“And the iron boats go as the mariners all know, with the gales of November remembered” – Gordon Lightfoot
Every Michigander knows that the winds of November are to be respected and even feared on the Great Lakes. The State of Michigan says that an estimated 6,000 vessels were lost on the Great Lakes with about a quarter of these canoes, sailing ships, ferries, steamers, and modern ore boats like the mighty SS Edmnd Fitzgerald still remain on Michigan’s 38,000 square miles of the Great Lakes bottomlands.
Michigan in Pictures has a lot of these stories from the Edmund Fitzgerald to the Christmas Tree Ship to the Freshwater Fury aka the White Hurricane of 1913 that happened 112 years ago today. See them all in Michigan shipwrecks on Michigan in Pictures.
Yolanda took this photo a memorial at Whitefish Point Lighthouse to few of those lost aboard the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald. More in her excellent Somewhere in Michigan gallery.
Michigan in Pictures 
I’m going to come back and look at more of these links. I’ve been reading some articles today as we mark the 50th anniversary of the tragedy.
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Hi Andrew – I just watched this documentary on the Edmund Fitzgerald on YouTube. It was broadcast on WDIV Friday night but I don’t have TV and I follow Paul Gross, a retired meteorologist from that station and he is in the documentary briefly and he had recommended it. Very interesting, so I thought I’d share. I’ll do the link in a separate comment so it doesn’t go to SPAM.
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Hey thank you!! It’s one of the best docs on the Fitz I’ve seen. Really enjoyed it!
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You’re welcome Andrew. I thought it was very thorough and I learned some new things I’d not heard/seen before … like taking three times to break the champagne bottle at the christening of the Fitz was a bad omen – yikes!
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Here’s the link for you Andrew:
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Indeed. One of my friends said he used to play baseball with a crew member & based on a snippet from the documentary, I was able to figure out who it was!
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That’s incredible … was it the young man in street clothes on the couch (I think with a dog). I felt sorry for that guy as he did not think freighter life was for him and he was told to stay.
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Yep that’s the guy!
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