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Wolf Hunting

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Dear Mods.

I have my view of the forum set somewhat differently.
I still have it set on the blue VB4 default style as I find it easier to read and easier on my eyes rather than all that in your face gold.
However, that's all very subjective, but i found it very difficult to find my way to the blog page.
Couldn't see a link anywhere...
Am I right in saying nowhere enough readers are writing or reading blogs?
Could we raise the profile of good and well written blogs?
There are a good few blokes on here who are well able to write interesting and enjoyable blogs.
Could we give it a nudge?

And some of you guys out there, could you get your finger out and write something funny or just interesting?

Could you have a link on the toolbar at the top?
'What's New' 'Forum' 'Blogs' or something like that?
 
The blogs feature was turned off yonks ago.
 
I didn't know that!
That explains why I couldn't find it!
So I've posted it onto a dead link then?
 
This'll make you laugh, but way back in 2016, I wrote a few blogs.
Are they gone forever or can I retrieve them?
I'd particularly like the two on shipping disasters...
 
I'm no way a techie, but could the Wayback Machine help? I'm only vaguely aware how it works, but it attempts to archive everything that has been online as I understand it..?
 

Edmund Fitzgerald: Why it sank? Part 3 of 3.​

by
Wolf Hunting

Published on 16th November 2011 10:04 AM
0 Comments
Comments


Well, there are a number of, to this date, unconfirmed theories why the ship sank.

Rogue Waves:
Subsequent research has shown that rogue waves were around every one in a hundred reaching 36’ and one in every thousand waves reaching 46 feet. Frightening indeed in such a storm when you’ve only got 11.5 feet between the waterline and the top of the hull in calm water! The ‘Three Sisters’ phenomenon is said to occur on Lake Superior as a result of a sequence of 3 rogue waves forming that are one third larger than ‘normal’ waves. When the first wave hits a ship’s deck it deposits tons of foaming water onto the deck but before it can drain away the second wave hits, followed immediately by the third which adds to the accumulated backwashes suddenly overloading the deck with hundreds of tons of water.

Cargo Hold Failure:
A number of its 21 hatches caved in allowing inrush of water. It was subsequently discovered by underwater surveys that Hatch 1 cover, was completely inside the hatch and there was damage caused to hatches 2-5 with 16 hatch cover clamps missing. Number 6 hatch cover was found vertically inside the hatch. Evidence of damage caused by external pressure was evident.

Shoaling:
It ran aground on the 6 fathom shoal, causing water to enter the hull. The speed and reported times of the ship developing a list and its exact location where it foundered supports this theory.

Charts:
It was found out in 1976 in a brand new survey that there was an undiscovered shoal which ran a further mile east of the charted 6 Fathom Shoal. Evidence showed that the Fitzgerald sailed over this exact point. Grounding here would have caused the loss of the railing as the bow and stern would have bent downwards causing the bolts on the midsection of rail be tensioned in excess of their limits and been torn loose under the strain.

Structural Failure:
Modification of the load lines which allows heavier loading thereby making the vessel travel lower in the water made it possible for large repeated waves pounding the ship to cause stress fractures in the hull. This is not counting rogue waves, just the normal ‘regular’ huge waves it had encountered in its 17 years of service. The ship was discovered in 536 feet of water in two pieces, around 170 feet from each other, which leads to the ship breaking up on the surface as the stern would have continued to move forward after the split.

Lack of Watertight Bulkheads:
It has been found that if the Fitzgerald had watertight bulkheads it would have made it into the safety of Whitefish Bay without any shadow of a doubt. Experts have stated, “The Great Lakes ore carrier is the most commercially efficient vessel in the shipping trade today. But it's nothing but a motorized barge! It's the unsafest commercial vessel afloat. It has virtually no watertight integrity. Theoretically, a one-inch puncture in the cargo hold will sink it”.

Stonehouse called on ship designers and builders to design lake carriers more like ships rather than "motorized super-barges" making the following comparison: Contrast this [the Fitzgerald] with the story of the SS Maumee, an oceangoing tanker that struck an iceberg near the South Pole recently. The collision tore a hole in the ship's bow large enough to drive a truck through, but the Maumee was able travel halfway around the world to a repair yard, without difficulty, because she was fitted with watertight bulkheads.[150]

Increased Load Lines, Reduced Freeboard:
The USCG (owners) increased the Fitzgerald's load line in 1969, 1971, and 1973 to allow 3 feet 3.25 inches (997 mm) less minimum freeboard than the Fitzgerald's original design allowed in 1958.

This meant that Fitzgerald's deck was only 11.5 feet (3.5 m) above the water when she faced 35 feet (11 m) waves during the November 10 storm. This change allowed loading to 4,000 tons above what the Fitz was designed to carry. Concerns regarding the Fitzgerald's keel welding problem surfaced during the time the USCG started increasing her load line. This increase and the resultant reduction in freeboard decreased the vessel's critical reserve buoyancy.

Maintenance:
NTSB investigators noted that the Fitzgerald's prior groundings could have caused undetected damage that led to major structural failure during the storm, since Great Lakes vessels were normally dry-docked for inspection only once every five years. It was also alleged that when compared to the Fitzgerald's previous captain, McSorley did not keep up with routine maintenance and did not confront the mates about getting the requisite work done. After August B. Herbel, Jr., president of the American Society for Testing and Materials, examined photographs of the welds on the Fitzgerald, he stated, "the hull was just being held together with patching plates." Other questions were raised as to why the USCG did not discover and take corrective action in its pre-November 1975 inspection of the Fitzgerald given that her hatch coamings, gaskets, and clamps were poorly maintained.

Complacency:
On November 10, 1975, McSorley reported he had, “never seen bigger seas in all his life” Paquette, master of Wilfred Sykes out in the same storm said, "I'll tell anyone that it was a monster sea, washing solid water over the deck of every vessel out there. The USCG did not broadcast that all ships should seek safe anchorage until after 3:35 p.m. on November 10, many hours after the weather was upgraded from a gale to a storm.

McSorley was known as a "heavy weather captain" who "'beat hell' out of the Fitzgerald and 'very seldom ever hauled up for weather'". Paquette held the opinion that negligence caused the Fitzgerald to founder. He said, "in my opinion, all the subsequent events arose because (McSorley) kept pushing that ship and didn't have enough training in weather forecasting to use common sense and pick a route out of the worst of the wind and seas.

Paquette's vessel was the first to reach a discharge port after the November 10 storm; she was met by company attorneys who came aboard the Sykes. He told them that the Fitzgerald foundering was caused by negligence. Paquette was never asked to testify during the USCG or NTSB investigations.

Corporate Greed (see also Increased Load Lines):
One concern was that shipping companies pressured the captains to deliver cargo as quickly and cheaply as possible regardless of bad weather. At the time of the Fitzgerald foundering, there was no evidence that any governmental regulatory agency tried to control vessel movement in foul weather despite the historical record that hundreds of Great Lakes vessels had been wrecked in storms. The USCG took the position that only the captain could decide when it was safe to sail.

Finally, The SS Wilfred Sykes is still sailing today. As is the 'Arthur Anderson'
Okay Wolfie, here's your starter for 10 ^^^
 
Last edited:
Here's how you might find the others:
  1. Goto to this page - http://web.archive.org/web/sitemap/...rid=1004&contenttype=vBForum_Post&showposts=1
  2. Click on 2016
  3. Hover you mouse over the outer, lighter blue, ring just below the multi-colour section (somewhere about 4 o'clock).
  4. As you hover a URL will be shown above the circle. If you move the mouse pointer even a whisker, a new URL will be shown.
  5. If a URL looks like it might be one of your blogs, click the mouse ... carefully, if the mouse moves a millimetre as you click a different page will be loaded.
  6. Then cut and paste the text somewhere you can save it.
Happy hunting !!
 
Distant Shores, what a little gem you are!
I'm going to try to retrieve all of them as I had the original word docs saved on a remote hard drive.
Which my wife unfortunately dropped as she was tidying up the table, "This clutter has been here all week!"
I'll spend a little time on this, thanks for your help.
 
Ah.... It appears that the WayBack machine hasn't saved them...
It can only conjure up the first couple of lines then it stops and doesn't let you go further, saying it hasn't been saved...
Great try though.
A bit annoying as they must just be sitting there....
Can anyone else, a nerdy techy or someone help with this please?
Thanks in Advance..
Seems like it was around the 12 May 2016.
 
Ah.... It appears that the WayBack machine hasn't saved them...
It can only conjure up the first couple of lines then it stops and doesn't let you go further, saying it hasn't been saved...
Great try though.
A bit annoying as they must just be sitting there....
Can anyone else, a nerdy techy or someone help with this please?
Thanks in Advance..
Seems like it was around the 12 May 2016.
Expensive, but a data recovery place might be able to restore the contents of your busted hard drive.
 
Hiya Will, I tried that but it was gonna cost upwards of 600 quid, and as I'm all old and retired these last 8 years, I couldn't really justify the cost of it to resurrect mostly work stuff that I was never gonna use again. Interesting stuff like these blogs were an unfortunate casualty.
I was just hoping that something or someone would be able to reach back into the dark and dusty recesses of TWF...
In fact as I'm writing this, it's just dawning on me that Distant Shores reprinted the whole of part 3 of one of them, but when I went into it, it wouldn't let me past the first few lines, saying it hasn't been recorded...
How did he do that I wonder... (I followed his instructions obviously...)
 
EDMUND FITZGERALD.

This isn’t about a footballer, nor has it anything to do with football. It’s about a ship.

Tight up against the Canadian border where Canada gathers its winter weather are a series of large freshwater lakes into which drain Ontario’s snow melt, which out of Lake Ontario form the Mighty St Lawrence River and then on out through Montreal and Quebec into the North Atlantic.

These vast areas of inland water are known as The Great Lakes, and there’s 5 of them. Lake Ontario (approx 193 miles long x 53 miles wide), Lake Erie (241 miles x 57), Lake Huron (206 x 193 at its widest point), Lake Michigan (307 x 118) and finally, the largest one, Lake Superior (350 x 160). It’s here, tight up against the Canadian state of Ontario and the American state of Minnesota that this story unfolds.

There’s an awful lot of Canada up above the United States and it gets very cold, it’s just a huge weather machine. Those great frozen North West Territories, they just slide their winds and subzero temperatures right down into America, all winter long.

The winds come curving out of Ontario, their edges laced with ice and snow, whilst the dark grey storm clouds reach out into the cold winter months of November and clutch their frozen fingers into the massive deep waters of the Great Lakes especially in the notorious winter months where the water can turn from a benign flat blue to a steely heaving mass of waves driven by frozen lashing winds.

This bit of a story is about a ship, hurricane winds, massive waves, indeed rogue waves, uncharted reefs, submerged sandbanks, broken or faulty hatch covers, company greed, danger and the relentless drive for profits. All the usual stuff you can expect to uncover when 29 family men lose their lives when their ship becomes a wreck.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that was made to be “1 foot shorter than the maximum allowed” for lock clearances and so when this 729’ vessel was launched on June 8, 1958, she was the largest boat on the Great Lakes, and particularly for a vessel of its type, it was finished to a particularly high standard, with deep pile carpets, tiled bathrooms, curtains over the portholes, and leather swivel chairs in the guest lounges. It had two guest staterooms for passengers and an extra large galley and was fitted out to provide superior food to two separate dining rooms. It even had air conditioning which unusually extended to the crew quarters. The bridge was fitted with state of the art nautical equipment (which at the time was lacking a crucial depth sounder which would become critical later) and this fine vessel to this day, remains the largest boat to have sunk in the Great Lakes.

Nicknamed the "Mighty Fitz", "Fitz", or "Big Fitz", “The Queen of the Lakes” and the “Toledo Express” for those of you that believe in fate, it’s a funny thing how superstition takes an immediate hold and we stick a label across the future of the ship.

But the ship suffered a series of mishaps during her launch: first there was a delay of 36 minutes when gangs of men were dispatched to hammer out the huge wooden block holding the keel in place eventually freeing the vessel for its launch.

Then it took three attempts to break the champagne bottle used to christen her and then when she truculently entered the water in the usual sideways launch she waddled across the inlet and collided heavily and along her whole length with a pier, generating a huge wave which comprehensively drenched many of the 3,500 people gathered around to watch the launch.

It’s probably usual, I don’t know, but from Sept 6th 1969 to Sept 4th a year later the Fitzgerald was involved and damaged in 3 separate incidents, colliding with a lock wall, another ship and grounding. In May 1973 it hits a wall in Soo Lock and twice in June 1974 it is involved in two separate collisions sustaining significant damage.

For the next seventeen years the Fitzgerald carried taconite (iron ore processed into little marbles) from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Cleveland and Toledo and other ports. As a "workhorse" she set seasonal haul records six different times, often beating her own previous record. Her size, record-breaking performance, and "dee jay captain" endeared the Fitzgerald to boat watchers.

Captain Peter Pulcer was known for piping music day or night over the ship's intercom system while passing through the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers, and entertaining spectators at the Soo Locks with a running commentary about the Fitzgerald.

Unlike the song which says, ‘she left some mill in Wisconsin’, She actually loaded 26,116 tons of iron ore pellets at Burlington Railroad wharf in Silver Bay, Minnesota, about 65 miles up the coast from Duluth. And again, unlike the song which states she was bound for Cleveland, she was actually destined for Zug Island in Detroit.

This story unravelled exactly 36 years ago today. It’s a kind of anniversary and as I’ve always loved the song that Gordon Lightfoot made shortly afterwards, I thought I’d post it up here for the day that’s in it.

That’s the background stuff. The story begins in Part II.
 

I just don't get it!

by
Wolf Hunting
Published on 17th August 2011 11:09 AM

Saturday evenings were cold wintery affairs. I’d just come in from playing football on the croft in front of the house with a load of mates amongst who was numbered Joe Corrigan who would later become Manchester City’s goalkeeper, I'd had a bath and was sat in front of a roaring coal fire listening to all the football scores because my Dad had his pools to check. He had Littlewoods and another one on the go. A guy in a brown macintosh with wide lapels and a brown trilby hat used to come round and deliver them and my Dad and I used to get all set around 5 o’clock and I remember going down the pages ticking off boxes, until eventually we got onto the Scottish teams, my interest in results waned, but my imagination was stirred by listening to stuff like; Hamilton Academicals 3 Partick Thistle 3: Airdrionians 4 Queen of the South 5.

Apart from wondering where all these teams played I also wondered if Scottish football was played without goalkeepers.

It was when I grew older that I wondered how a football team got called after an area or a county. I mean despite listening hard, I never heard a score being read out of West Riding of Yorkshire 2 Swindon 1, or East Anglia 2 York City 1. But in Scotland we got East Fife, East Stirlingshire, Heart of Midlothian.

It seems to be a kind of intelligence test. Where do East Fife actually play?
I looked it up and as all you guys already know, they play in Methill.
Oh, you don’t know where Methill is? Well it’s just outside Leven. What do you mean? You don’t know where Leven is? Well, it’s on the coast between Lower Largo and Buckhaven, about 8 miles east of Glenrothes. So now you know.

So now I’m all grown up and I have to say, I just don't get this.
There's a lot of time given over to Scottish football on 5Live and it kind of winds me up somewhat.
It's not so bad that I'd stick it in the 'Things That Really Annoy You' thread, and of course, I fully accept there are people who are Scottish, people who just like football in any form who'll watch Italian football, Spanish and French soccer etc, just because it's a football match, you've got Sky Sports and you have time, so you can watch football all day regardless of where it is being played. Which is terrific.

But what I don’t get is that with all the leagues in Scotland with tiny little clubs that apart from 3 or 4 thousand that go to watch on a wind blown afternoon, no one cares about.
I'd bet the majority of people in the UK don't even have a bull’s notion of where they actually are!
So why are they covered so comprehensively? BBC spend a lot of time covering a lot of Scottish football. BBC Scotland sure, but nationally? Is it so necessary?

Does it get more irritating the further south you go?
Do people in Southampton give a stuff about Celtic?
How much do people of Bristol or London care about Rangers?

Take East Stirlingshire for an example, I'd say a good few people know where Stirlingshire is but how many would know where they play, (without looking it up on the web) well, they play in Falkirk.

Falkirk is a small town of around 34,500 people which for a football town is quite small, which is why it’s a bit of a surprise then to find that it supports 2 teams, Falkirk being the other, and they don’t even share grounds.

Even more surprising is that this catchment area of Scotland which has admittedly a much greater population to choose from, has proportionately, a large number of clubs to choose from. In that narrow but wide band from Glasgow in the West and Edinburgh say around 50 miles you have the leading lights of Scottish football represented.

You have of course Celtic, Rangers, Hibernian, then vying for some attention and a bit of limelight, Livingstone, Motherwell, St Johnstone, Stirling Albion, Alloa Athletic, Dunfermline and of course Falkirk and East Stirlingshire.
And finally the emotively named Heart of Midlothian.
(Can you imagine either City or United being called Pride of Greater Manchester?)

I remember on those cosy afternoons putting 1’s 2’s and crosses with my Dad, recording complete surprise to find that Celtic didn't actually play at Hampden Park, that the massive stadium called Hampden Park was actually the home of a little club called Queens Park. This caused me all sorts of concern. Why did this little club play in this huge famous theatre? And where on earth did Celtic play then?

It seems to be well acknowledged that there may be 3 or 4 teams who could play in the middle or lower end of the Prem, but the rest?

There's loads of clubs in Wales and certainly over here in Ireland and a good few up in the North who I’m sure stir the hearts and minds of several thousand loyal supporters, and into those lives inject all sorts of preoccupation, but these get, apart from the scores being read out, nothing, zilch, which conversely, seems about right.

But I understand the principle. A bit like Formula 1, about 95% of the coverage focuses on the leading 5 or 6 cars. The coverage that the last 15 cars get is minimal or non existent -unless they crash. When was the last time there was extended camera footage or an article on Lotus or Virgin cars battling it out for 15th place for instance.

So likewise, does anyone know that Kilmarnock scored 5 goals on Saturday, or that Inverness Caledonian Thistle slipped to a 2 goal defeat by.... who?
Apart from giving out the scores, I really don't understand the amount of coverage that Scottish football gets on 5 live and or the BBC.

No idea about Sky, I haven’t got it, so I never watch it.

Following the same principle as F1 that I outlined, we don't get a lot of coverage on teams in the lower leagues in the UK apart from the late night football show on a Saturday night after MOTD, but you'll get a lot more about the SPL.
But you won't hear about (if there IS such a thing as) top football in Wales, Northern Ireland or Ireland.

But you'll get yards of coverage about Celtic, Rangers and a few others.

I just don't get it.
 
It looks as though URLs starting with content.php are more like to turn up something useful than blog.php even when there is not title in the URL.
 
With Captain Ernest McSorley in command, the Fitzgerald left her berth at 2.20pm on the 9th November 1975, heading out into a freshening wind.
Now before I go any further with this, I need to tell you that on three separate occasions the owners in their pledge to return greater dividends to it’s shareholders, increased the loading capacity in 1969, 1971 and again in 1973, this resulted in a reduction of freeboard from its original design by 3’4” which meant that there was now only just over 11’ from the water line to the top of the hull on this huge vessel.

Prior to these changes she was noted as ‘a good riding ship’, but after the changes, she became sluggish, with slower response times to shedding water and lifting back up in heavy seas.

Indeed, Captain McSorley said, “I don’t like the action of the ship these days. It’s heavy, and the damn thing wiggles in heavy seas, the bow hooks to one side or the other in heavy seas without recovering and it makes a ‘groaning sound’ I’ve never heard on any other ship, it actually scares me”. It was against this background she headed out into it’s 5 day sail to Detroit.

Just a little further down the coast, a similar, 647’, 26,500 ton vessel called the ‘Arthur M Anderson left Two Harbours with a full load of steel, captained by Jesse B. Cooper. They were to sail in frequent contact with each other a few miles apart for the next 26 hours. Only.

Only 15 minutes after leaving her berth and some 15 miles in front of the ‘Arthur Anderson’, the Fitzgerald picks up a gale warning for the area directly into which the ships were heading.

Now, right here I’m going to introduce the 3rd ship which influences this tale.

Loading 21,000 tons of steel directly opposite the Fitzgerald at the Burlington wharf, was the SS. Wilfred Sykes. She was 671’ long, captained by Captain Dudley Paquette.

She departed some 2 hours behind the Fitzgerald. On picking up the same gale warning he chose a route much further to the north thereby giving his vessel a lot more protection from the northern shore of the lake avoiding the worst effects of the oncoming storm. He was later critical of the Fitzgerald’s captain in choosing to take the more conventional route straight down the middle of the lake.

Captain Paquette monitored the radio conversation between the ‘Anderson’ and the ‘Fitzgerald and was scathing in their dismissal of the oncoming weather as they were already encountering a heavy swell which was being driven by increasing winds of around 50mph and a 10 foot swell. (This by the way, to give a sense of perspective is around the maximum height of a rough sea which will cause the cessation of the ferry services between Ireland and the UK, this route being serviced by until very recently the largest ferry ship in the world.) . The storm hit Lake Superior at 1am on the morning of the 10th November 1975.

At 1am, The Fitzgerald reported worsening seas and 60mph rising winds now gusting to 70mph – Storm force. Parquette was stunned to hear McSorley on the Fitzgerald say he was going to reduce headway and try to seek some shelter from the Isle Royale. Parquette was stunned as McSorley was not known for turning aside or slowing down in the face of rough weather.

Around 3am as the centre of the storm passed directly overhead the sea conditions improved rapidly with the winds dropping to 5 or 6 mph, the Fitzgerald then pushed on getting up to it’s maximum speed of around 14-16 knots but the winds rapidly picked up and came at them from the north west and at this point the wind was full of blinding snow which reduced visibility to next to nothing. The ‘Anderson’ lost sight of the ‘Fitzgerald’ at this point but could still ‘see’ it on their radar.

And here, I’m going to introduce a further element into this story…

By now it was mid afternoon, and in mountainous seas described by McSorley as the worst he’d ever seen in his life, the Fitzgerald had passed Michipicoten Island and was approaching Caribou Island. The Anderson was just approaching Michipicoten, about three miles off the West End Light.

Caribou Island is a tiny little outcrop of land around 65 miles out of the relative safety of Whitefish Bay and immediately off it’s northern shore was a charted shoal. In calm waters it was about 6 fathoms (about 36 feet) below the surface. It was on the chart as Six Fathom Shoal. But with seas of 35 foot waves and very low troughs in between the walls of water, this was indeed dangerous waters for a ship with a draft of 26 feet…..

Captain Cooper maintained that he watched the Edmund Fitzgerald pass far too close to Six Fathom Shoal to the north of Caribou Island. He could clearly see the ship and the beacon on Caribou on his radar set and could measure the distance between them. He and his officers watched the Fitzgerald pass right over the dangerous area of shallow water. By this time, snow and rising spray had obscured the Fitzgerald from sight, but was visible 17 miles ahead on radar.

The waves at this point were so high that they were interfering with the radar which had therefore become partly ineffective.

At 3.30pm having sailed in terrible seas the whole morning and into the overcast skies of the November afternoon, the ‘Anderson’ picked up the startling radio transmission that the ‘Fitzgerald’ was taking on water, had lost a section of railing and had lost two vent covers. It had also developed a list. Now with its reduced freeboard (only 11.5 feet) and being very heavily loaded and it’s captain reporting previously that ‘it’s slow to recover from heavy seas, and wallows in heavy seas, this isn’t good news…

The Fitzgerald now had two of its 6 bilge pumps running continuously to try to shift the water in the holds, but around 4.10pm McSorley called the ‘Anderson’ to say that due to tremendous battering they’d lost all their radar equipment and were effectively ‘blind’ and so would again reduce speed to allow the Anderson to catch up and take instruction from their radar systems.

Both ships were heading towards the relative safety of Whitefish Bay, the Lake at this point being around 100 miles wide but the storm had knocked out the radio transmission equipment of the United States Coastguard Service, but the lighthouse was still functioning. This was one of the worst storms encountered in living memory and had in fact caused the Soo locks in Sault St Marie (the 1st port that allows exit from Superior) to be closed and the rising waters pushed by the extreme depression had caused severe flooding in the town.

By late afternoon on the 10th November the winds had risen further to sustained speed of 70 mph driving waves of 25 feet. More ominously came the phenomenon of rogue waves with gusts of 86mph and rogue waves of 35 feet. For a bit more on Rogue Waves, see the section in Part 3.

I’m going to add in a new fearful fact here regarding wave theory. A group of 3 rogue waves were reported in the vicinity of the Fitzgerald around the time she sank.

Cooper on the ‘Anderson’ reported the following, “… about 6:55 pm, me and the men in the Anderson's pilothouse (at the front of the ship) felt a "bump", felt the ship lurch, and then turned to see a monstrous wave engulfing their entire vessel from astern. The wave worked its way along the deck, crashing on the back of the pilothouse, driving the bow of the Anderson down into the sea.

He continued, "Then the Anderson just raised up and shook herself off of all that water - barrooff - just like a big dog. Then another wave just like the first one or bigger hit us again. I watched those two waves head down the lake towards the Fitzgerald, and I think those were the two that sent him under."

The last communication on that awful night was from McSorley to Cooper on the ‘Anderson’ saying, “the pumps seem to be holding up and we’re holding our own…..”

It would have been about then that the two monster waves that Cooper had reported swamping his ship would have reached the Fitzgerald….

All contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald with its 21,116 tons of taconite pellets and its 29 crew was lost.
 
Another hunting tip, WH

Select the 2011 archive not the 2016. There are far less entries so it's easier find them by hovering over the outer circle. Look for URLs with content.php in them --- after blog.php, before entry.php --- around four or five o'clock.

Good luck with finding the others.
 
Will do. Thanks mate. Really want to find the one about the TAYLEUR...
 
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