I've seen 50 Footers come in the hangar Bays of our aircraft carriers. These Great Lakes freighters do some flexing in the Great Lakes. Shorter more powerful waves rather than rolling. My hat is off to all the Great Lakes Sailors :-)
Great example of big waves on a short period between trough and peaks. makes it easy to imagine how other boats may have 'folded' in the middle with bow and stern on peaks with the trough mid boat.
Huron could get nasty but the most dangerous lake in the world lake Erie I went to the fireworks in Toledo on the Maumee River in a 42 Post sports fisherman the lake was like a mirror at 8 when I set the anchor I came out into lake Erie in 10 footers at 10:00pm
True, during the "white hurricane of 1913" Huron took about 200 of the 283 lost at sea. Including the 'Curruthers' near Georgian Bay, a brand new Steel freighter swallowed. Btw, still hasn't been found
They stack up more closely on the lakes, same size waves on ocean wld probably be rollers w a longer frequency, longer time/greater distance between crest & troughs....
One of the best Great Lakes storm videos. Makes you think of the thousands of boats and sailors on the bottom of the lakes. We see the River Class boats in Fairport frequently.
I'm being a pedant here, but the reason they are NOT called seas is they do not have salt. They are fed by snowmelt/rivers/groundwater so they are fresh.
@@beanman6684 Your pedantry is noted, and welcome. But I think the definition of a lake is any enclosed, landlocked body of water. A proper "sea" is connected to a larger body, an ocean.
If they were seas then Michigan would be underwater and the entire lakes will combine into the Adrien sea. then the lakes would become the most fresh sea ever. I hardly believe that will be true
So what makes the Great Lakes so deadly? Between 0:20 and 0:40 is your answer. Those are a short 20 seconds of pure chaos and would feel like an eternity if you were there. The waves on the lakes are not the massive 50-90 foot rollers of the open ocean, they are shorter but are more frequent and much more steep. There were about 2-3 cresting 25-35 footers under the ships’ hull during that short time frame, possibly all at once, putting concentrated stress on multiple points in the hull (newer lake ships are actually designed to flex midship to handle these conditions). Also there is no time to prepare for the next wave when riding down the other side of one like in the open ocean, instead you just smack right into the next wave. It doesn’t help that waves tend to come in all directions as they bounce off the shores and are typically harder to gauge the height of. Also in the shallower parts of the lakes (like western Lake Erie) it can be even worse since one wrong move you’re smacking into a shoal or stuck in the shallows with the sawtooth waves bartering your hull. I’ve seen people (mostly those familiar with the oceans) dismiss the lakes on the account of the lakes having shorter wave height, which is true, but ultimately the shorter wave height is a symptom of the exact reason the lakes are so dangerous. Sailors who have sailed on both have said while a storm in the ocean is like sailing over big mountains, a storm on the lakes is like sailing into the teeth of a running circular saw. It’s telling that when an ocean-going vessel (called “salties” on the lakes) enters the lakes an experienced pilot familiar with the lakes is required to be on board.
Thank you for posting this. It answers questions that I've wondered about for a long time. Id love to see what this looks like on a ship with the pilothouse in front.
Those are not 25-35 foot waves, if so they would easily be going over the deck. The freeboard of the ship is 10-15 feet, and these waves barely go over, still rough and you make an interesting note, but if these were 30-40 foot waves the ship would really be in a pickle. :O
Many people out there fail to recognize that when the Great Lakes begin to release all their furry, they are nothing at all to want to play around with or get caught up in. That's why these sailors who sail the Great Lakes deserve all the respect they can get for all that they do, as their jobs are extremely dangerous and are at any moment, they can loose their lives.
Dayyyym. Great footage. Just toured the Mackinac Icebreaker today. Fascinating job and lifestyle. Would love to be out there in a storm on a big ship and see what it's like....maybe. For like a minute or two.
I hope LLT fixed the boom stays. When I worked on her for Oglebay Norton the starboard one was broken. There's also a nice sag in the deck under the boom from when ONCO took the tunnels above the side tanks out. Oh the Earl, I remember my time on her. Great video though, we went through a little something like that on northern Lake Huron heading to Cleveland from Marquette.
while in the Ocean, waves are huge but spread far apart on the Great Lakes, the waves are just as high as their ocean counterparts, but more tightly packed together making them much more dangerous. The Constant pounding of waves was enough to doom many vessels on the lakes, and the sailors died in the cold fridged waters.
@@davidwadsworth8982 I’ve only been on the Mackinac Island Ferry in bad weather - it was so bad we had to go around the North side of the Island - and that was bad enough. (Was there a ferry line called Straits? Smaller boat than Arnold Line’s two-tiered utility boats.)
I was on the edward fitzsimmons when she sank... I was scrubbing me flippers and on deck when the hull split in 2 and luckily here I am on the titanic...
Normally I do not agree that big seas were running in a video. But I am making an exception here, because these appear to be truly big seas. I was out in seas that big, at least 15', and the winds were later reported by a wind station to be 55-60mph. These seas are all of that size and maybe then some! The poster does not mention if they were upbound or downbound (going north or south) or what the season was. If was officially winter, then she would be running Winter Lines, meaning her load is light, allowing her to ride higher in the water; she looks like she is running high. Either that or she is running light (no load) and going upbound to get a load.
Love Canada and the great lakes..amazing bodies of (fresh) water, hard to believe that such big fresh water lakes exist in land. Greetings from Wales, UK.
Familiar with Erie. Dangerous for 2 reasons: (1) it's very shallow, making waves steep sided, more like breakers (2) Erie is aligned with the prevailing winds, allowing steep waves to build. Erie has seiches, which raise the water level at Buffalo and sometimes Toledo. The waves aren't as high as Superior, but extremely steep, very dangerous, and build up very quickly. Superior is the graveyard of ships, Erie is the graveyard of tugboats.
I've sailed in both great lakes and oceans of the world specifically the indian Pacific atlantic where waves that sunk the fitz are normal eg northern pacific
Hi Anthony - My name is Tricia and I'm a producer at The Weather Network in Canada. I'm working on a show about the weather on the Great Lakes and I would love to use your footage. I would be happy to credit you...and I'd love to talk to you to get a really feel of what it's like on a ship in these conditions. (That wind sound sends chills down my spine!)
No, the Fitzgerald was a "traditional" lakes freighter with a house up forward in the bow. These were the new diesel "river" class of vessel designed to go up the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland to the steel mills there.
See now to my untrained little boater eyes these swells don’t look so bad. But it’s all about perspective. I’d assume the ships hill takes a pounding in between rise and crash on each roller. Plus the perspective is shrunken some in video and also the fact that the bow is probably some 900 feet away. That’s three football fields long. I wonder if there’s any company that makes it policy to don immersion equipment under these conditions.
