond Fitzgerald, a marker buoy and one of her lifeboats. Both those items were crushed and twisted, the lifeboat looked like someone squished it then pulled back out and twisted it. Water is a powerful force that can literally destroy anything in its way.

[@gwenwheeler1248]

I've been in parhs of tornadoes, and hurricanes ,so not many storms make me nervous. The remainder of the storm came through central/upstate ny. That storm had a sound, a feel,that was undesirable ,also a life-force, a mind of its own,alive somehow

[@Lisa1111]

The bottom line is that the sea will always win.

[@caroleminke6116]

Nothing is unsinkable

[@GhostFire455]

The search never gives up her dead

[@bowslap]

I firmly believe that conditions aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald were far more dire than they alluded to….the “hot mic” moment of Capt. McSorely admonishing the officers to “don’t let anyone out on deck” overheard by the Arthur M. Anderson, plus the discovery of one of the pilot house doors being dogged OPEN. No one in their right mind would want to face the full fury of a November gale on Lake Superior unless things were looking pretty grim aboard the ship. Had the rogue waves/3 sisters that hit the Anderson NOT hit the Fitzgerald? I believe they MIGHT’VE made Whitefish Bay, but not much further past Whitefish Point before having to beach the ship.

[@timm1139]

I have no idea why this story hits me so hard. Maybe because it was one of the first major tragedies I heard about as a kid & the song.

[@gregorylyon1004]

We will probably never know with absolute certainty why the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. I have always thought that she hit bottom on six fathom Shoal.

[@alexlindsey6446]

me too

[@maegenyoungs2591]

But we know now that 6 was a halfass zero of 10 .. So it definitely never came close to the bottom. There isn’t 6 fathoms with miles of reported strike area or path it took. I think it partially broke on the surface. They could reverse engineer the placement and bending of metal to determine. If we could figure out the titanic this should be much easier

[@BigfootEvidence_Channel]

👋👍

[@robertredmon6387]

​@maegenyoungs2591 look if it broke apart on the surface the wreckage would been further spread apart then it was it was overloaded riding about 4ft lower than it should have been she had strike bottom because how do explain fence railings down and vents missing

[@jimhall1095]

No sign of contact on the hull or anywhere in that area of the shoal.

[@JohnShields-xx1yk]

The huge plate covers weren't water tight, those were bolted down, but they probably weren't screwed all the way tight. Big waves, leaking hatches, it's over. Gordon's amazing song made this famous throughout the world.

[@BonnieDragonKat]

News flash Gordon Lightfoot wrote his song after reading a Newsweek article that came out before the ship was found they were only surmising what could have happened went down with the ship.

[@kimberlyalcauter7094]

They knew a storm was coming when they left Superior, so they DEFINITELY would have secured the hatch clamps tight. And their first mate, John McCarthy was a stickler for those kinds of things so no doubt in my mind, the hatch clamps were all on and all tightened down.

[@BigfootEvidence_Channel]

Great video 👋👍

[@ronosga4391]

I think her keel broke with the first rouge wave and the second lifted her stern and flipped it over. If she took a nose dive in one piece the piolet house would probably have been blown off the ship. Plus that much weight sliding forward and hitting the bottom the bow of the ship would be unidentifiable. It would make sense if that happened because the cargo rapidly sliding out of the bow section would create a suction and compress the hatch seals, allowing the clamps to unlatch. Plus this would explain the taconite piled on top of the bow section, as it spilled from the upside down stern section. Whether she bottomed out is a question that has an answer, but is being held back. Some say there was red hull paint on the shoal, but with the reduced free board due to relaxed Coast Guard regulations they don't want that information released. The other issue is a 729' ship doing a nose dive in 530' of water would likely leave her prop out of the water. Recovering her log book, which you would think would have been a priority on the first dives, is now conveniently prohibited. Although any incriminating information would probably have been left out of the log book, because they felt their ship would get them home. The idea that we will never know is hard to believe with technology we have today.

[@stynger_OO7]

Like Edward Smith of Titanic, McSorley was also due to retire after the run.

[@regould221]

I believe that one of the air vents on the deck, near the bow, broke off and opened a 3ft wide hole on the deck. This allow large amounts of water to flow into the ship with every wave that washed over the decks and made the ship heavy to the bow. Then a rogue wave hit the stern of the ship, raising the stern up and the bow down, Because of the extra weight of the water the bow went under water and the forward motion of the ship drove the bow to the bottom. This would have happened so fast the crew wouldn't be able to send a mayday. The bow could have hit the bottom when the stern was still at the surface. When the bow hit the bottom and stopped something had to give at that would be the mid section that looks like it blew up. I doubt a surface break up because the two halves ended up so close together on the bottom. A surface breakup would have had the 2 halves floating and sinking at different rates and the 2 halves would have ended up farther apart, like the Titanic.

[@justaperson8560]

The deck rails which were chains had broken on one side not the vents

[@Patricklane37]

I did a video on the wreck of the edmund Fitzgerald

[@hunterkiller86]

The big Fitz went down because of the weather.

[@albigfamily8884]

They will return

[@larrytemen4789]

11:36 not if you have a basic understanding of leverage and what a fulcrum point is…..🤦‍♂️

[@jesse-gz1ri]

With a loose keel that boat had no business being out there that day.

[@LeeBoggs-k8s]

The ship went down because of greed plain and simple. It was overloaded and 29 people died because of a greedy gamble.

[@zeke8686]

Good point I assume you have protested this by not using anything like an automobile, a cell phone, a computer, or anything else that contains metal.

[@video198712]

NO Ship is unsinkable ! Didn't people learn that from the Titanic?! How can a ship, any ship not split in 2 if it sinks?

[@stargazer5784]

There are many shipwrecks that aren't split in two.

[@BonnieDragonKat]

No one ever said she was unsinkable.

[@EdithVonPants]

A lot of ships don’t split when they sink. Titanic had massive engines in the stern and water all around the bow. It would make sense why she split

[@jimhall1095]

Another Edmund Fitzgerald video? Cmon.

[@mikebrase5161]

This is almost 20 years old. It's from '06.

[@jimhall1095]

Correct. No need to post it again a day ago. No new info or news and there won’t be.

[@BonnieDragonKat]

This is an old video. It's from Dive Detectives.

[@jetcat132]

Don’t watch it then

[@RumblesBettr]

Wet bits got inside the dry bits and then it sinks down to the deeper part of the wetty bits. Mystery solved

[@SnickasBah]

The song makes me wish I was deaf

[@jetcat132]

And we wish you had never posted anything. Go listen to Taylor Swift.