Rogue Wave or Human Error: What Sunk The Infamous SS Edmund Fitzgerald? | Dive Detectives | Timeline 

The bell now rings 30 times, once more to Gordon Lightfoot who enshrined the tragedy of the Edmund Fitzgerald who we lost this time last year. RIP to Gord and the crew of 29

Remarkable investigation that absolves the crew. Tragic on so many levels. Greed. Exploitation. Cutting corners. Very informative. I sailed as a passenger in 1982 on a small freighter to South Georgia, South Atlantic. It had been chartered by the RN and I was part of 30 man British Army team. The crew were indigenous St. Helenians. Incredible sailors. We hit a F11 storm approaching Shag Rock (or maybe just passed it). The skill of the crew was staggering. We got through unscathed but the two cargo holds were pulverised. We’d lost all our rations, fuel, some ammunition. But the St. Helena was in one piece, as were we. Nothing but respect for sailors, merchant or military.

I'm a lake Huron solo sailor, and I'm a welder fabricator, they water tested a non twisting and non rolling ship, even with clamps done a worn out twisting ship in my eyes will leak a lot! No blame to the sea men!! Blame falls on the money holders, they lived happy lives and that's wrong

I’m a flatlander. I watch these shows to learn and to appreciate the men that risk their lives to transport goods across the water. RIP 🚢

I know absolutely nothing about ships, sailing, but I'm truly fascinated by all of these documentaries, and the bravery of all these men. God bless them.

"Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours..."

When a storm is coming you Batten Down the Hatches and double check them. Never bought the story that the Captain or Crew were at fault. No Way.

I'm sure that ship building has gotten even better, but a former Capt on the Lakes made a comment about the ship losses that stayed with me. Most ships go down are run by "Company" men who do whatever it takes to make a run on time, and (more significantly), they make that one last run of the season. What changed after the Fitz is that the insurance companies refused to insure any ship that made a run when the weather predicted severe storms (like the Witch of November). I'm no fan of insurance companies, they bleed just about every segment of society, but that decision took the decision to sail out of the Captain's hands, and companies stopped pressuring the Captain as well.

I grew up in a town on Lake St Clair, we used to go for boat rides and see these monsters all the time. When you're 10 yrs old and doing the " Trucker horn pump" and the freighter blasts his horn for you, You're King of The World. I remember when she went down. The entire town was sad. It was a difficult time.

Has anyone noticed. Everytime you hear a bell ring it rings periodically in the video. In total it rang 29 times.

The courage of the men who sail this most dangerous stretch of water daily is beyond belief.

Well done documentary. As someone who grew up on the lakes and lost a uncle on the Bradley it's really nice to see someone cover this topic with this much sensitivity toward the families of those lost. So many docs just gloss over the human toll for a bunch of statistics.

RIP Gord and the 29 crew members lost in this tragedy, and my best wishes to all surviving family members and friends. The respectful attitude shown to the dead in re this maritime grave is heartening, as are the sterling efforts shown in this fascinating documentary to get at the truth. I'm impressed! Nice one team. 🌟👍

My grandfather was a doc on the Fitz for years, but retired 6 months before her loss. Even got a peice of the Fitz ancore

the other sad part of the story is that the families had to live with the thought of it's the crews fault. moms and dads and siblings have past away not knowing the real truth.

A) Wrong loading sequence between cargo holds can cause huge stresses on the ship’s structure, if the stresses at any frame exceed 100% there will be a structural failure. B) There are 2 conditions for calculating stresses, sea conditions and port conditions. Port conditions gives more allowances, for example a bm stress of 120% at a sea going condition will be only 80% at port/calm water conditions. C) Iron ore which is avery heavy cargo is loaded at the center of the hold and it creates a slop which from it the cargo is spread to the rest of the hold. The cargo holds are not fully loaded due to the weight of the cargo. There is no way to balance the ship, the ballast water is being pumped out as much as possible to load more cargo during the loading and pumped in during discharge. Ballast water in bulk carries is used only to reduce stresses, make sure that the propellor is submerged, to reduce air draft, to keep the vessel at a minimum draft that will allow the ship to be sea worthy( Without cargo the vessel will float like a ballon with excessive stability). D) When the ship is in Ballast condition need to check that the bilges are not clogged. Rubber packings of hatch covers need to be checked frequently and changed when they show signs of deformation or fatigue . Hatch comings drain channels must be checked that they are not clogged before departure. All cargo hatches must be secured before departure, it’s the chief officer’s responsibility to inform the captain when the ship is ready to depart, it’s the captain’s duty to make sure that all the preparations are made. There are many more things I can write about but I will stop here, if you are interested read bulk carrier practice book for more information.

I thought this video was very well done. Lots of new info provided. Thank you!

I remember when this happened. Waiting to hear about if they have been located. It was sad news.

Big props to these guys for finally putting this documentary online. Back when I was in my Fitzgerald craze about 3 years ago as I attempted to solve the mystery, I found a short teaser for this episode. I was familiar with Mike Fletcher from The Sea Hunters, so I really wanted to see the episode in full. Now I finally have, and it backs up greatly what I believe most likely happened to Big Fitz and her crew.

A truly amazing story!! Thank you for the video!!

It's about time we see a new documentary about the Fitz! It was the first song I learned to play on the guitar & I've been obsessed since! THANK YOU!! 😁😁

Men who worked on the ship spoke of cracks in the hull that you could see daylight through, they were told don't worry about it. The Coast Guard said it wouldn't have mattered during the investigations. The film didn't mention that the Anderson had eight FEET of water on its deck that night. those sailors were scared to death. The Coast Guard Rescue boat out of Duluth that night went beyond vertical as the waves that night bounced off the shore and were coming in at three different angles. Captain Mcsorley had his pumps on, why? the pumps on that ship only pump from the ballast tanks. That ship had multiple failures.

I was on the oil tanker M.V. Lakeshell in 1975. We were too far away in Lake Superior from the Edmond Fitzgerald to help her. Our crew did experience high waves in Lake Huron, but the chief engineer took on ballast to sink us like a submarine, so we survived. Also our design as a tanker (bridge and engine room positioned on the stern) helped, as not to twist to cause a breakup of the metal structure. The angels were looking over us that time. 😇

My gpa was on the Blough (ship sent to try and save the sailors).

This was a bad storm. My stepfather was driving from central Wisconsin into western Minnesota and got caught in it. From thunderstorms and lighting to thunder-snow and 60 mph winds. Would have been 100 times worse on Lake Superior.

Is it an apples to apples comparison between the Morrell and the Fitzgerald, though? The Morrell was a vastly older vessel (1906) that had a hull made of brittle steel, something that wasn't changed until almost the 1950s. It was neat to see the Calumet at, presumably, the Port Colburne marine scrap yard.

I will preface this with that I’m writing this comment before finishing the video. As a Great Lakes sailor myself working on the boats out here I have to say this a good video! Personally I believe what they say about the bow flooding I believe what happened is that they were in the storm taking waves over the pilot house and radioed that they had water coming in. But the reason for no call saying they were going down or anything of the sort was because the water they sank in was shallower than the boat was long and I believe they crested a wave water and cargo rushed forward and where they thought they were going to pop back that it drove them nose first into the bottom before they even knew they were going down which caused her to snap in the middle

Really interesting, God Bless the crew 🙏

More please! Love interesting new perspective and investigation in 2024. Well done and really enjoyed. More!!

I learned of the Edmund Fitzgerald disaster from Gordon Lightfoot's song. That's how old that was

Born and raised in Michigan my whole life and I remember when the Fitz sank. I firmly believe she hit the three sisters mentioned by Captain Bernie Cooper. Once her bow was plunged under water and probably hit bottom, that still left over 200 feet of the ship out of the water and the hull couldn't handle it and she broke her back.

personally, i dont think it was either. All the evidence points towards her taking on water, which, when she hit a trough, saw her break deep, strike the bottom of the seabed, split and thats why her rear half is upside down. it was simply a matter of circumstance that no-one could have forseen or stopped (remember, the Fitz was an old ship)

I have been fascinated by this disaster since the day it happened. Thank you for this most *EXCELLENT* documentaries! 🙏

The fact they tried to blame the crew is the most disgusting part of this story. The investigators and company owners should all be slapped with something heavy and jagged. That Ship was their home on the water and regardless of lax attitudes in calm weather, as soon as it turned sour they would have been racing around making sure everything was buttoned up tight, laziness was not an option. The fact they were overloaded is what sunk the ship, they may have withstood the storm as the other other ships did if loaded correctly, this was the owners fault not the Crews.

My great uncle was In the engine room when the ship went down

Isn't it weird that people nowadays go to the site of shipwrecks using small boats?

I was wondering if you could do a video covering the harrying of the north? It’s such an important yet forgotten part of English history, northern England still hasn’t recovered nearly 1000 years later, and it’s a big reason why the north-south divide is even a thing.

Wow watching that simulator gave me chills, after being in that I would never get on another boat

It still seems to lead that the missing vent covers were the main culprit for letting water to flood her holds, and that rogue that Capt Cooper stated, that would have shifted all of her cargo forward against the bulkheads of the compartments, making her more nose heavy, ontop of the water adding more weight, then she just slipped under, weakening her middle, I want to say that is where she split, like titanic did

I remember hearing the song when I was about 10 years old and it was so scary to me that I had nightmares the first time I heard that song!! I still get creeped out by that song to this day!! How sad for the victims families!!! The investigative work in this video is amazing!!

Mike Nelson would have said.."when suddenly it happened ! "😮

The most haunting part about this, to me, is the guy talking about hearing his ship tear apart. And just thinking that the guys on the EF might have had, maybe, seconds to even realize what was happening. A wave could have crashed over the pilot house and wiped out anyone inside before they could do anything at all to stop what was coming or even mitigate it. Some of the guys belowdecks might not have even known anything was happening before it was all over.

EXCELLENT PROGRAM

3:30 Recent sonar scans? It’s been illegal to do any sonar surveys on the Fitz since 2006 with the Ontario Heritage Act.

Shallow lake with ocean sized waves, she went over a possible rogue(but it didn't have to be) into the trough and straight into the lakebed

Deck officers/Chief officers/Captains take note: There are pre warning signs that the vessel was submitted to heavy stresses from all sorts of reasons: dented railings, dented soundings pipes and dented frames inside the holds. Frequent inspections of ballast tanks especially in the vicinity of the frame where those signs appear will give indication if there are serious issues with safety of the vessel.

You guys are awesome!!!!

Great Show 😊

Brave of Dennis to go out there. I would have never went near the ocean again if I were him.

The problem with this analysis is that you’ve started with a certain premise and then looked for evidence that would support it without considering either evidence against it or all of the investigations that have happened before. Note that the ship you looked at which is known to have broken in two on the surface the two halves are widely separated. Thats not uncommon when a ship suffers a failure of that nature and it’s not something you see with the Fitzgerald. The NTSB looked carefully at this event and their conclusions differ not only from the Coast Guard’s but also from your own. We know the Fitzgerald was listing and taking on water. The NTSB found based on their investigation at that time that the hatch covers would not have been watertight in those boarding seas and that there was no way to pump out water that got into the holds. That the bilge pumps could not keep up with the rate of water coming in was further evidence of that. Otherwise if it was just the ballast tank vent tubes the pumps should have been able to handle that rate of inflow and eliminate the list. The result was that the Fitzgerald with her heavy load and water aboard was now very deep in the water with her decks almost awash. Because of that when a boarding sea came over the front deck covers the hydrostatic load was enough to collapse the hatch cover into the forward holds. The wreck substantiates this with the hatch covers from at least holds 1 and 2 collapsed into their holds. With the Fitzgerald already low in the water and a large wave crashing into the pilot house as the hatch covers fail that would have produced enough rapid flooding to drive the ship down by the head likely resulting in the bow of the ship plunging straight into the bottom. The resulting violent stop as the ship moving at speed impacted the bottom would have created tremendous stress loads in the hull and could have very easily resulted in the ship breaking in half. Consequently the stern would have likely sunk very quickly and the fact that it capsized as it did so vice the bow which sits upright in the bottom is further evidence of this breakup sequence. Thats also why the two halves lie so close together. Just look at the animation you did on the simulator. Now imagine when that big maximum wave washes over the pilot house that the forward hatch covers fail instantly flooding those spaces with tons of water. It’s easy to see how that almost instantaneous loss of buoyancy would have driven her bow straight to the sea floor giving those on the bridge no chance for a Mayday or Escape. Similarly to violent nature of the impact with the sea floor and the resulting breakup and capsizing also doomed everyone in the stern section of the ship. Finally it should be noted that the NTSB investigated multiple possible loss scenarios and the forgoing was the only one which fit all of the available evidence.

Very few things have a simple explanation. In this case, it was both human error AND nature's fury

I've seen waves on lake erie keep snowballing until they are 4 times as big as what the wave starts off as ... The weight of that water is incredibly significant... It will push a ship straight down and the stress will snap it like a twig in 75mph wind . God rest the people and thier families in all tragedies

I think it was the three sisters. I've live on lake superior it gets ROUGH 😢

Their water pressure test using the hose and a "similar" cargo freighter was....Lacking. Their method didn't account for flexing and twisting due to the storm. Though I have also always doubted the crew would've left the hatches unsecure to have caused the sinking! Just pointing out the flawed test to discount it.

Great to see some updated simulations and information. We keep learning more and more about rogue waves and what they can do.

Any ship of that length can break it's back across the trough between two peaks especially if she's fully laden.

It was greed that sunk that ship. Corporate greed. Corporate greed will sink us all.

Essy to blame a dead crew

Engineers need to stop calling their ships unsinkable. It never seems to end well

Wave pushed her bow under. Drove her straight down. Cooper even said his bow got pushed under, but he came back up. The Fitz had a list and was taking water, she couldn't recover. No radio distress, mayday, ect.. she broke on the bottom imo

It was a storm with massive waves. They had been in contact with the other ship and said holding our own, meaning they did everything they could to try to sail. the only thing they would be at fault for was to go at all....

The ship wasn't seaworthy. Malfeasance floated her for years too long.

Dateline is a solid program. This was a trip. I was 17 years old during the Trial of the Century. This made me remember how crazy the coverage actually was. Jane Pauly really phrased her questions toward the dismissed juror according to how people viewed the trial with a relative degree of mistrust, that’s my sense after watching this. If you look at Mark Fuhrman’s testimony pleading the 5th in its entirety, it’s definitely not as dramatic as the way the television media chopped it up for clickbait.

The water hose test on the hatch covers would in no way duplicate the stresses and flexing that would occur when a ship is being battered by the huge waves in a storm. During such conditions the entire vessel hogs, sags, and most importantly, twists. It's easily conceivable that the hatch covers could start leaking when the frames of the openings are being twisted side to side. I don't think that the hatch covers were an issue during the sinking, but the hose test was a waste of time.

A neat documentary overall, the “simulator” footage was unique and interesting, but there were some glaring errors too, like the narrator saying the Fitz was the largest AND fastest freighter on the lakes…..the Fitz was most definitely not the fastest lake freighter even on the day it first set sail, there were several lengthened / converted “Victory ships” on the lakes at the time that could keep up a pace over 50% faster than the Fitzgerald’s top speed.

According to Capt. Darryal over on the History Man channel she was buckled & twisted long before she made that last sailing, because she often ran overloaded [by the ships owners & Capt's] He had worked on the Big Fitz & he had family on her when she went down He also contends that she had run aground on an unmarked section of shoal and then the coup de gras was the 3 sisters that had just washed over the Arthur M Andersen a few moments before so I very firmly believe it was a combination of events that led up to her being on the bottom

I don’t think the splitting on the surface theory will ever be the main theory. There is evidence for it as the ship was not structurally sound. Despite only being 17 years old she had in the previous 6 years had her keel fixed twice for coming loose. There were also rumors of it happening again in the summer of 75 but they were ignored. A crew mate who had gotten off the ship before the disaster said this but was never interviewed by the USCG’s investigators. The other three ships that were out there the older Arthur M Anderson, and Wilfred Sykes and the new Roger Blough but better structurally. The former two had just been reinforced while the Blough being newer had been built better. The Fitzgerald I heard was overloaded. With those terrible seas and a potentially weak keel she didn’t stand a chance. Plus she wasn’t built with rivets which in the 80’s the Arthur B Homer the sister ship of the Fitzgerald who was built the same way was permanently laid up despite only being lengthened a few years before. Something just isn’t right with that. She could’ve bottomed out but the Captain Mcsorely was a 30+ year Master and Officer. He would’ve known that shoal in any weather. Now, first Mate McCarthy ( no relation that I’m aware of ) was also a master but was demoted after having his ship bottom out, if he was on watch and the ship bottomed out, that could be a possibility. The reason she won’t probably have that be the lead theory is because the Coast Guard would’ve lost even more credibility and the Great Lakes Shipping would’ve taken even more of a hit. There would’ve been lawsuits everywhere. And plus there’d be no mystery! If you want to truly solve or come to a most likely conclusion, then the Keel should be checked, and the logbook to see what they h may have been experiencing. It won’t answer everything but it’ll answer a lot. Plus if Fred Shannon is still alive he should be interviewed too. He knows/knew the wreck better than anyone else.

Construction companies of two Sankey ships( 2🚢 )Construction companies were responsible for weaknesses of those two ships for reduced cost than decided amount. Companies utilized those ships 🚢 loads much more weights than what was designed for financial greedily.

I am for diving the wreck. To go inside the pilot house and get the log book. That log book could tell a lot about that night

Standard is 5 bulkheads. Fitzgerald only had 3 bulkheads.

I want to see how the hatches perform when being twisted in the rough waves. It was designed to bend so we're the hatches designed that way too?

This needs a full production all star cast AAA production big time movie. Crazy story

Whether the hatch coverings are to blame or not that water test they performed with the fire hose was just total BS. There were thousands of tons of water washing over the deck, not some piddly little jet concentrated on a few square inches. The ship was hogging and torquing so the hatch coverings were flexing away from and onto the holds, even a quarter inch gap will let in a lot of sea water and this was going on for hours around the entire perimeter of the cover. There were no bulkheads within the cargo bay so the entire payload would have been shifting forwards and backwards as well as side to side. If the ship started listing it would stay listing and only get worse unless a wave managed to right it and distribute the taconite more evenly. This said I believe that due to the inaccuracy of the charts and the significant extra weight she was carrying the Fitzgerald bottomed out and at the very least lost the structural integrity of her keel plates.

Also - with a storm like that and the ship twisting, those hatches ARE gonna leak.

I grew up in Duluth and remember watching the storm down in the harbor from the bus to school. Interesting video, but they spelled Duluth with an "e" on the map (35:44).

The Fitz would come to port, It was something to see. Massive ship.

I urge everyone if you haven't listen to Gordon Lightfoots song... wonderfully done

The grounding theory is the only thing that holds up if you ask me it checks all boxes list guard rail cable broken deck vents all started right near Cariboo island

golly with the ads holy cripes chill

Similar incident to that of the MV Derbyshire, also a very large ore carrier, during typhoon Orchid off the south of Japan. 42 crew and 2 wives lost. 169000tons DWT. Believed structural failure caused by huge seas.

PLZ if you are going to talk about America use American measurements as well!!!!!!!!~~~~~~~~~ As NOT all the world understand kg vs lb's or C vs F!~

Sounds like a rouge wave.

Okay, I’m only part-way into this documentary and I can see that not only is there nothing new here, but the producers do not appear to have done very much research beyond what they were told by the few people they interviewed. First of all, you can’t effectively compare the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald to that of the Daniel J. Morrell. The Morrell was 60 years old, in poor condition, and built using Bessemer steel which becomes brittle in cold temperatures; it’s ALWAYS cold on the lakes. The Fitz was designed very differently, with welded hull and newer steel manufacturing processes. It is possible that the storm could have caused a small stress fracture in the hull that would have caused it to take on water gradually, but not as likely as other possibilities. The Henry Steinbrenner lost its hatch covers and sank so quickly it didn’t even break up, I suspect something similar would have happened to the Fitz if a stress fracture had opened up. If it had broken up on the surface like any other lake boat, then they would have had time for a distress call. Evidence indicates that the ship took on water very gradually, which caused it to plunge into the sea floor when the ship hit a massive wave, broke its back, stern flipped over and came to rest on the bottom. Also, these ships breaking at the center is not new or unique; these lake boats are long SOB’s, they ALWAYS break at center. On that same note, nearly every lake freighter that has ever broken up on the lakes has settled upright on the sea floor, so whatever happened to the Fitz was very unusual. Honestly, this program appears to me like all these guys did was watch a previous documentary or two, visit the Morrell and interview Dennis Hale, assert an opinion on the wreck of the Fitz doing minimal research, and presented it as if it were some fresh new perspective. Any of us online commenters could do that, they just had the money. I do appreciate that they actually tested the theory that the ship sank due to “ineffective closure of the cargo hatches” and proved it to be false, which was nice to see.

I know everyone still has their own opinion but from what I've seen of the wreck sight of the Fitzgerald but what I do disagree with is the way she sank and how the sections lay on the bottom! I still believe she nose dived digging a trench and the stern twisted the ship apart! There is too much twisted steel from the middle section! Thanks for up loading this video it's very interesting!

Personally I don't care if it was human error or a rogue wave that sunk the ship. Because knowing that does not change a thing. The ship is still on the bottom and won't bring anyone back

160 kph ~ 100 mph!

I believe she was torn apart on the surface. RIP Her Crew. Gordon wrote the perfect song for yawl.

I remember that day

I've always been haunted by the tragic story of the Fitzgerald... A thousand thoughts flood my mind and sometimes I'm consumed with the thoughts of its crew and what happened for days at a time...Such a sad piece of History

Someone posted in another video that they kept painting the water lines differently so they could haul more, and that is what sunk the ship in the November storm!~

Why would you refer to Edmund Fitzgerald, or its sinking, as infamous? The sinking was a tragedy, it wasn't infamous.

19:09 my uncle works on the Calumet. Obviously a different ship. But exact same spelling and colors. Just different configuration on there the wheel house is at. Stern vs bow

The best lake to fish the water is cold all year round. My grandfather was a cop in the U.P. when this happen. They did put out S.O.S. call to other ships.

The song is good but brings back the sad memories,feelings . I just as doon not hear it .

I thought nobody could dive on the wreck anymore.

Lake Superior doesn't give up it's dead or it's secrets.

This documentary is over ten years old

Ah, it's Chris Hearn from Disasters At Sea, and Mike Fletcher from The Sea Hunters

I’m no engineer and if there’s an engineer here who would like to chime in, please do so but just looking at how the Edmund Fitzgerald was made seems to me like the center of that ship was a major weak point. It looks like they might have made that ship a little bit too long causing that area to be sort of a a stress focal with the bending and twisting with the waves of the sea. I to am of the opinion the Edmund Fitzgerald did not just founder nor nose dive to the bottom. I think that boat was overloaded and caused it to break in half.

My dad was in the Arthur M Anderson just 15 miles behind her both captains were talking the last words that were heard was...we,re holding our own then the ship went completely off radar several factors played a part .. Unsecured hatches on deck was taking in water .. The cargo itself was like marbles rolling around ...taconite pellets And a wave just big enough to send the ship in a dive trajectory as it crested over the top ... my whole family are sailors they all said superior in Nov was pretty rough...