The Gales of November

Tonight, I learned the meaning of the word fetch, used as a noun, to describe the growing power of wind and waves. This is especially pertinent to a lover of Lake Superior who is frequently at a loss to describe the lake’s extraordinary drama. The fetch explains much – like why the storm that sank the Edmund Fitzgerald grew as it rolled across the lake from the north, northwest, creating waves that grew to mammoth proportions by the time it reached the Fitzgerald at Whitefish Point. The longer the fetch, the higher and stronger the waves.

Fetch, a noun

• the distance along open water or land over which the wind blows
• the distance traversed by waves without obstruction

I may have gotten only part of that right. I do know that for part of the day of November 10, 1975, the day the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, that the winds were also blowing from the east. That wind could be so fickle, picking up and leaving one direction to take up with another, seems weird to me, but I’m not much of a weather person.

Our lecturer tonight, an expert on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, carefully laid out what he surmised was the cause of the ship’s sinking. He explained that the seas were very rough, the Fitzgerald took on water, the water combined with a huge load of taconite pellets lowered the boat in the water, so much so the captain labeled the situation the roughest seas he had ever seen because the waves appeared so much higher than they normally would have. And then a big wave hit, the boat nosedived to the bottom and broke in half, the crew all below decks, per the captain’s instructions. Our speaker surmised that the crew knew they were in bad weather but never knew that sinking was imminent. The lifeboats were never deployed.

If you don’t know, all twenty-nine crewmen on board died and are presumed to be still inside the sunken ship because, as they say, Superior never gives up its dead, the reason having to do with how extremely cold the water is.

The lecture tonight tied the science of what happened with the lyrics of Gordon Lightfoot’s famous folk song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Here are the lyrics. The song tells the story pretty well.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

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 early

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 feelin’?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
T’was the witch of November come stealin’
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin’
When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya”
At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in, he said
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the maritime sailors’ cathedral
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early

Near where we stay in Grand Marais is a small Coast Guard station. It’s been shuttered for several years but the folklore is that it was this station that received the Edmund Fitzgerald’s last radio contact before it sank several miles to the east off Whitefish Point. If there had been a call for help, help couldn’t have come because the station’s boat was too small and the distance too far. But if the Fitzgerald captain wanted people to know the ship was in dire straits, he told people who would never forget and who would pass the story on for generations.