Edmund Fitzgerald: See photos of the Great Lakes most famous ship

Table Of Content

• The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank 48 years ago. Here's the story of its final voyage
• Russian drones strike Black Sea town, set hotel ablaze
• These are the best Mother’s Day gifts you can buy …
• A to Z Auto Service
• More of the Scariest Places in Los Angeles
• Feds say he masterminded an epic California water heist. Some farmers say he’s their Robin Hood

To learn more about the 1995 restoration of the Fitzgerald bell, see our Bell Restoration page. The wreck was immortalized by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot's famous song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Bernice Field of Canada’s Ministry of Culture and Tourism said her office or the explorers must contact police, who may try to recover the body.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank 48 years ago. Here's the story of its final voyage

The Fitz is the largest ship to sink on Lake Superior. The tragedy of the sinking was not the monetary loss of the cargo or even the loss of the liner itself. The tragedy was that 29 members of the crew lost their lives. Every year on this grim anniversary, the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point holds a service to honor the lives lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

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The article says no remains of the crew were ever recovered but then in 1994 a body was discovered. More than 40 years ago, in her 17th year and 40th voyage, the ore freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, taking with all 29 members of the crew to the bottom. In 1994, diver Fred Shannon and organized a privately funded dive. Shannon’s dive group discovered the remains of a crew member still wearing his life vest. The SS Fitzgerald carried taconite iron ore from the mines near Duluth, Minnesota to the ironworks in Detroit, Toledo, and to other ports as well. The Edmund Fitzgerald's sounding board, which was later found spilt in two and covered in oil.

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After a decade of being mostly sober, Spector began going out again and ventured out on Feb. 2, 2003 for a night on the town. At the House of Blues, he met a statuesque 40-year-old actress named Lana Clarkson. They went to Pyrenees Castle for "just one drink." Clarkson never left the house - her body was found slumped in a chair with a single gunshot wound to her mouth. Spector's driver, who made the emergency call from the castle, later testified that Spector said, "I think I've killed someone." Spector was sentenced in May 2009. Advertised on its completion as “the most beautiful storage building in the world,” this 1928 high rise once boasted a penthouse club called “The Thirteenth Heaven,” complete with angel-winged waiters.

And we honor the amazing bravery of those who risked their own lives to search for a crew who would never be rescued. Her demise was shared around the world in Gordon Lightfoot’s song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” while the harrowing details of the ore carrier’s last journey became part of mariner lore. Tysall said the dive boat did not anchor to the wreck and the team went through the proper channels for a dive license required by the Ontario Heritage Act. Subsequent amendments to the act have effectively banned diving of any kind on the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck without approval by the Canadian government. The two picked a date, arranged a team and drove a small pickup truck from Florida to Michigan, taking turns sleeping on the oxygen tanks in the truck bed. When they arrived in the Upper Peninsula, the weather gave them a window of one morning when the water was millpond calm for the expedition.

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Every minute on the bottom at that depth lengthens the time needed to decompress on the ascent. The duo had a finite amount of breathable gas mixture, and Lake Superior allows little room for error. “It reminded me of an ice breaker cutting through large blocks of mud and clay,” said Tysall, a Florida diving instructor who is one of two people to ever scuba dive the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank 45 years ago today.

The sight of the massive ship crashing into the water was so harrowing that one man reportedly died of a heart attack on the spot. A team found the wreck four days later at a depth of 530 feet using a side scan sonar and other equipment, but they were unable to recover the bodies. Once the longest freighter on the Great Lakes, the 729-foot ship was torn in half during a storm on November 10, 1975 and plunged into the black depths before the crew could escape or send out a distress signal.

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Low visibility caused by snow and high seas began to swallow the deck of the Fitz. Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen. Approximately 240 ships have sunk in the Whitefish Point area since the first recorded sinking in 1816. Above, see a 2000 file report on the 25th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

DID YOU KNOW? The 1975 Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - Awesome Mitten

DID YOU KNOW? The 1975 Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Posted: Thu, 09 Nov 2023 08:00:00 GMT [source]

'There is no medical mystery to be solved and family members have said they'd like their relatives to remain in their natural grave,' he said. During the initial expedition made by the United States Coast Guard in May, 1976, many new discoveries were made. The ship was discovered only a few days after the sinking, but this expedition officially determined that the wreckage was the Edmund Fitzgerald through identification of the hull and the name on the ships.

Since its launch in 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald had carried taconite iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to Great Lakes ports such as Detroit and Toledo. On the 45th anniversary of the Fitzgerald's sinking, a Michigan maritime documentarian recalls his dive to the wreck site, and the one image that continues to haunt him. It's the day the Edmund Fitzgerald got caught in a storm, got torn apart in 30-foot waves, and sank to the depths of Lake Superior — 530 feet below the surface, to be exact — taking 29 souls with her.

However, like Disneyland itself, the El Capitan has its ghostly dark side. In its previous life, the theater was the site of a suicide in the balcony seats and the death of a manager in its office. When Disney revived the El Capitan, legend has it they walled off the window above the entryway, where his ghost could still be seen from the street.

But Dr. Jim Cairns said, given the depth of water, it would be extremely difficult and expensive to retrieve the corpse. From a practical point of view it is not possible to retrieve,' said Cairns. Cairns said a University of California team was filming the ship from a mini-submarine when they found the partially decomposed body Wednesday. He said extremely low temperatures would have slowed decomposition and that what remains is 'more than a skeleton.' Cairns said the film crew is sending photographs to his office and to provincial police. He said he will review them when they arrive next week, but that it would be impossible to identify the remains without seeing them and matching dental records.

Under the cooperation and direction of several organizations, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society retrieved the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1995 by request of many of the Edmund Fitzgerald families. The bell was restored following its recovery and is currently displayed in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point Michigan. The church will live-stream a service on Facebook for the first time, said the Rev. Jeffrey M. Hubbard, rector at the church also known as "The Maritime Sailors' Cathedral." Shannon said the body, partly clad in what appeared to be seaman’s coveralls, was not in the wreck but near the bow of the ship and under some debris.

Mixter rode a submersible called the "Delta," and when he got to the wreck, he couldn't believe what he saw. In July of 1994, Mixter was offered an opportunity to board a submersible vehicle and to travel to the bottom of Lake Superior to investigate the wreck site of the Edmund Fitzgerald. GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Nov. 10, 1975 will live in infamy in Michigan maritime history.

To most Midwesterners, this event is more than just a hit pop song. MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. – It was Nov. 10, 1975, when an early winter storm complete with hurricane-force winds and dangerously-high waves sunk the SS Edmund Fitzgerald killing all 29 crew on board. Friday marks the 48-year anniversary of the sinking. The wreck was explored with the help of a two-man submarine operated by Albert Falco and Colin Mounier and the purpose of the trip was the production of a film about the Saint Lawrence River and its tributaries. The final version contained a few glimpses of the Fitzgerald, but not much was learned (about the Fitzgerald) during the expedition.

Just before leaving, Tysall reached out and grasped the port side rail with two neoprene-gloved hands. It was a reverent moment filled with emotion, he said. For the first time in 20 years, living hands touched the ship.