It was a mild afternoon on the water when Captain Ernest McSorley eased the freighter away from the Burlington Northern No. 1 Dock at Superior, Wisc. With over 40 years’ experience on the Great Lakes and the oceans, the veteran skipper was not overly concerned by the weather advisories on this Nov. 9, 1975 day.

McSorely and his crew of 29 experienced men aboard the 729-foot-long Edmund Fitzgerald were downbound for Detroit when “Big Fitz” was joined by another Great Lakes freighter, “Arthur M. Anderson,” commanded by Captain Jesse “Bernie” Cooper, who was also one of the most experienced and respected captains on the Lakes. The two ships would travel together on this trip. The Anderson was headed for Gary, Indiana.

A low-pressure weather system had begun to form over the Southern Plains on the morning the two ships began their journey. Both men had weathered Lake Superior storms countless times, and knew the precautions to take to protect their ships and crews in such weather as was predicted.

McSorley’s “Fitz” was faster and more powerful than Cooper’s ship and would hold the lead of the two freighters. The two captains had agreed to take the northerly course across Lake Superior which, because of the highlands of the Canadian shore, offered some protection from the full force of a northwest wind. The route would take the two vessels northeast through the widest sections of the the great lake, and would take them midway between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula, then very near the Canadian shore before turning abruptly southeast near Michipicoten Island in Canadian waters, into Whitefish Point, Michigan, and shelter from the storm.

As the Fitzgerald and the Anderson made their way along the lake, the weather rapidly deteriorated and the gale warning was upgraded to a storm warning. By the early morning of Nov. 10, seas had increased to 12 to 16 feet, driven by winds in excess of 30 miles per hour. As wind and seas increased, the Fitzgerald had passed Michipicoton Island, turned south and was approaching Caribou Island, with the Anderson some 10 miles behind, but keeping pace. At approximately 3:30 p.m., McSorely radioed Cooper.

“I have a fence rail down, two vents lost or damaged, and have a list,” McSorely said. He asked Cooper if he would follow the Fitzgerald into Whitefish Point. Cooper, a veteran sailor, knew at that moment the Fitz was in trouble.

Cooper was also concerned, because he was monitoring the progress of the Fitzgerald on radar, and he believed the ship had passed dangerously near a shoal north of Caribou Island. This would put the Fitzgerald in water too shallow for its draft. It was shortly after Cooper made the observation that he received McSorley’s radio call. Alarmed that McSorley had said he was listing, Cooper asked him if he had the ship’s pumps operating. “Yes, both of them,” McSorley replied.

Approximately a half hour later, Cooper received another radio transmission from McSorley, requesting navigational assistance; both the Fitzgerald’s radars had stopped operating. With the radars broken, and the light at Whitefish Point out and the radio beacon not working because of a power failure, McSorley was traveling blind, other than what assistance he would get from Cooper.

The seas steadily rose as the wind increased, far exceeding the weather warnings issued. Cooper reported wind gusts of greater than 46 mph, and seas 18 to 25 feet. While the storm was obviously pounding the Fitzgerald, the Anderson was also taking a savage beating from the storm. At about 5:20 p.m., the crest of a giant wave crashed into the side of the Anderson, smashing its starboard lifeboat.

At about 6:55 p.m., the Anderson was struck astern by a wave that was so large it rolled along the length of the deck, burying the ship under an estimated 12 feet of water; the wave crashed against the pilothouse, pushing the bow of the ship under water. Raising up again and shaking the water off, the ship was immediately struck by a second wave, equally violent, and equally large.

Cooper later said he watched those two waves roll away, directly toward the listing, damaged Fitzgerald. He said he believed it was those two waves that drove the ship under.

In radio contacts, McSorely had not seemed anxious or panicky. The Fitz sent no distress call. It simply disappeared from radar and any contact. Because the ship had sent no distress call, Cooper waited nearly a half hour before contacting the United States Coast Guard to report the Fitzgerald as a possible casualty.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was located, four days later, broken in half, in 530 feet of water, just 17 miles north of Whitefish Point, in Canadian waters, claiming McSorley and his 28 crewmen.

What sank the Fitzgerald has never been agreed upon. After an initial investigation, the National Transportation Safety Board concluded the ship sank due to improperly sealed hatch covers. Captain “Bernie” Cooper disagreed with that theory until the day he died in 1993.

“I don’t care what anybody says,” Cooper said in an interview. “At 3:10 in the afternoon, she had either bottomed out or had a stress fracture in the hull. That’s the only two possibilities. She was sinking from that time on.”

Cooper, who knew Great Lakes freighters, said that it was impossible to break a wire fence rail due to a sagging ship, but if the hull was bent backwards, as in an upward thrust, the tension applied to the rail would snap it. McSorley had eventually reported having broken three.

“My theory is the water just finally built up on her, piling up on her bow,” Cooper said, in reference to the two waves that had rolled over the Anderson and pushed its bow under, just before the Fitzgerald disappeared from radar. “Those two seas were the biggest we’d ever seen,” he said.

Captain James Hobaugh, skipper of the U.S. Coast Guard buoy tender Woodrush, was the first to respond to Cooper’s call.

“The seas were coming down from the northwest, hitting the Canadian shore and ricocheting,” Hobaugh said later in an interview. “They (were) hitting the U.S. shore and ricocheting off. So, you’ve got three seas coming in from three different directions.” On the ocean, the troughs between waves (swells) are long, and in the Pacific Ocean, they are longer, Hobaugh said. There is space enough between swells on the ocean to allow a ship time to make directional corrections, but on the Great Lakes, the swells are too close and pound a ship like a trip hammer. At the same time, in the area between Michipicoton Island and Whitefish Point, where the Fitzgerald sank, a ship will pitch and roll at the same time.

To the family members of the 29 men who died on the Fitzgerald, the reasons the ship sank do not alter nor diminish the loss. Underwater researchers, using small submarines, later located and photographed bodies on and near the wreck. In an effort to protect the underwater gravesite, the families of the crew have requested legislation of the Canadian government banning further dives to the Fitzgerald.