On the afternoon of November 9, 1975, when the SS Edmund Fitzgerald set out on its 746-mile run from Superior, Wisconsin, to Detroit, Michigan, Lake Superior was mostly calm. Even so, the crew likely saw the red sky from the intensifying storm gathering over the Great Plains. While the National Weather Service had posted gale warnings for the Lakes region, the approaching storm likely didn’t phase the crew.
Gales alone rarely troubled ships the size of the Fitzgerald. In 1975, the 700-foot-long and 39-foot-high Fitzgerald was one of the largest boats on the lakes. But as the ship made its way out of port that night, meteorological forces invisible to 1970s forecasting technology were conspiring—the dreaded Witch of November was swooping in unseen. By 1:00 a.m. on November 10, the Fitzgerald was already reporting 60-mile-per-hour winds and 10-foot-high waves.
Of magic and mythology
Whenever the November Witch sweeps across the Great Lakes in autumn, mariners know to beware. Hurricane-force winds, born from collisions of lingering summer warmth and frigid Arctic air, can slam into the lakes and set loose 40-foot waves. But unlike an ocean hurricane, which builds for days or weeks, the Witch of November—made famous by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 ballad—can transform the lakes from glass to fury in just hours.
To the Anishinaabe, also known as Chippewa, it isn’t a sorceress who terrorizes the largest of the Great Lakes, but a clash between Thunderbirds, wind spirits who rule the upper air, and Mishibijiw, the Great Lynx who guards the lakes’ watery deep. In November, battles between these fearsome rivals can whip the water into chaos.
Magic and mythology aside, 50 years ago, the force that spawned such unpredictable weather was physics waiting to be understood. The treacherous storm that engulfed the Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975 bore all the hallmarks of these annual autumn tempests, “with reported winds of 50 to 60 knots and waves of 20 to 30 feet,” according to a later U.S. Coast Guard investigation.
A stern captain and a faithful crew
Christened on June 8, 1958, the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald was named after the president of Northwestern Mutual Life, the insurance company that owned the freighter. Ernest McSorley, the captain who helmed the vessel on its final voyage, had a reputation for being stern, hard-driving, and beloved by his crew. Born in 1912, McSorley became the youngest freighter captain on the Great Lakes when he took command of the S.S. Carrollton in 1953. By the time he was picked to helm the Fitzgerald in 1972, he had already captained eight different Great Lakes vessels.
When McSorley led the Fitzgerald out of port on the afternoon of November 9th, 1975, he knew it would be his last voyage—not because he had some dark premonition, but because he was set to retire. According to a new book, The Gales of November by John Bacon, McSorley added the run from Superior, Wisconsin, to Detroit, Michigan, to his schedule as a bonus to help cover medical bills for his wife.
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But perhaps McSorley did have a sense of what might be brewing out on the lake because he adjusted his course to a more northerly route, which took the Fitzgerald past the shallow waters near Caribou Island.
From the youngest crew member, 20-year-old Karl Peckol from Ohio, to the oldest, the 63-year-old McSorley, the 29 crew members aboard the Fitzgerald—most from the Great Lakes region—brought with them decades of maritime experience. Even though ships in 1975 did not have the technology to “see” weather fronts forming, the crew likely sensed the conditions that compelled McSorley to change course.
“One of the worst seas I’ve ever been in”
By midday on November 10, ships across Lake Superior were logging 16- to 18-foot average waves. The National Weather Service later emphasized that wave height reflects only the average of the highest third of waves—individual peaks, or rogue waves, can reach twice that height.
At 3:30 p.m., McSorley radioed a nearby freighter, the S.S. Arthur M. Anderson, trailing 15 miles behind, taking the same route to Whitefish Bay on the eastern side of Superior. McSorley reported, “I have sustained some topside damage. I have a fence rail laid down, two vents lost or damaged, and a list.” By then, the ship’s two pumps were faltering and its lifeboats were gone or damaged. McSorley asked the Anderson’s Captain, Jesse Cooper, “Will you stay by me till I get to Whitefish?” Far from shore, radio contact with nearby ships was the only lifeline available at the time.
Between 5:30 and 6:00 p.m., the Fitzgerald, now only 19 miles from Whitefish Bay, was in communication with another nearby vessel, the Avafors. McSorley radioed, “I have a bad list, lost both radars, and am taking heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I’ve ever been in.”
“We are holding our own”
Around 7:00 p.m. the Anderson, now just 10 miles behind the Fitzgerald, was struck by two successive rogue waves, estimated at 35 feet or more, that rolled over its decks and tore away its starboard lifeboat.
Captain Cooper later reported that when the first wave hit, they felt the ship shudder and saw a massive wave swallowing the ship from behind, driving its bow deep into the water. “Then the Anderson just raised up and shook herself off of all that water—barrooff—just like a big dog,” Cooper said. “Another wave just like the first one or bigger hit us again. I watched those two waves head down the lake toward the Fitzgerald.”
Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot released his song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” in 1976. Video: Gordon Lightfoot – Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald (Official Audio), Gordon Lightfoot
Captain Cooper’s first mate Morgan Clark—who was having trouble keeping sight of the Fitzgerald on his radar because of transmission interference from the heavy seas, snow, and rain—radioed McSorley: “How are you making out with your problems?”
“We are holding our own,” McSorley replied.
Five minutes later, the Fitzgerald entered a likely snow squall, vanishing from the Anderson’s radar. Ten minutes later—about the time it would have taken the waves to travel the distance between the ships—it was gone.
The Fitzgerald sank about 17 miles short of Whitefish Bay, taking all 29 crew members.
[ Related: Dead ships find solace under the treacherous surface of the Great Lakes ]
The science behind the Witch
What McSorley and his crew likely sensed as they ventured farther into Lake Superior was an ominous shift in barometric pressure and wind speeds. Two high-speed jet-streams—one sweeping south from Canada, the other racing east over Michigan—met above the developing front.
According to a 2006 report that reexamined the weather conditions that day, their collision created an atmospheric “vacuum” that pulled surface air upward and rapidly intensified the storm. Warm air rushing north and a deep bend in the jet stream added even more spin and energy. In 1975, forecasters lacked the satellite imagery and fine-scale models to detect those dynamics in time; they relied chiefly on barometer readings relayed by teletype—a typewriter-style terminal used to send and receive printed messages.
Now, meteorologists can see the “Witch” before she takes flight. Doppler radar, NOAA buoy arrays, satellite wind sensors, and atmosphere-wave models gather and interpret data continuously and feed hour-by-hour forecasts to every corner of the Great Lakes. When similar jet-stream interactions form today, they light up meteorologists’ digital displays as the unmistakable ingredients of an explosive “bomb cyclone.”
Advances in ship design and communications
Back in 1975, it was radio chatter between vessels that captured the events of the massive storm. Today, the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL) and National Weather Service track storms, wave heights, and pressure gradients in near-real time. Mariners receive automatic alerts via satellite and AIS—the Automatic Identification System that enables ships to broadcast their positions and hazards.
The reason for the “list” that McSorley reported in his communications with other vessels has never been fully determined. Whether he scraped bottom in shallow water near Caribou Island and began taking on water, or whether hatch covers were compromised allowing the water washing over the deck to enter the cargo hold—or whether ore shifted as the freighter rolled in heavy seas—it’s likely that the list added stress to the freighter’s hull.
A vessel two football fields long, like the Edmund Fitzgerald, can bridge ordinary wave troughs. However, when its bow and stern crest separate waves of 30 to 40 feet high with nothing beneath the midsection and there’s 26,000 tons of ore pressing down, the hull could, in theory, flex past its limits, especially if it was already compromised. Whether the Fitzgerald broke apart on the surface remains debated, but subsequent dives to the wreck have confirmed that its hull rests in two main pieces on the lakebed 500 feet below the surface.
In June 1996, Popular Science writer Dan McCosh described how the ore carrier Carl D. Bradley likely snapped in half on Lake Michigan during a November 1958 storm. In 1966, the lone survivor of the Daniel J. Morell wreck, Dennis Hale, recounted how he saw the freighter break apart in heavy waves on Lake Huron in November 1966.
In the decades since, naval engineers have strengthened cargo vessel framing, improved hatch-cover design, and introduced specialized stress modeling to simulate wave loads before a ship ever leaves port. Onboard digital sensors now relay real-time data like speed, wind, and hull stress to shore-based operations centers—an infrastructure unimaginable in 1975.
A new chapter, but an old foe
According to a Michigan State University analysis of Great Lakes wrecks since 1950, based on Dave Swayze’s Great Lakes Shipwreck dataset, tugs and freighters each account for about a quarter of post-1950 losses, with the rest divided among small workboats, barges, tankers, passenger vessels, and fishing boats. But no Great Lakes freighter has been lost since the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The Fitzgerald’s sinking closed a chapter of paper charts and teletype forecasts and opened one of buoy networks and satellite vigilance. Still, every November, on the heels of Halloween, when the barometer falls and Superior stirs, sailors know the Witch is waiting. Scientists call her a mid-latitude cyclone. The Chippewa remember her as the clash between the Thunderbird and Lynx. All three tell the same truth: the Great Lakes are inland seas, capable of summoning violent autumn storms that often begin with a red-gold sky.
Native poet Margaret Noodin wrote about the red skies over Lake Superior in her 2015 collection, Weweni. “At sunset in the lowering / brilliance is written / on the arriving tide / where kisses are ships / curved against the sea / and a clan fish whispers / the language of waves / to the stones of a subterranean cave.” Her words remind us that despite all our scientific insights, Nature still speaks a language all her own.
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