Saturday Matinee: Ship History Radio

Summary

History Daily: Saturday Matinee – Ship History Radio

Episode Title: Edmund Fitzgerald at 50 – Why That Shipwreck?
Date: November 22, 2025
Host: Lindsay Graham (History Daily), Amy Bachary (SSHSA)
Guest: Mark Sprang, Archivist, Great Lakes Historical Collections at Bowling Green State University

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Overview

This Saturday Matinee episode of History Daily features a special crossover with Ship History Radio from the Steamship Historical Society of America (SSHSA) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the tragic sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Host Amy Bachary and guest Mark Sprang—a leading Great Lakes maritime archivist—discuss the enduring fascination with this shipwreck, its cultural significance, the mystery surrounding its fate, the resulting safety changes, and the historical materials that preserve its story.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Edmund Fitzgerald: Enduring Popularity and Mystique

• Incident Recap
  On November 10, 1975, the bulk freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior during a fierce storm, claiming all 29 crew.

  • "Today we remember them and reflect on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy." — Amy Bachary (04:10)

• Why This Shipwreck Resonates

  • Simply not the “worst” on the Lakes, but the most famous due to a unique confluence of factors:
    • The recency bias: A tragedy from 1975 still feels recent; many relatives and colleagues of the lost crew are alive today.
    • The personal, tight-knit nature of the Great Lakes shipping community.
    • The enduring mystery: No bodies recovered, unclear cause, no survivors.
    • The impact of Gordon Lightfoot’s song, which cemented it in popular culture.
      • “The song is a big part of it because that was the following year and it became sort of a smash hit. ... It spread through popular culture like almost no other shipwreck has, maybe other than the Titanic.” — Mark Sprang (11:12)
    • Several crew hailed from the Toledo area, deepening local investment.

• Lake Superior’s Role

  • Its depth, cold, and anoxic waters mean bodies and wrecks are uniquely preserved—and sometimes never recovered.
    • “That line in the Lightfoot song ... ‘Lake Superior never gives up her dead.’ It’s not actually folklore ... the bacteria that would normally cause a body to bloat and float to the surface can’t survive.” — Mark Sprang (05:18)

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Community & Public Memory

• “Boat Nerds” and Enthusiasm
  The Great Lakes foster a close, informed, and passionate shipping enthusiast community (“boat nerds”) who meticulously track ships, share news, and preserve history.
  • “...there’s so many people doing great photography out there. Community is so well-informed too. So if you’re wrong they will let you know...” — Mark Sprang (09:45)

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Post-Tragedy Changes & Lessons

• Regulatory Changes (13:50)
  • Survival suits became mandatory.
  • Modern navigation aids required (from LORAN-C to GPS).
  • Depth finders became compulsory (shockingly, Fitzgerald lacked a mechanical depth finder in 1975).
  • Emergency radio beacons installed.
  • Stricter annual Coast Guard inspections, and reversal of rules permitting lower “freeboard,” limiting overloading.
    • “There were some congressional panel recommendations ... regulations are written in blood.” — Mark Sprang (13:50)
  • Notable Documentary Evidence: A loading log from a sailor on the Fitzgerald, 1972–73, shows a push to break carrying records— a subtle hint at commercial pressures.

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Wreck Site Protection & Preservation

• Fitzgerald’s Final Place

  • The wreck rests just over the Canadian border, protected as a gravesite—no diving or even sonar scanning is allowed without special permission.
    • “...you’re not even allowed to sonar scan it... I think enough people seem to be respecting it at this case because the last time anyone has been to the wreck is mid-90s.” — Mark Sprang (17:50)
  • Last known submersible visit: mid-1990s.

• Great Lakes: Diving Mecca

  • Superior's cold preserves wrecks well: some 19th-century schooners remain intact, down to masts and even paint.
  • Mark relays a story of the luxury yacht Goonilda, with interiors immaculately preserved—one of the “gold standards for shipwreck preservation.”
    • “You can go into the lounge and there’s the piano still standing up, and, like, the dishes are still sitting there. ... I think it was Jacques Cousteau actually said that.” — Mark Sprang (24:01)

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Cultural and Historical Artifacts

• Key Collections at Bowling Green State University (30:39)
  • Complete original builders’ plans for the Fitzgerald.
  • Rich trove of photographs (originals and copies), extensive newspaper scrapbooks, films of ship launch and port operations.
  • Special items:
    • Coast Guard and NTSB reports on the disaster (including protest letters from industry).
    • Recovery history of the ship’s bell—replaced in the ’90s with a new bell inscribed with all crew names.
    • Physical artifacts: taconite pellets (the ore it carried), Gordon Lightfoot’s sheet music, ship’s original design specifications.

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The Unsolved Mystery

• Why Did It Sink?
  • Theories abound: vulnerabilities in hatch clamps, rogue waves, overloading, design flaws, and more.
    • “There’s lots all these competing theories with various levels of credence to them, and then having a pop culture song written about it, which is not something that usually happens...” — Mark Sprang (11:12)
  • The Coast Guard blamed potential issues with hatch clamps; the industry rebuffed this claim.
    • “There were about 60 per hatch ... one or two of them ... is not going to loosen the hatch enough to make a difference.” — Mark Sprang (24:01)

The Human Side: Remembering the Crew

• Focus on Loss and Safety
  • While the debate over “why” continues, both speakers emphasize the importance of remembering the lost crew and the regulatory changes enacted in their memory.
    • “I don’t think that’s valuable. I think 29 people lost their lives and we should remember them.” — Amy Bachary (19:25)

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Life Onboard: Passengers on the Fitzgerald

• Rare Glimpse Inside
  • Unique images reveal passenger quarters and a dining room, once used by company owners, business guests, or crew family members riding the “Queen of the Lakes.”
    • “State of the art cabins ... you could wine and dine the big, big wigs while you were at port unloading.” — Mark Sprang (34:26)
  • Until recently, it was possible to ride aboard Great Lakes freighters, a tradition now mostly ended after 9/11 and COVID-era changes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Power of Song
  “That line in the Lightfoot song ... ‘Lake Superior never gives up her dead.’ It’s not actually folklore.” — Mark Sprang (05:18)

• On Resilient Memory
  “It spread through popular culture like almost no other shipwreck has, maybe other than the Titanic.” — Mark Sprang (11:12)

• On the “Boat Nerd” Community
  “If you’re wrong they will let you know in various modes of politeness...” — Mark Sprang (09:45)

• On Regulatory Change
  “Regulations are written in blood, like, well, yeah, we should have done these before, but now that people died, we’re actually going to implement this.” — Mark Sprang (13:50)

• On Remembering the Human Cost
  “I don’t think that’s valuable. I think 29 people lost their lives and we should remember them.” — Amy Bachary (19:25)

• On Shipwreck Preservation
  “You can go into the lounge and there’s the piano still standing up, and, like, the dishes are still sitting there.” — Mark Sprang (24:01)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro & Listener Feedback: 00:00 – 04:10
  • Lindsay Graham addresses show critics and explains shipwreck selection.
• Why Lake Superior Is Unique: 05:18
  • Mark Sprang on the "never gives up her dead" lyric.
• Archivist's Background: 05:50
  • Mark Sprang describes his career and BGSU's collections.
• Shipping Enthusiasts & Community: 09:45
• Why the Fitzgerald? 10:52 – 13:37
• Regulatory Changes After the Sinking: 13:50
• Wreck Protection, Diving, and Memorial: 17:50 – 19:56
• Recurring Storms and Historical Perspective: 19:56 – 23:41
• Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation: 24:01 – 28:47
• Archival Material and Artifacts: 30:39
• Fitzgerald’s Passenger Cabins: 34:26

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Conclusion

This episode stands as a thoughtful tribute to the lost sailors of the Edmund Fitzgerald and an exploration of why their story endures. Drawing from deep historical collections, expert insight, and a respect both for the mystery and the lives lost, it reminds us that history is as much about memory and meaning as it is about facts.

For more images, film, or archival material on the Edmund Fitzgerald and Great Lakes shipping, visit:

• shiphistory.org/radio
• Bowling Green State University Great Lakes Collection
• SSHSA

Until next time: “Fair winds and following seas.”

Transcript

[History Daily Host]

There are more ways than ever to listen to History Daily ad free. Listen with Wondry plus in the Wondery app as a member of Noiser plus at noiser.com or in Apple Podcasts. Or you can get all of History Daily plus other fantastic history [e-mail]. If you will indulge me, I'm going to be a little petty running a this Day in History show as I have for years, it's still always a little shocking at the presumption of some of my listeners when it comes to topic selection. Some listeners feel compelled to tell me in comments, reviews and social media just how ignorant, misguided or inappropriate our topic selections are. How dare you not cover topic X today. They will scream, painfully unaware that we covered that event last year. If you it's unconscionable not to celebrate Y today when we have plans to cover Topic Y next year upon its 250th anniversary. No one wants to hear about Z when K is clearly more important, says someone who thinks only American history exists. I tell you, it's exhausting and it's disappointing. And it happened again recently, on November 10, when we did not cover the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on its 50th anniversary. But look, I understand the sinking of that ship is an event that people know and care about, made immortal by Gordon Lightfoot's song. But it's not the worst shipwreck in history. That's the MV Wilhelm Gustloff, which sank in the Baltic Sea on January 30, 1945, taking an estimated 9,000 passengers with it. It's not even the worst shipwreck in the Great Lakes. That's the SS Eastland, which sank on July 24, 1915, killing 844. Still, the 50th anniversary of a well known tragedy is something to mark, and we're going to do so on today's Saturday matinee with an episode from the podcast Ship History Radio from the Steamship Historical Society of America. Okay, Petty mode off. I hope you enjoy. While you're listening, be sure to search for and follow Ship History Radio. We put a link in the show notes to make it easy for you.

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[Mark Sprang]

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[Amy Bachary]

On November 10, 1975, 29 crew members were lost when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in a storm on Lake Superior. Today we remember them and reflect on the 50th anniversary of the tragedy. You're listening to Ship History Radio from the Steamship Historical Society of America. Through recording, preserving and educating, our mission is to share the impact of engine powered vessels, their crews and their passengers with future generations. My name is Amy Bachary and I am the Education Director. Today I'm joined by Mark Sprang, who is the Archivist for the Historical Collections of the Great Lakes at Bowling Green State University. We'll be talking about the Edmund Fitzgerald anniversary and why the specific shipwreck is so popular. We will discuss changes that followed the tragedy and the related materials in Mark's collections. We've just released a film version of this interview that features the primary sources discussed here. You can find it on our YouTube channel at the Handle Hiphistory There is.

[Mark Sprang]

That line in the Lightfoot song and it's a big quote of how Lake Superior never gives up her dead. It's not actually folklore. So because the water in Lake Superior is so cold and so many parts of it are so anoxic that the bacteria that would normally cause a body to bloat and float to the surface can't survive, so they don't Float to the surface like you would get in warmer waters. The lake, it is said, never gives up.

[Rakuten Advertiser]

Her dead.

[Mark Sprang]

When the skies of November turn gloomy.

[Amy Bachary]

Tell us a little bit about yourself first. A little bit maybe about your background in archives and how you got into the position you're in today.

[Mark Sprang]

My name is Mark Sprang. I'm an archivist at Bowling Green State University with our Great Lakes Historical Collections. Before that I worked for the state of South Carolina for a couple of years. Detroit Historical Society, Naval History and Heritage Command. I went to graduate school at University of Michigan where I already had the marine bug before that. But I wanted to work in collections specifically related to maritime history. I do just about anything related to the history, maritime history of the Great Lakes region. I do processing of collections. I do appraisals and donor relations. I do reference, lots of reference and research questions. Outreach, lots of assistance with publication for people doing broadcasts, documentaries, books, articles, interviews, even like presentations at local historical societies. So it keeps me very busy. Our collection founder was named Dr. Richard Wright. He did several seasons as a coal passer in the 1950s and then decided to go back to school to be a history professor. He wanted to teach and preserve Great Lakes maritime history because there weren't a lot of academics really doing that at the time. Got his master's and doctorate, both of them on Ohio specific shipping topics. Got a job here as a tenure track professor. He both was a teaching professor and he founded what became what is now called the center for Archival Collections here. But the Great Lakes collection, basically our scope is anything related to the maritime history of the whole region, including like the St. Lawrence Seaway. So that's a pretty big geographic area. Not compared to like the, not compared to like the SSH scope, which is like the oceans. We're our little inland seas here, but it's everything. There's obviously a massive photograph collection which is of course our most used resource. Mix of copies and originals from a lot of different shipyards and trade groups and things. A lot of manuscript collections related to shipbuilding companies, shipping companies, individual researchers and photographers. You know, researcher would donate their, their research product later. For example, logbook collection of local logbooks. Well, local to our region. Logbooks, some audio visual stuff, but not a ton. Although I'm getting, I'm getting a donor who's providing a ton of born digital photography and video of, of shipwrecks that he's discovered over the last 20 years with his friends. So that's really cool to see because it's like raw, raw video that's big. We have a large newspaper scrapbook collection. I mean a lot of newspapers are available online in different ways, but some still aren't. And these are just the collected marine related articles. And then we also have a really large collection of plans and blueprints for vessels built on the Great Lakes. Mainly for Great Lakes service, but somewhere for ocean service. Especially during both world wars. Sometimes it's people doing shipwreck research. For example, like we have the Edmund Fitzgerald's original builders plans as built in just north of us by Detroit.

[Amy Bachary]

That's very impressive. And I will say the SSH scope is massive. It's literally any engine powered vessel. You have way more material than we would on the Great Lakes. So that's why, you know, I wanted to chat with you because we do have a lot of members and followers on our social media channels and anytime we post anything Great Lakes related it is like boom. You know, there's just so many people interested in this topic and I found a lot of the presentations when we were at the Maritime Heritage Conference together fascinating on Great Lakes. So it's, it's a topic I think we need to, you know, make sure we're representing because we do have a lot of people interested.

[Mark Sprang]

The enthusiast community here. Well they would affectionately call themselves boat nerds because there is a nice, a great website called boatnerd.com and they have the boat Nerds of Facebook Facebook group mostly for current ships because you can use the free marine traffic app and you can see where any commercial ship is in the world at any given time. So someone will say, oh, it's going to be in Cleveland in an hour or so or it's going to be coming into Duluth at 4am I got to be there in the cold to take pictures of it. So it's a semi tight knit community just in terms of numbers compared to like you know, ocean by shipping. But I think because I think because the ships are always so close to shore the yeah, there's so many people doing great photography out there. Community is so well informed too. So if you're wrong they will let you know in various modes of politeness something about this region. I don't know why. I think because so much of the industry of the Rust belt was fueled by the shipping here. You know, the iron ore and coal for steel production in cars, etc. I think that's part of it too. It was much bigger part of helping the Midwest become the powerhouse it used to be.

[Amy Bachary]

The Edmund Fitzgerald story gets a lot of attention and I Think it gets a lot of attention because of sort of the mystery of why the ship went down. But do you have any other thoughts on why this particular shipwreck does get so much attention?

[Mark Sprang]

I mean, I know the song is a big part of it because that was the following year and it became sort of a smash hit. The ship was the pride of the American side, coming back from some mill in Wisconsin, as the big freighters go. It was bigger than most, with a crew and good captain, well seasoned. That it spread through popular culture like almost no other shipwreck has, maybe other than the Titanic, just because of its. The scale, but I think the recency bias too, because it was 1975 and that's not a time people would think about a shipwreck with all hands lost, especially for, you know, there's still sailors around. I mean, they're retired now, but they remember it. For a lot of them, it was their friends, they knew each other. And because the Great Lakes shipping community is such more tight knit in terms of numbers and number of sailors and things like that, I think it's just so. It had a much more personal impact. I think that's why. Because the community was so small. I mean, it was only, you know, a couple hundred to few hundred ships at most at the time. So losing a whole one with everybody was a big deal. The previous large shipwreck on The Lakes was 1966. The Daniel J. Morrell sank and lakes Lake Huron. But they know what caused that. And one person survived out of the whole crew in this case? Yeah, it was. They just disappeared. You know, no remains, no one floated up, no survivors. So I think that's probably the other part is the. The recency bias, the mystery of not really knowing what happened for sure. There's lots all these competing theories with various levels of credence to them, and then having a pop culture song written about it, which is not something that usually happens for a shipwreck in modern times. It was very common, you know, in the 19th, 18th, early 20th centuries to do that. But it tended to be more focused on that area. You know, the song was known by people from this is where the ship was based or where the captain was based or where it was built. So it just had a bunch of coincidental things to make it the big phenomenon that it is. The Fitzgerald gets a lot of attention in our region because seven out of the 29 crew were from the Toledo area, including the captain, who is literally on his last trip before retirement.

[Amy Bachary]

There was some changes made to regulations Though, after the sinking. Right. How would they even make those recommendations for changes if they can't accurately pinpoint what caused the sinking in the first place?

[Mark Sprang]

There's at least a few things. Few ships were already piloting the use of survival suits for the crew before that, but that. That became mandatory by 1980 or so. Loran Sea started to be required, and that became. That was surpassed by GPS later. That was a requirement. That was all the vessels were required to have depth finders, which it still blows my mind that the Fitzgerald did not have a mechanical depth finder. They were still using the manual line at 1975. And they have to get annual inspections by the Coast Guard, I believe. Also having to have emergency radio beacons that can be activated in an emergency so they can be located right away. There were some congressional panel recommendations and some other improvements from American Bureau of Shipping. Fortunately, there's always an upside to a shipwreck, for what it's worth. But it's sort of that quote about regulations are written in blood, like, well, yeah, we should have done these before, but now that people died, we're actually going to implement this. And a couple of years before, the Coast Guard had permitted lower freeboard and load line. So that means your vessel could sit, you know, a few feet lower in the water, but that means also if you're washed over, it's harder to recover. So those were rescinded as well, thankfully, because I don't know if that played a role or not, but I'm sure it didn't help that they were known for overloading. I know. One of the items I sent you is a loading log from a donor, a sailor who worked on the ship in 72, 73. But you can tell it was designed for this. But they kept breaking carrying records. And it's like, well, there's a point where you're carrying too much because it's, oh, if we get a few more hundred tons more on this trip, we'll make X dollars more. Even more confusing for me because the ship was operated by Columbia Transportation Ogle Bay Norton Company, but owned by Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance. So they operated several ships as an investment, but had an actual shipping line do the management and all that. Oh, hey. Welcome to gift wrapping.

[History Daily Host]

Whoa.

[Mark Sprang]

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[Amy Bachary]

Hey, can you wrap these, please?

[Mark Sprang]

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[Amy Bachary]

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[Mark Sprang]

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[Amy Bachary]

Well it's better than socks.

[Mark Sprang]

So I have to trade in my old phone right?

[Amy Bachary]

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[Historical Narrator]

Incredible.

[Amy Bachary]

In fact, wrap up my old phone too for my aunt Rosa.

[History Daily Host]

Forget that.

[Amy Bachary]

Aunt Liz will be jealous.

[Mark Sprang]

Sounds like my family drama. Oh I got it.

[Amy Bachary]

I'll give you it to my abuela. I'll take reindeer paper with hey where are you going?

[Mark Sprang]

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[History Daily Host]

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[Mark Sprang]

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[Amy Bachary]

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[Mark Sprang]

Yeah, it's for the reasons of it being a protected gravesite and it's just mostly just over the line into Canadian waters as well. So you're not even allowed to sonar scan it like a side scan. I mean it's deep, it's 500 foot. But in the 90s there was, there were a couple divers who were able to make it with the the special like pressure suits like you'd see in the abyss kind of. But yeah, it's I think just because of the recency and because so many people were around who were affected by it, they were able to press for that especially from the Province of Ontario government to be like no, you can't come here, you can't visit the site even just to do sonar like shipwreck searching in Ontario waters. You have to get government permission to do it in the US you just go. So yeah, it is very unusual that because it's the 50th anniversary and there's people who were like, we would love to just. We don't want to go down to it. We just want to scan it and see how. How it's deteriorating, but you can't even do that. I think enough people seem to be respecting it at this case because the last time anyone has been to the wreck is mid-90s. So it's been 30 years. So I've. I know a couple of people who got to go on a submersible down to it in the 90s, so they got to see it. So. But since then, people just want to know, is it. Is the, is the water pressure, is it crushing the wreck? How does it look? You know, they're not trying to look for remains or anything. It's just what is the status of the ship itself.

[Amy Bachary]

When people talk about this, everybody talks about. They just love to argue about why the ship went down. And I don't think that's valuable. I think 29 people lost their lives and we should remember them. And, you know, I like talking about sort of the changes that came after it to make sure that crew members are safe in the future. But it is just such a popular ship and shipwreck and, you know, so I think it's important to talk about.

[Mark Sprang]

But yeah, because that is. That was also. There were, you know, there was a. The Daniel J. Morrell sank in Lake Huron in 1966. There was a survivor, the Carl Bradley Sanken and Henry Steinbrenner both sank in Lake Michigan. One in 58 and one in 53. But there was always one or two people who made it. There was the big Armistice day storm of 1940 on the Great Lakes in which several ships were lost in Lake Michigan. Yeah, almost one day off from the day the Fitzgerald sank because it was November 11th versus November 10th. And it's like, yeah, every couple of decades we get an almost identical storm at an almost identical time of year. There was one from the 9th to the 13th of 1913 that was still the biggest known storm on the Great Lakes because 12 ships were lost, about 250 sailors lost and a bunch of ships damaged, and lots of power outages and things all over the region. So each time you see improvements in the weather forecasting because 1913 wireless communication is still super new. I mean, and only some lake ships and fleets were adopting it. It wasn't universal. So, I mean, the Titanic was the year before April of 1912, and it was still. That was still considered pretty new at that point. So the bombs high clones that beelines the Great Lakes always are either Alberta clippers or they're a low pressure system that gets over the Rockies, hits the panhandle of Oklahoma, coalesces and like beeline straight for us every time. They always hit a slightly different section of the lakes, but the same thing always happens. There was another one in the 90s like that. Yeah. And we can reconstruct the Fitzgerald storm because I believe that also in 1975 is when Noah launched their first GOES satellite. So their first official weather satellite that was sending back imagery from space. So we could actually see the images and you can actually, you have to dig a while, but you can find that sort of historical imagery on NOAA site, which is really, really cool that you can do that. But. So that's why it was so bad for the Fitzgerald, because reconstructing all the weather data and looking at it, they were in this little sort of oval of eastern Lake Superior where the wave height was the highest, the sustained winds were the highest, the precipitation was like, it was the worst possible situation because they were, because they had the whole length of Lake Superior was the fetch for the wind. Because when they left, after they left Duluth and they got the first, you know, weather advisories, the wind was from the north. So they hugged the north shore, which totally makes sense. That's what you do to shelter from the weather. But then it switched west, so you had the whole length that, I mean, you had 20 to 25 foot waves. Captain Cooper of the Anderson, who was miles behind the Fitzgerald, said, I think we've got 30 to 35ft going over our decks at some of these waves. So which isn't surprise, isn't surprising for the ocean, but that's how, how bad the lakes can get too. And the waves are closer together here because the. So you're getting hit by them more quickly in succession. We have logs from other. Not from the Fitzgerald, of course, because they're at the bottom, but from other ships that were out at the same time. So they're recording their weather data and what's happening. And even the western end of Lake Erie, when we were just getting brushed by a little, little arm of the storm, we were still getting 10 foot waves on the west end here. So that's how bad it was. So a lot of ships stayed in port at that time and others that were out in the storm. The Coast Guard said, hey, well, our Coast Guard cutter still it was being fitted in Duluth. So they're like, hey, can all these freighters can you guys go and look for them instead? Look for them for us, which they did.

[Amy Bachary]

Do you think there's any possibility that you could tell them that and go back there and do any searching?

[Mark Sprang]

I don't know.

[Historical Narrator]

Like you said to me, out there is tremendously large and if you want.

[Mark Sprang]

Me to, I can, but I'm not.

[Amy Bachary]

Going to be making any time. I'll be lucky to make two or.

[Mark Sprang]

Three miles an hour going out. It's still fascinating that there's like we. They were relying on civilians to do the search and rescue stuff, which you wouldn't think about. So, yeah, there's just so much related to it in terms of regulations. And of course there's the Lake Carriage Association. Quick plug for our collection because we have their historical records. They've been around since 1880, roughly. So they're basically the, the trade group that represents all the shipping companies on the lake. So I know one of the items I, I sent over to you is their, their president's protest against the Coast Guard's report. Because the Coast Guard is like, well, obviously it was these hatch clamps and they're like, no, there's no way. We've been using these for decades and haven't had any problems. There were a lot of them. There were about 60 per. I want to say 60 per hatch, I'm probably wrong, and 21 hatches. And they, you had to, you know, the deckhands had to do each one of those. So they wouldn't always do every single one or they would do it as on. As they were on the trip. But one or two of them being, you know, not all the way down on a. Out of 60 is not going to loosen the hatch enough to make a difference. You know, the captain had 40 years of experience, Captain McSorley, so he knew, I mean, he knew what he was doing. But they did interview prior captains for the Coast Guard port of Inquiry and stuff too. So it's interesting to get their perspectives on what happened. And surprisingly, the Wikipedia article, I don't always recommend Wikipedia as a source, but they actually do a good job. The whoever the authors have been, they don't take a side and they just present the major theories and like, here's the different ones and what they think happened because the Coast Guard had theirs and the NTSB had theirs. A book that came out late 90s 2000s by one of the. One of the guys at Great Lakes Engineering Works who designed it, did his own. There's another one just based. There's another one Done by a weather expert. And then you have more general ones. It's like any popular history topic. You have the entire spectrum of publication. So you have very serious, academically rigorous to sort of pop history type stuff. And they're not always differentiated between which is which. So. And you're right about. You mentioned the shipwreck preservation. So there's some great ones in all of the lakes, But Superior has the ones that are the best preserved. We are a diving mecca to an extent. But I think because of the water temperatures, people tend to. They love to do more shipwreck diving in, like, the Caribbean or the Mediterranean somewhere where it's warmer. Right. Because Lake Superior, even in the summer, is barely. Barely into the 60s, if that lake Erie, the visibility is too bad. But, you know, we have. I know in the lake system we have at least three or four schooners that sank in the 19th century where the masts are still standing. There's a bunch in Lake Superior where some of the paint's still on it. Intact windows. It depends on how they sank. Right. If they sank violently, it's all busted up, but some of them just went gently to the bottom. There was a yacht called the Goonilda that sank in the early 1900s. Great representation of rich people. Hubris, because, you know, they're. They came into the lakes from, like, New York City right on their yacht, and they're in Lake Superior. The guy's like, oh, I don't need a local pilot to make sure I know where stuff is, so I don't hit it. Of course, they ran aground on. Ran on a reef. And yes, there are reefs in. Not coral reefs, but we have reefs in the Great Lakes. You know, locals are like, well, you're gonna need two tugs to get you off properly. It's like, oh, I only need one. And of course, that didn't work. And so it just kind of did this, like, slid off and went to the bottom. But because it sank gently, everything's intact. Like, you can go into the lounge and there's the piano still standing up, and, like, the dishes are still sitting there. And the. The skylight's intact and the gilding is still on the bow. You know, it's. So it's considered sort of like one of the gold standards for shipwreck preservation, if I recall. I think it was Jacques Cousteau actually said that. He's like, this is one of the best preserved things I've ever seen before. At Raising Cane's, we're hyper focused on being the best at what we do and getting it right every time. Cook to order chicken fingers, cane sauce, crinkle cut fries, coleslaw, Texas toast, iced tea and lemonade. It's our one love. But is the hype real? Yeah, it's real good. Raising Cane's chicken fingers one love. Next time order with our app or online.

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[Amy Bachary]

I.com can we talk a bit about the materials that you have related to the Edmund Fitzgerald specifically?

[Mark Sprang]

Biggest thing is the original builders plans from Great Lakes Engineering Works. They only built two ships after The Fitzgerald before they closed in the early 60s. So it's a big deal. So we have pretty much a full set because not really anything was modified before it sank in 75. So over 8, 17, 18 years it didn't really go through that many that much change. Photograph collection, some of which are original, some are copies. There's kind of a conglomeration as many of our photo files are of course the newspaper collection. We have a couple of films of it. One is a promotional film done by Willis Jeep and the Toledo Port Authority together in like 1960. They're promoting the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and how great it's going to be for the Great Lakes region. And only kind of was.

[Historical Narrator]

Cargo of all descriptions long has been transported by water from one country to another. Today moving freight by ships to and from the United States is big business. And when we speak of foreign shipping we usually think of ports at New York, Baltimore, New Orleans or San Francisco. Our story starts at the Dwight D. Eisenhower Lock, one of the seven new locks in the St. Lawrence Seaway that permit larger ocean going vessels to reach Toledo. It is near Messina, New York. The longest freighter on the Great Lakes, the Edmund Fitzgerald also makes Toledo a regular port of call. The vessel is 729ft long and can carry more than 20,000 tons of iron ore. More than four and a half million tons of iron or have passed through the Toledo port in a single season.

[Mark Sprang]

It was known as the Toledo Express because Superior, Wisconsin to Toledo, Ohio was its most common route. So it did that hundreds and hundreds of times over its career. A few things we have copies of but they're not. There's many copies out there like the Coast Guard's report widely panned the National Transportation Safety Board's report. A little information on the recovery of the ship's bell. In the mid-1990s it was replaced with a. A new bell engraved with the crew members names. We have a couple of nice little taconite samples which is the basically pelletized iron that it would usually carry. Of course we have a copy of Gordon Lightfoot sheet music for the song and then some other material like the specifications. The. The first paper, the paper the designers presented at the Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers. Wow. Here's the design of our new ship because at the time of its launch it was what was called Queen of the Lakes which is the title given to the longest ship on the lakes generally. So it was only it wasn't that long before it was surpassed by Canadian ship by just A little bit. The current largest ship is 10, 13ft long. So it's stuck in the lakes. There's no way it can get out. So there's. Yeah, there's a lot related to that and the sort of machinery design and inspections and American Bureau of Shipping approvals and that sort of thing. So there's quite a bit of.

[Amy Bachary]

So you had sent a couple pictures that I found especially intriguing and they were of passenger accommodations and a passenger dining room. And I had never seen pictures of the interior of this ship at all and honestly didn't know that there would have been. I know that on, you know, most cargo vessels, especially ocean going cargo vessels, there would have been small accommodations for passengers and they would have carried, you know, 4 to 12 or something like that. But I had never really thought about that on the Great Lakes. And so when you sent these pictures, I was like, oh my gosh, that is so interesting. So I wonder if you can talk a little bit about that, how common it would have been for people to travel on a ship like the Edmund Fitzgerald.

[Mark Sprang]

So the flagships of a number of fleets usually had some sort of passenger quarters and like an owner's quarter slash lounge that they could use on a whim, basically. You know, if they have business interests at the other end of that ship's regular trip, they'll just. Sometimes they would just ride the boat instead. And you could still, until, especially until the COVID years, it was a lot easier. You could still get passenger passage on a number of the freighters on the Great Lakes. So you know, they'd have a special steward who just cater to you and your guests. And you know, it's the same thing. It's only a handful of people. Now you can only do it if it's like a raffle or something because I mean post 911 it was already starting to be restricted. But then the companies took advantage during the COVID years to like kind of permanently restrict passenger access. Yeah, in the Fashiro case they had sort of state of the art cabins. I mean the one picture you'll probably show of the guest stateroom you can kind of, you can actually kind of see the curve of the, the side of the cabin there. So you had nice pasture staterooms. They had a nice. They probably used the officer's mess, I would guess to eat in because it was fancier. You know, you could wine and dine the big, big wigs while you were, you were at port unloading, not loading, maybe loading too. But usually you were at a, at a, a big sort of gravity dock situation. It wouldn't have been as easy to do that. But a lot of times in the earlier years it was usually family members of especially of the captain, bring the wife and kids along for a trip or, you know, something along those lines. And of course, the more recent you get, the more difficult that was to do. Prior to the sort of standard Great Lakes freighter design, tons of the ships on the Great Lakes were sort of they were passenger and package freight. So you had the freight deck and you had a passenger deck on them. So that was more common. And then once trains and automobiles came along, that kind of really slowed it down. So the passenger trade on the lakes now is very low light.

[Amy Bachary]

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Ship History Radio and our interview with Mark sprang on the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. You can find images and links to the film and the historical collections of the Great Lakes at shiphistory.org radio. Learn more about our [e-mail] until next time, bear winds and following scenes.

[Mark Sprang]

Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect for Patty. That friend was Desiree. Until one day I texted her and.

[Amy Bachary]

She was not getting the text. So I went to Instagram. She has no Instagram and anymore. And Facebook. No Facebook anymore.

[Mark Sprang]

Desiree was gone. And there was one person who knew the answer. I am a spiritual person, a magical person, a witch. A gorgeous Brazilian influencer called Kat Torres, but who was hiding a secret from Wondery. Based on my smash hit podcast from Brazil comes a new series, Don't Cross Cat, about a search that led me to a mystery in a Texas suburb.

[Amy Bachary]

I'm calling to check on the two missing Brazilian girls.

[Mark Sprang]

Maybe get some undercover crew there.

[Amy Bachary]

The family are freaking out. They are lost.

[Mark Sprang]

I'm Chico Felitti. You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.