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These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

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Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#21

Post by emptybits »

shagie wrote: post #17
sandworm101 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500-foot waters but the ship was 700+ long. The size of cargo ships boggles the mind. The largest space rockets are toys compared to any modern cargo ship.

The relevant xkcd - https://xkcd.com/1040/ (there's a large version of it too) There's a mentioned fun fact that is what reminded me of this: The Edmund Fitzgerald, the Kursk, and the Lusitania all sank in water shallower than they were long. Elsecomment there was a mention of diving, there are lines for diving records too.

And thank you for this tidbit, down there at the bottom of the Marianas Trench:

"MYSTERIOUS DOOR WHICH JAMES CAMERON BUILT HIS SUB TO REACH AND OPEN. HE WILL NOT SAY WHAT HE FOUND WITHIN."

o_O

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#22

Post by EvanAnderson »

jacquesm wrote: post #9

I lived on an Island in Lake Huron for about 5 years and went visiting the Lake Superior area many times. To call it a lake does not really do it justice: it's an inland sea, and a most impressive one. I've seen the lake from the shore in more than one storm and it didn't look any different than the ocean, except that it seemed in many ways more violent. I asked the locals about it and they said that the lake is more…

For people interested in the history of shipping on the Great Lakes, along with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, consider visiting the Valley Camp museum (a lake freighter that has been made into a museum ship) in Sault Ste. Marie, MI and the Soo Locks and visitors center, right down the street.

Sadly, the days of getting to walk out onto the locks for "Engineer's Day" (held on the last Friday of June, typically) are over. In 2025 the public wasn't allowed into the operational area of the locks ("out of an abundance of caution").

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#23

Post by sq_ »

I feel for the families with their reactions to people diving to the wreck, especially the fear that it could become a tourist attraction, but people being so upset at the various submersible and diving teams is curious to me.

Of course, you can't know the true intentions of the teams, but they all seem to have gone down there with great respect for the ship as a gravesite.

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#24

Post by nkrisc »

simplicio wrote: post #14
jacquesm wrote: post #9

I lived on an Island in Lake Huron for about 5 years and went visiting the Lake Superior area many times. To call it a lake does not really do it justice: it's an inland sea, and a most impressive one. I've seen the lake from the shore in more than one storm and it didn't look any different than the ocean, except that it seemed in many ways more violent. I asked the locals about it and they said that the lake is more…

Heh, yea my parents were big on folk music so I heard the song a lot growing up, and was always vaguely puzzled how a such a large ship could get in so much trouble on just a lake. I still remember the "oh I get it" moment when I visited Michigan as a teen and saw Lake Michigan for the first time.

Growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan made any lake I could see the other side of feel like more of a pond than a lake.

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#25

Post by shagie »

salamanderman wrote: post #19
simplicio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, yea my parents were big on folk music so I heard the song a lot growing up, and was always vaguely puzzled how a such a large ship could get in so much trouble on just a lake. I still remember the "oh I get it" moment when I visited Michigan as a teen and saw Lake Michigan for the first time.

I assume you thought the "hurricane west wind" line from the song was exaggerated. The winds down the middle of the lake, in certain seasons, are 80mph.

https://www.michiganseagrant.org/lessons/lessons/by-broad-co... and Reexamination of the 9–10 November 1975 “Edmund Fitzgerald” Storm Using Today’s Technology - https://www.michiganseagrant.org/lessons/wp-content/uploads/... (pdf from 2006)

    The captain of the Arthur M. Anderson later indicated that as it moved into the area where the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost (Fig. 2) waves were between 5.5 and 7.5 m and winds gusted between 70 kt (35 m s–1) and 75 kt (37.5 m s–1).

   ...

    Wave heights of individual waves generally follow a Rayleigh distribution (Lonquet-Higgins 1952) so that the maximum wave height in 7-m seas, although rare and unlikely, could be as high as 14 m. It is particularly noteworthy that the most severe conditions in the simulations occurred between 0000 and 0100 UTC, coincident in time and location with the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#26

Post by thinkingtoilet »

nkrisc wrote: post #24
simplicio wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, yea my parents were big on folk music so I heard the song a lot growing up, and was always vaguely puzzled how a such a large ship could get in so much trouble on just a lake. I still remember the "oh I get it" moment when I visited Michigan as a teen and saw Lake Michigan for the first time.

Growing up on the shores of Lake Michigan made any lake I could see the other side of feel like more of a pond than a lake.

Ha. Me too. I remember looking at Lake Champlain for the first time and commenting it wasn't that big. My friends looked at me like I was crazy. "You can see across it!" That was the day I learned how big Lake Michigan was compared to nearly every other lake on the planet.

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#28

Post by cl42 »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #13
tonyvince7 wrote: post #7

The ship was the pride of the American side Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most With a crew and good captain well seasoned Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms When they left fully loaded for Cleveland And later that night when the ship's bell rang Could it be the north wind they'd been feeling? The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound And a wa…

It's poetry, not code, but I've formatted it as code for line breaks: The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed When the gales of November came ear…

Thanks for doing this. The song is beautiful and I highly recommend folks listen to it on Spotify/Youtube/whatever.

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#29

Post by salamanderman »

shagie wrote: post #25
salamanderman wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you thought the "hurricane west wind" line from the song was exaggerated. The winds down the middle of the lake, in certain seasons, are 80mph.

https://www.michiganseagrant.org/lessons/lessons/by-broad-co... and Reexamination of the 9–10 November 1975 “Edmund Fitzgerald” Storm Using Today’s Technology - https://www.michiganseagrant.org/lessons/wp-content/uploads/... (pdf from 2006) The captain of the Arthur M. Anderson later indicated that as it moved into the area where the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost (Fig. 2) waves were between 5.5 and 7.5 m and winds guste…

Yes, after the ship was already screwed, they moved the ship to the far side of a small island where the winds would be slowed and the waves would be smaller. Unfortunately, their depth maps were inaccurate and the water wasn't deep enough such that they bashed the hull. If it weren't for the extreme winds, they wouldn't have moved the ship to try to get out of them.

Re: These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories

#30

Post by marze »

gausswho wrote: post #8
danielbln wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good lord, ascent must've taken hours at that depth. I felt daring going down 40 meters in Belize, 164 in pitch black ice cold water, trimix and hours of deco gass on the way up? No thanks.

According to TFA they had 15 minutes at the wreck, 4.5 hours of ascent. At about 34 degrees water temp.

It may have been 15 minutes to both go down and explore, it mentioned 4 minutes at the bottom. The quote: "15-minute descent and exploration"
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