The Great Lakes Can Be Treacherous

When I was in my twenties I lived in on the shores of Lake Michigan.

It makes up part of the world’s largest freshwater system. Included are the five Great Lakes — Michigan, Superior, Huron, Erie, and Ontario, as well as various tributaries. In fact, more than 20% of the world’s freshwater is in the Great Lakes alone.

Of these, Lake Superior is the largest. It is, in fact, the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area.

Its Ojibwe name is Gichi-gami, which means big water. It’s as large as the country of Austria and holds enough water to cover both North and South America to a depth of a foot (30.5cm).

It also produces some terrifying waves.

I remember when I lived in Michigan, watching the tall waves in winter. They created ice sculptures in the frigid weather as subsequent waves froze over prior ones.

They’ve been recorded as high as 23 feet.

Superior’s waves are taller — 8.7 meters (28.5 feet) in a typical storm but they can get as high as 33 feet high — as tall as a 4 story building.

The Great Lakes provide important trade corridors. Its waterways carry cargo from Duluth, Minnesota on Lake Superior at one end to the St. Lawrence Seaway in Canada at the other, and more than 110 commercial ports in between.

Obviously this is an important transportation network.

Source: https://clearseas.org/insights/marine-shipping-in-the-great-lakes-what-you-need-to-know/

Unfortunately, there have been many shipwrecks on the Lakes over the years. They are particularly likely to occur in November, the season of powerful storms in the area.

One such wreck was immortalized by the Gordon Lightfoot song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. This was a real incident that occurred on November 10, 1975. The ship was a cargo vessel hauling taconite pellets (a type of iron ore) from mines in Duluth to iron works in Detroit and Toledo.

Twenty nine men were lost.

Their bodies were never recovered, though the ship’s 200 lb. bronze bell was recovered on July 4, 1995. Several groups were involved in this recovery:the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, National Geographic Society, Canadian Navy, Sony Corporation, and Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians. The bell is now on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point as a memorial to her lost crew.

The ship sunk only 17 miles from the safe harbor of Whitefish Bay. The entire crew perished when the ship sank. Later when the wreck was found, it was discovered that the ship had broken in two. It still sits on the bottom of Lake Superior at 530 feet deep.

To learn more about the incident, this link is full of a lot of interesting information including blueprints of the vessel as well as further links.

The sinking led to changes in Great Lakes shipping regulations and practices, such as mandatory survival suits, increased freeboard (the distance from the water level to the upper deck), and more frequent vessel inspections.

It also inspired the deeply moving song by Gordon Lightfoot:

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This post was previously published on Shefali O’Hara’s blog.

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