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QUICK FACTS
SS Edmund Fitzgerald Gross Tonnage Length Engines 13,632 Tons 729 Coal fired Westinghouse Electric Corporation steam turbine @ 7,500 SHP (Shaft Horsepower) 1x 19.5 diameter propeller
Propulsion
Speed
Crew Type Nicknames
14 kn (16 mph)
29 Lake Freighter Fitz, Mighty Fitz, Big Fitz, Pride of the American Flag, Toledo Express, Titanic of the Great Lakes Lost in a storm on November 10th, 1975
Fate
HISTORY
Design and Construction
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, invested in the iron and minerals industries on a largescale basis
This included the construction of the Fitzgerald, which represented the first such investment by any American life insurance company
In 1957, they contracted Great Lakes Engineering Works (GLEW), of River Rouge, Michigan, to design and construct the ship With a deadweight capacity (measure of how much weight a ship is carrying or can safely carry) capacity of 26,417 tons and a 729 feet hull, the Fitzgerald as the longest ship on the Great Lakes
Granting the ship the title of Queen of the Lakes (until September 17th, 1959, when a 730-foot long ship, the SS Murray Bay, was constructed)
HISTORY
Career
Northwesterns [life insurance company] normal practice was to purchase ships for operation by other companies In the Fitzgeralds case, they signed a 25-year contact with Oglebay Norton Corporation to operate the vessel
Ogelbay Norton immediately designated the Fitzgerald flagship of its Columbia Transportation fleet
For 17 years the ship carried taconite (iron-bearing sedimentary rocks) from the Iron Range mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo, and other ports Loading the taconite pellets took about 4 hours, while unloading took around 14 hours Round trips between Superior, Wisconsin and Detroit, Michigan usually took around 5 days and averaged 47 similar trips per season
WRECK DISCOVERY
A U.S. Navy aircraft found the wreck on November 14th, 1975 The Fitzgerald lay about 17 miles from the entrance of Whitefish Bay, in Canadian waters close to the international boundary at a depth of 560 feet A further November 14th-16th survey by the United States Coast Guard using a side scan sonar revealed two large objects lying close together on the lake floor
This theory suggests that these three waves further added to the problems of the Fitzgerald that were already listed. It would also mean that water would remain on the deck for longer than usual
The National Transportation Safety Board conducted computer studies, testing and analysis to determine the forces necessary to collapse the hatch covers
They concluded that the Fitzgerald sank suddenly from massive flooding of the cargo hold due to the collapse of one of more of the hatch covers under the weight of giant boarding seas instead of flooding gradually due to ineffective hatch closures
However, the NTSB also released another opinion as to the cause of the wreck
That the Fitzgerald sank suddenly and unexpectedly from shoaling
http://www.mhsd.org/fleet/O/OnColumbia/fitz/default.htm
http://www.ssefo.com/info/timeline.html http://www.glmi.org/fitz/gallery/default.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald