Gordon Lightfoot’s saddest song played on the radio this AM while I was out collecting supplies necessary for a proper Sunday - the newspapers, etc. Not a bad tune, actually, and I prolonged my errands to hear it in its entirety.
The question I have is as follows: what was the big deal about the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald?
At 29, the death toll was notable but, as far as the great disasters go, relatively inconspicuous … was it the suddenness of the sinking? The fact they (allegedly) vanished without a trace? The fact that it took place on Lake Superior?
Please explain why the Edmund Fitzgerald quite literally became the stuff of song and story and passed into folkie legend.
Your right. In a history of Great Lakes ship wrecks the E.F. would likely take up very few pages. Yet as far as Lightfoot is concerned the wreck was more topical or timely than it was historical. The song came out the year after the wreck. Perhaps Lightfoot was trying to remind people that folk songs are a form of contemporary history when they are written. The best songs about the Civil War were written during the Civil War. Folk songs about working on the railroad were written by folks who worked on the railroad. A modern folk song writer should probably also write about what’s happening around him and not about an era of which he has no personal experience.
I can help you out with little bits of this. I used to sing at Mariner’s Church of Detroit, MI, which is mentioned in the song:
To this day they still hold an annual memorial service in honor of the wreck. Family members of the lost crew, sailors, merchant marines, etc. all turn out in huge numbers. Gordon Lightfoot showed up last year (or was it the year before last?). My girlfriend’s uncle knew someone who went down on the ship.
Anyway, there has always been controversy over the cause of the sinking, and I think that plays a big part in the wreck’s infamy. Some think it sank because faulty hatches on the cargo sections failed and allowed the ship to take on water. Others think that ballast tanks ruptured and that the ship flooded from the bottom up. There is also a theory that the cargo of iron ore shifted violently during the storm and overstressed the cargo hold causing a rupture. But that isn’t taken as seriously, I don’t think.
The site of the wreckage is well documented. It is in just over 500 feet of water at the bottom of Lake Superior, and the ship itself is broken into two large pieces (split roughly amidships). As far as I know, the only piece of the ship ever recovered was its bell, which is now on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.
Some websites you can look at for info: http://www.oakland.edu/boatnerd/efitz/http://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/
Sorry if this is incoherent…(yawn)
I think that it illustarates the power of art - if Lightfoot hadn’t written such a great, sad song, few people would know about the Edmund Fitzgerald, outside of the communities that were directly affected by its loss.
Also I think it was the location. Most people think the Great Lakes as small and placid but they are capable of generating monstrous weather and the fact that a lake could sink an 800’ freighter in 1975 was a shock to many. As a curiosity last Memorial Day a few of us were out on our 20’ day cruiser. In the distance we saw a freighter about seven miles away. We slowly closed and I was mildly surprised and touched to see it was the Arthur M. Anderson. It was colorfully painted and we did a slow circle around her. I was thinking of her history and the fact that 25 years ago she was plowing through the swells only a few miles astern of the Edmund Fitzgerald and, although have always been interested in the epic, I now felt a real connection to it. As a further curiosity I had never seen Lake Erie so calm as it was that night. What a contrast to that November night. To me the Fitzgerald still lives through the Anderson; the last to see and hear her.
I think it is compelling because shipwrecks are fascinating and horrible all at once. We imagine ourselves in the same situation and wonder: What would it be like to know we were going to die today? Not in a split second, like someone in a car crash, but soon. I was horrified to see Cameron’s “Titanic” account to realize that a lot of people survived the sinking of the ship, only to freeze to death in the water. Yikes.
Somewhat off-topic -but interesting nonetheless is the fact that the song’s melody is not original - Lightfoot applied the true-to-life, folksong-ish words to an exisiting melody from an Irish folk tune with the chorus - “Oh, how I wish I was back home in Derry”. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes - he actually wrote to someone overseas who had a hand in the original melody requesting permission etc etc. Imagine the surprise when it became something of a novelty hit in the seventies! This may shed some light(no pun intended)upon the thought that he was introducing the folk tradition into the Great Lakes area. You may want to look into to the late great Stan Rogers work if you fond of these type of songs. He was the master…
I took a look at Gordon Lightfoot’s own comments in the book that came with the boxed set. He said, “I thought I had another shipwreck song in me after having done ‘The Ballad of The Yarmouth Castle’ years before. … It’s been an interesting and educational experience, for sure.”
He went on to say that the survivors have functions periodically, which he attends when he can.
I watched a Discovery channel show about the EF a few months ago. A couple of interesting points from the show were: the EF was something of a “Titanic” of the Great Lakes, very large, modern and thought to be unsinkable. Also, when the ship was first launched, there was a mishap of sorts, the ship was on a drydock and was to slide down sideways into the water. The ship hung up at first and then suddenly slid very quickly causing a big wave to crash directly across the dock. At least 1 person was killed.
Glad to see some else around here that likes Stan Rogers, brother of Garnet Rogers. I listen to his songs a lot, to bad he died in a plane fire 06/02/83. His great songs are still around though.
His “Three Fischers” is a great fishing tradgety ballad. His songs have a lot of emotional content.
It’s a peom by Charles Kingsley.
Chorus:
For men must work and women must weep
Though storms be sudden and the waters be deep
And the harbour bar be moaning
It’s probably because the E.F. was the biggest ship to be sunk by bad weather in the Great Lakes. Others, with more people and bigger capacity were likey sunk in wartime, but that’s different. This is an “act of God”.
Still, I must wonder why he didn’t write a sad tune to commemorate the sinking of the river cruise ship Victoria back in the 1880’s. Over a hundred dead, on a sedate Thames river mere yards from shore! Could be because London, Canada, isn’t big enough to warrant fame…
I think that there a a couple of aspects of the EF story that make this tragedy especially, er, tragic.:
IIRC, the EF was only about 15 minutes away from safety (I think the song makes a point of this).
Not one body was ever recoverd. The song points out that there’s a Native American proverb that Lake Erie (or whatever the tribes up there called it) never gives up her dead.
Actually, it was 15 miles. I don’t know how fast the EF steamed, but at 15 knots it would have been an hour from safety. An hour or two still isn’t very long.
“I must leave this planet, if only for an hour.” – Antoine de St. Exupéry
IIRC, the last thing heard from the ship was the captain saying “we’re holding our own”. It was never heard from again and, as someone else said, the ship was basically snapped in half.
I think Cactus Rose hit it. This was the last major shipping disaster on the Great Lakes. In fact, I can’t think of a similar U.S. shipping disaster anywhere of this magnitude over the past 40 years or so - at least one where the ship sank and the crew was truly lost.
If you analyze Lightfoot’s song from a critical standpoint, it’s very simplistic and repetitive. Its power and endurance comes from the emotion he is able to elicit within that simple framework. He really humanizes the tragedy.
The part about the cook? Gets me every time.
“Nothing is so firmly believed as what is least known” - Michel Gyquem de Montaigne
Actually, it’s Lake Superior, or, as the song has it…
“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down 'bout the big lake they call Gitche-goome. The big lake, they said, never gives up her dead when the gales of November come early.”
Later in the song this verse is repeated, but instead of “the big lake”, the word “Superior” is used.
What does Lightfoot mean when his lyrics speak of the speculation behind how it sunk: “They may have split up, or they may have capsized; they may have broke deep and took water”.
What does the last phrase mean, “break deep and take water” as opposed to the prior “splitting up”?
You gotta admit, the song is very poignant and reminds us of the fury of Mother Nature. (Yes, you could argue that he could have picked any shipwreck, but he leaves that up to YOU to write your own poignant lyrics and make it into a hit song!)
“They’re coming to take me away ha-ha, ho-ho, hee-hee, to the funny farm where life is beautiful all the time… :)” - Napoleon IV
It’s a reference to the fact that they had no idea (when Lightfoot wrote the song) what had caused the sinking. (Now they have lots of ideas–they just have no idea which, if any, are correct.)
Split up – did the ship get caught lengthwise across a great wave trough and simply break to two?
Capsize – did the Fitz take on so much water through its damaged hatch (or simply get caught crosswise by the massive roller wave that shook up the Anderson) and caspsize?
Broke deep (I thought it was “dove deep”) – did the ship get its bow caught under a large wave while its screw simply pushed it on down like a submarine?
The fact that the ship is in two pieces does not automatically answer the question. Ships are designed to sit keel-down in water. Once a ship has begun to sink, all bets are off regarding structural integrity and it can break up under a lot of different conditions. In addition, a Great Lakes freighter has a much smaller cross-section than any other large freighter in the world. This allows it to carry great loads in narrow/shallow rivers, but it does not make it easier to keep its keel intact.
I believe ‘breaking deep’ means that as it is going over large swells, the bow may actually slam down under the water. If hatches are open, the ship can then take on water. If it does this repeatedly during the storm, then maybe it could take on enough to cause it to flounder and sink.