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These Men dove to the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck decades ago. Their stories
- brudgers 1y ago[culturally related] Gordon Lightfoot, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuzTkGyxkYI
- randomtoast 11mo agoThe wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is located at a depth of 530 feet (162 meters) below the surface of Lake Superior. That's an extremely risky technical deep dive. There were probably more people in space than non-saturation diving at this depth.
- blutack 11mo agoPresumably also open circuit not rebreather given this was mid 90s. It's a pity the article doesn't detail their dive plan, the gas quantities must have been staggering. Nowadays this type of diving would be done using an eCCR (and backup open circuit), where some software on a microcontroller controls the amount of oxygen in a breathing loop. A scrubber (hopefully) removes the CO2. Changing the gas mixture as you go is required to reach these sorts of depths because oxygen becomes toxic at pressure, and gas density itself can cause issues with breathing.
- mi100hael 11mo agoThere's more detail on the dive in this account: https://cambrianfoundation.org/2000/02/28/1995-expedition/ https://cambrianfoundation.org/2000/02/28/1995-expedition/
- eszed 11mo agoThis one says twelve minutes of exploration at the bottom.
- nradov 11mo agoRight, Terrence Tysall and Mike Zlatopolsky (Zee) dove the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1995 using open circuit gear. This article by Tysall gives some details of their dive plan. https://advanceddivermagazine.com/articles/fitz/fitz.html https://advanceddivermagazine.com/articles/fitz/fitz.html
- danielbln 11mo agoGood lord, ascent must've taken hours at that depth. I felt daring going down 40 meters in Belize, 164 in pitch black ice cold water, trimix and hours of deco gass on the way up? No thanks.
- sandworm101 11mo ago500-foot waters but the ship was 700+ long. The size of cargo ships boggles the mind. The largest space rockets are toys compared to any modern cargo ship.
- shagie 11mo agoThe relevant xkcd - https://xkcd.com/1040/ https://xkcd.com/1040/ (there's a large version of it too) There's a mentioned fun fact that is what reminded me of this: The Edmund Fitzgerald, the Kursk, and the Lusitania all sank in water shallower than they were long. Elsecomment there was a mention of diving, there are lines for diving records too.
- emptybits 11mo agoAnd thank you for this tidbit, down there at the bottom of the Marianas Trench: "MYSTERIOUS DOOR WHICH JAMES CAMERON BUILT HIS SUB TO REACH AND OPEN. HE WILL NOT SAY WHAT HE FOUND WITHIN." o_O
- tonyvince7 11mo agoThe 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 Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms When they left fully loaded for Cleveland And later that night when the ship's bell rang Could it be the north wind they'd been feeling? The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound And a wave broke over the railing And every man knew, as the captain did too 'Twas the witch of November come stealing The dawn came late, and the breakfast had to wait When the gales of November came slashin' When afternoon came, it was freezin' rain In the face of a hurricane west wind When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin' "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya" At seven p.m., a main hatchway caved in, he said "Fellas, it's been good to know ya" The captain wired in he had water comin' in And the good ship and crew was in peril And later that night when his lights went outta sight Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald -- Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
- LeifCarrotson 11mo agoIt's poetry, not code, but I've formatted it as code for line breaks: The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead When the skies of November turn gloomy With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed When the gales of November came early 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 Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms When they left fully loaded for Cleveland And later that night when the ship's bell rang Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'? The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound And a wave broke over the railin' And every man knew, as the captain did too 'Twas the witch of November come stealin' The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait When the gales of November came slashin' When afternoon came it was freezin' rain In the face of a hurricane west wind When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin' "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya" At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in, he said "Fellas, it's been good to know ya" The captain wired in he had water comin' in And the good ship and crew was in peril And later that night when his lights went outta sight Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Does anyone know where the love of God goes When the waves turn the minutes to hours? The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her They might have split up or they might have capsized They may have broke deep and took water And all that remains is the faces and the names Of the wives and the sons and the daughters Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings In the rooms of her ice-water mansion Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams The islands and bays are for sportsmen And farther below Lake Ontario Takes in what Lake Erie can send her And the iron boats go as the mariners all know With the gales of November remembered In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral The church bell chimed till it rang twenty-nine times For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee Superior, they said, never gives up her dead When the gales of November come early
- jacquesm 11mo agoI lived on an Island in Lake Huron for about 5 years and went visiting the Lake Superior area many times. To call it a lake does not really do it justice: it's an inland sea, and a most impressive one. I've seen the lake from the shore in more than one storm and it didn't look any different than the ocean, except that it seemed in many ways more violent. I asked the locals about it and they said that the lake is more violent than the sea in places but there wasn't any coherent explanation, it could be the steep rise of what eventually becomes the shoreline rather than the much more gradual one the ocean usually has. There are also much lower periodicity waves in such constrained bodies called 'seiches': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seiche There is a museum dedicated to the wrecks, well worth visiting, but do bring earplugs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Shipwreck_Museum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Shipwreck_Museum
- mallomarmeasle 11mo agoThanks for that, super interesting about sieches. A standing wave not directly from the moon or waves.From the wiki: Lake seiches can occur very quickly: on July 13, 1995, a large seiche on Lake Superior caused the water level to fall and then rise again by one metre (three feet) within fifteen minutes, leaving some boats hanging from the docks on their mooring lines when the water retreated
- trillic 11mo agoIn Chicago I’ve observed and measured a consistent 0.8kn (1.48 km/hr) current set flowing north after a long week of consistent breezes out of the north. The water just piles up in the shallow end of the lake and when the breeze dies that water needs to go somewhere. Lake Michigan has the least turnover of all the lakes and when thinking about predicting current on it it’s good to imagine a 300 mile long bathtub.
- jacquesm 11mo ago> it’s good to imagine a 300 mile long bathtub Harrods was destroyed by the Vogons. Hilarious comment, thank you. Now I will have to go and see every bathtub from now on as a tiny Lake Michigan...
- shagie 11mo agoOn Sunday, there was a service commemorating its sinking - "Old Mariners' Church in Detroit rings fabled bell to mark 50 years since Edmund Fitzgerald sinking " https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2025/11/09/old-mariners-church-rings-fabled-bell-to-mark-50-years-since-edmund-fitzgerald-sinking/87148287007/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/20...
- sq_ 11mo agoI feel for the families with their reactions to people diving to the wreck, especially the fear that it could become a tourist attraction, but people being so upset at the various submersible and diving teams is curious to me. Of course, you can't know the true intentions of the teams, but they all seem to have gone down there with great respect for the ship as a gravesite.
- RA_Fisher 11mo ago“We’re holding our own” - Captain McSorley., 7:10pm, 5 minutes before contact was reported lost. Seemingly more a story of patriarchal arrogance than force of nature.
- cassepipe 11mo agoThat may be the case but that seems unfair from that statement alone. It could just as well be some kind of way to keep panic at bay at a time where you need all your wits. Couldn't that lead you to underestimate the danger you are in ? And that's not even accounting interpretation errors under stress and unknown unknowns.
- RA_Fisher 11mo ago> On the fateful evening of November 10, 1975, McSorley reported he had never seen bigger seas in his life.[70] Paquette, captain of Wilfred Sykes, out in the same storm, said, "I'll tell anyone that it was a monster sea washing solid water over the deck of every vessel out there."[172] The USCG did not broadcast that all ships should seek safe anchorage until after 3:35 p.m. on November 10, many hours after the weather was upgraded from a gale to a storm.[55] McSorley was known as a "heavy weather captain"[173] who, according to George Burgner, "'beat hell' out of the Fitzgerald and 'very seldom ever hauled up for weather'".[140] Paquette held the opinion that negligence caused Edmund Fitzgerald to founder. He said, "in my opinion, all the subsequent events arose because (McSorley) kept pushing that ship and didn't have enough training in weather forecasting to use common sense and pick a route out of the worst of the wind and seas." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald
- cassepipe 11mo agoYou do make a good case for your claim ! You swayed me. Masculine recklessness-as-toughness, also known as patriarchal arrogance, seems indeed to have sunk that ship.
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- atourgates 11mo agoThis was interesting: > Still, Mixter and the team were labeled "ghouls and pirates," and "the state of Michigan actually passed a law against recording bodies on shipwrecks that are less than 50 years old," he said. Assumedly, as of today, the Edmund Fitzgerald has aged out of that law? The latest episode of the NYTimes book review podcast [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sinking-of-the-edmund-fitzgerald-50-years-later/id120315179?i=1000735760916 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sinking-of-the-edm...] is a really interesting interview with John U. Bacon who just wrote a book on the Edmund Fitzgerald, called The Gales of November. Quite interesting if, like me, you didn't know anything about the historical event beyond the song.