Hard To Believe 36 Years Has Passed

[Possum]

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald - YouTube

[macnkat]

Funny how some things touch folks differently...I didn't even know there was a wreck until the song came out.

[JohnRR]

Had to think about that today with the first snow of the season hitting the area.

[SRT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by JohnRR Had to think about that today with the first snow of the season hitting the area.

Living in the Duluth, MN area, we're aware of the Fitzgerald. Plus we now have snow flakes in the air (32° F right now). There have been gale warnings already for areas of Lake Superior.

[w6pea]

Quote:

Originally Posted by macnkat Funny how some things touch folks differently...I didn't even know there was a wreck until the song came out.

X2
Yes it is hard to believe.....time sure goes by fast doesn't it !


If We Can't Haul It...You Don't Need It ! Motor-T

[HeapBigEngin]

For what it's worth....

In October, 1968, my wife and I left the Detroit area and went up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to see the fall colors. That Saturday morning, my wife was not feeling too well...so I left our motel in Sault St. Marie and drove over to the Soo Locks to see what I could see. It was drizzling that morning, and I was one of a very few folks watching the shipping activity in the Locks. I took a few pictures in the rain and hustled back to the motel. Upon returning home, I had the pitures developed and, like many of us, put them away for future "reference".

In 2004 in preparation for our move to another state, I was organizing many things, including old pictures I had taken. I started looking at all of the pictures I had taken on the "color tour" in 1968. Very cool memories. And then I saw it. A picture of the Edmund Fitgerald in the Locks on that drizzly October morning in 1968. A cold feeling hard to describe immediately came over me. Wow! I recall being right next to the ship as it sat in the locks that morning and exchanging small talk briefly with a couple of crew members on deck. To think that 7 years after I snapped those pictures by mere coincidence that great vessel and its crew would meet its fate in such a horrible way....well, it just blows my mind. And every time I hear Gordon Lightfoot's tributary song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", I feel a knot in my stomach for those poor guys. I still have those pictures....and I cherish them to this day.

May they rest in peace....

[Possum]

When the Fitzgerald went down I lived a few miles from the coast of Whitefish Bay west of Sault Ste Marie Ontario. Lost part of the roof of our 100 year old house during that storm. My brothers brother in law lived in Goulais Bay north of Sault Ste Marie and he told me a few days later that the whole bay was full of huge lake freighters hiding behind the big island at the mouth of the bay.

A friend lied a couple of miles up the Goulais River from Goulais Bay, which would make him about 8 miles from Superior, and he had white caps and huge waves battering his run-a-bout that was tied to his dock. He's lived on the river his whole life and has never seen the likes of that storm before or since.