"The Gales of November"

 

We are not even one full month into this new year, but I think that I already know what will be the best non-fiction book of the year for me.  It is John U. Bacon's "The Gales of November, The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald".

This past November marked the fiftieth anniversary of the sinking of the this remarkable Great Lakes freighter ship, and while there have been other books, articles, and investigations into the events of November 10, 1974, author Bacon offers a different take on it.  In this book, he studies the lives of the 29 crewmen who lost their lives in this tragic event.  He also looks at the families, "the wives and the sons and the daughters", of these men.

Beyond all of that, though, I learned a lot in reading this book.  I learned just how vital the Great Lakes have been and continue to be to the economic engine of the United States.   The shipping of iron, ion ore, and taconite from the mines in the iron range of Minnesota via the Great Lakes to the industrial cities of Chicago, Detroit, Toledo, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, was vital to the wartime efforts during World War II, creating the "Arsenal of Democracy" that defeated the Axis.  That same industrial complex also contributed to the remarkable post-war economic boom in the United States.  Shipping tens of thousands of tons at a time in these ore carriers was infinitely more efficient than shipping overland via truck or rail. The Great Lakes were the very heart of the American economy.

I also learned of the incredible risks and dangers inherent in shipping along the Lakes.  Did you you know that it is much more dangerous sailing in fresh water than in ocean water when the weather turns bad?  I didn't, and I won't go into detail here as to why that is, but trust me, sailing upon these boats (and the people on the Lakes call them "boats", not "ships") is not for the faint of heart.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was built by the Northwest Mutual Life Insurance Company, and was named for the company's chairman.  It was christened in 1959, and was regarded as the finest boat ever built for service upon the Great Lakes. Throughout it's history, it set records in terms of tonnage of freight carried and delivered and for its speed in doing so.  Great Lakes sailors aspired to sail on it, and its crews were the best on the Lakes.  It was also easily the most luxurious of the ore boats.  It was standard that the Fitzgerald hosted VIP's from the mining, steel, and automotive companies on its various 2-3 day trips - in the summer months, when the weather was calm - along the Lakes in plush staterooms and treating them to gourmet meals along the way.  The food served on the Fitz was the best on the Great Lakes.

And it is those crewmen who are the focus of this book.  What does it take to be a sailor on these boats?  What are the duties of each person on board, from the lowly "wipers" in the engine room right on up to the Captain?  Bacon tells us all of this and also of the specifics of the 29 men who went down in Lake Superior that night.

Of course, there are no live witnesses to what happened during that storm on Lake Superior in 1975, but Bacon gives us a pretty good idea, based on radio exchanges between Captain Ernest McSorley on the Fitzgerald and Captain Bernie Cooper of the Arthur Anderson, a boat that was sailing about ten miles behind the Fitzgerald that night.  McSorley, by the way, was a 44 year veteran sailor on the Great Lakes and was regarded as the best Captain on the Lakes.  The trip that the Edmund Fitzgerald took that November was scheduled to be the last trip of the season and McSorley's last as captain before he was to retire.

It was fascinating to read about how crew members came to be on the Fitzgerald that night, and how some who were supposed to be on it were not.  "Survivor's guilt" was real thing among some of those sailors.  Here are the stories of the families of those men.  Most of them didn't know each other, but in the fifty year aftermath, they became a tight knit community who relied upon each other to get through life after the tragedy.  Bacon interviewed family members of fourteen of the twenty-nine crewmen.  Their stories are remarkable.

Then there is the story of Canadian singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot and his ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".  You all know the song.  How Lightfoot came to write and record it, and how it was received by the families of the victims, and how Lightfoot himself became an integral part of the community of the Family of those who were lost on the Fitzgerald.   It is this song that, more than anything, kept the tragedy alive in the minds of the public.  As John Bacon himself has said, "Without the song, there would be no book."

There were, of course, investigations and studies into what exactly happened that November night in 1975.   There were and are no live witnesses, of course, so we'll probably never really know.  As one of the family members put it, "Only thirty people know, God and the twenty-nine men who died that night."

The Edmund Fitzgerald leaves one remarkable legacy.  Its loss led to the institution of new safety measures in both ship construction, and in safety regarding weather reporting, and in the scheduling of the the trips across the Lakes between the iron range and the industrial delivery points.  In one hundred years covering 1875 to 1975, approximately 6,000 boats were lost on the Great Lakes and over 30,000 lives were lost.   Since 1975, there has been not a single ship or life has been lost.  The  Edmund Fitzgerald  was the last of the Great Lakes shipwrecks.

Four Stars from The Gradstander.

"All that remains are the faces and the names

of the wives and the sons and the daughters"