The Edmund Fitzgerald :: essays papers

The Edmund Fitzgerald Since commercial sendping began on the five capital Lakes, there energize Been six thousand shipwrecks. Half have never been found. There atomic number 18 three stormsThe sailors still talk about The great storm of 1913 claimed 250 lives and 12 ships. The storm of 1940 claimed 100 lives and two ships. The storm of 1975 claimed only one ship and 29 lives.The wreck of 1975 remains the most mysterious and controversial of altogether shipwreck tales heard around the Great Lakes. The legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald is surpassed in books, and enter and media only by that of the Titanic. Its mystery even led Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot to relieve a ballad about the vessel, the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which in turn stimulate popular interest in the story and the ship.Here I believe would be a good place to look at around background regarding the ship. The S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was conceived as a business enterprise of the nor therly vernacular Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. zero(prenominal)thern Mutual contracted with Great Lakes applied science Works of Ecorse, Michigan to construct a maximum sized Great Lakes bulk carrier. The keel was laid on August 7, 1957 as withdraw no. 301.The ship was named after the President and Chairman of the board of Northern Mutual, and the Fitzgerald was launched June 8, 1958 at River Rouge, Michigan. Northern Mutual placed the ship under permanent wave charter to the Columbia Transportation Division of Oglebay Norton Company, Cleveland, Ohio. At 729 feet long, 75 feet wide of the mark and 13,632 gross tons, the ship was the largest ship on the Great Lakes, for thirteen years, until 1971. The Fitzgeralds radiation pattern coarse during its productive life took it between Silver Bay, Minnesota, where she loaded taconite, to leaf blade mills on the lower lakes in the Detroit And Toledo area. It was usually empty on its return trip to Silver Bay.(G reat Lakes Shipwreck Museumwww.shipwreckmuseum.com/about.html)On November 9, 1975 Fitzgerald was to transport a load of taconite from Superior, Wisconsin, to Zug Island, Detroit, Michigan. Not Cleveland, as referenced to in the song by Gordon Lightfoot. The final voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald began at the Burlington Northern Railroad Dock No. 1, Superior, Wisconsin. Captain Ernest M McSorly had loaded it with 26,116 long tons of taconite pellets, made of process iron ore, heated and rolled into marble-size balls.