Losing Gordon Lightfoot this year really brought this story back to our thoughts. In a somewhat eerie sidenote, the Arthur M Anderson (the ship that accompanied the Fitz on it's last trip), is still being used on the Great Lakes and spends winter layup in Toledo.
Losing Gordon Lightfoot this year really brought this story back to our thoughts. In a somewhat eerie sidenote, the Arthur M Anderson (the ship that accompanied the Fitz on it's last trip), is still being used on the Great Lakes and spends winter layup in Toledo.
With the lack of salt water, lakers can be in service well over 50 years with good maintenance. Even over that if more or less jump boats....Toledo to Detroit, Toledo to Lorain.
Not every freight haul is a full load from Duluth to Buffalo.
Yep, those ships are workhorses that stand the test of time. The Arthur M Anderson was launched in 1952. The first new lake freighter in 35 years set sail earlier this year.
Most people don't understand the scale and scope of Lake Superior.
Disregarding the other 4 Great Lakes, Lake Superior is a freshwater inland sea, in and of itself. It influences its own weather. It's just that massive.
It is said that the Edmund Fitzgerald encountered storm-fed hurricane-force winds, and waves of 35 ft!
35-ft waves. That massive man-made structure with tons upon tons of ore in its hold, tossed like a toy, and broken in half. I have a healthy, active (and fairly cinematic) imagination, but there is simply no way I can envision what that day must have been like for those 29.
The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald should remind us all of just how small we really are. Ma Nature is no respecter of Man, or of our designs.
There ain't, in my opinion, many things in this world better than being at sea in rough water to make you appreciate the power of the sea and the fact that she will take what she wants. When the ship is rolling enough that you're walking on bulkheads, or if you're on deck and have to lo UP at the water outside the ship, it's fun as anything, but very sobering, too, because you know that tiny steel box you're riding in is your entire lifeline. If it goes down, or you go over, you're just... gone.
I took a 45-minute ferry ride to a place called Pictou Island a couple of weeks ago, for a series of newspaper articles I’m doin about Island life
The Island has 30 year-round residents but at one time it had about 200. All of them use solar and generator power these days.
The ferry is actually a converted fishing boat, a 45-footer. The Northumberland Strait - which contains Great Whites, by the way, even this time of year - was angry that morning and the boat was rocking and rolling pretty good, so I just grabbed on to a railing inside the cabin and held on.
The captain and the deckhand weren’t worried, so I wasn’t, but being a land-lubber I could really feel the power of the ocean. Unforgiving, unrelenting.