gCaptain.com

The NYTimes reports:

 The fever is contagious. Gold fever, that is.

Symptoms? Unwavering optimism.

”Today’s the day,” legendary treasure hunter Mel Fisher would say as he set out to sea each summer in search of the ocean’s secrets. Before his death in 1998, he found more than $1 billion worth of treasure, including gold and silver bars, emeralds, coins and artifacts.

As salvage season begins — roughly from May to August when the seas are calmer — a select few carry on Fisher’s work up and down Florida’s coasts, hoping to hit the mother lode.

Similar salvage operations take place up and down the East Coast during the summer months, through the Carolinas, into Virginia and up through New England, where Revolutionary War-era shipwrecks have been discovered.

Florida is said to have more treasure-laden shipwrecks than any other state, largely because it’s near the Gulf Stream. Spanish fleets would load their vessels with treasure from South America and gather the galleons in Havana. The ships would then head north, using the Gulf Stream to propel them back toward Europe. Continue Reading…

 

Model by Wood Wings

50 Years ago today the most infamous vessel of the Great Lakes was launched. Farlane writes:

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon on June 7th, 1958, as more than 10,000 people lined the banks of the Detroit River. They had come to witness the launching of Hull 301 at the Great Lakes Engineering Works of River Rouge, Michigan. Mrs. Edmund Fitzgerald, wife of the president of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company for which the ship was named, christened the brand new ship and at 12:34 p.m. the 729 ft. “Edmund Fitzgerald” slid gracefully into the basin amid cheers, salutes, and well wishers.

Professional Mariner gives us a bit more insight:

In 1958, when it was launched, the 13,632-ton, 729-foot-long ship was the largest carrier on the Great Lakes and remained so until 1971. In 1964 it became the first ship on the Great Lakes to carry more than one million tons of ore through the Soo Locks.

Nov. 9, 1975 started as a crisp, calm, sunny day along the U.S.-Canadian border. On that day Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the largest freighters on the Great Lakes, left Superior, Wis., to deliver iron ore pellets to Zug Island in Detroit. It carried a crew of 29 men. Luck was not with the ship or the crew. They would soon be lying at the bottom of Lake Superior.

Shortly after leaving Superior on what would be its last voyage, Fitzgerald made contact with Arthur M. Anderson, bound on a similar route for Gary, Ind. The two freighter captains discussed a storm that had brewed the night before in the Plains and proceeded northward toward the Great Lakes. According to the National Weather Service, it appeared to be a “typical November storm.”

At 1900 the Weather Service issued a gale warning for Lake Superior. The Weather Service predicted east to northeasterly winds during the night, shifting to northwest to north by the next afternoon. At approximately 2240, the Weather Service revised its forecast for eastern Lake Superior to easterly winds becoming southeasterly the morning of Nov. 10. At about 0200 on the 10th, the Weather Service upgraded the gale warning to a storm warning.

Continue Reading…

NOAA has a website dedicated to the weather side of this memorable story which can be found HERE.

If you are in Detroit tomorrow June 7th be sure to attend one of the memorial events listed HERE and for event listings throughout the Great Lakes click HERE. Otherwise you can watch the live webcast HERE.

Theories

Edmund Fitzgerald Online has the Top Ten theories about the sinking:

1. Bottoming out/grounding. This could have very well happened near Six Fathom Shoal.

2. Faulty hatch covers

3. Another theory, which is very disliked by many Fitz enthusiasts, is that the men may not have properly fastened the series of clamps that were used to hold down all of the the hatches, and therefore water seeped in.

4. Previous structural damage may have caused the sinking.

5. Huge waves swamped the ship and it sank. Many people call these huge waves (so big they are detected by radar) the Three Sisters.

6. Lack of proper repair from previous damage may have played a role

7. A huge wave rode up between two swells and the ship snapped in half.

8. Human error

9. A wave engulfed the ship, pushing the front of the ship underwater. The ship then hit ground, and broke in two…this may be why the two portions of the ship are so close.

10. Waves lifted both ends of the ship (bow and stern), but the center of the ship containing the cargo was not held by a wave, so the overload forced the center downward, sinking and/or breaking the ship in two.

For more official (and research?) theories be sure to read the offical NTSB investigation report.

Commemorative Print

(Purchase Info)

Launching the Edmund Fitzgerald

.

Video Dedication

.

Related Links

• Books, Movies and Music.
• Inspired Art
• BoatNerd - An Amazing Great Lakes Maritime Site
• Raina Clark - Great Lakes Maritime Blog and Podcast

Our favorite Picture Blog Dark Roasted Blend is running  a series titled: Shipwrecks & Sea Disasters

Don’t miss it.  Here are but a few of their offerings:

gCaptain also has a more comprehensive post of incident photos in the archives, click HERE to view it.

___________________________

This post was written by Richard Rodriguez, Rescue Tug Captain, and US Coast Guard approved instructor for License Training. You can read more of his articles at the BitterEnd of the net.

David Mearns, shipwreck hunter at the Maritime Museum in Fremantle talking about the finding of HMAS Sydney. Picture: Colin Murty

Today’s The Australian has an article featuring David Mearns. Here’s an excerpt: [Continue Reading →]

The above photo was taken by Mark Zanzig during a flight over the Nambia desert. Mark Writes;

Another photo of the Edward Bohlen, this time providing a view on the full body of the ship. The wreck from 1909 now lies far inland from the beach, which makes you wonder how it actually got there?

Well we are sure there’s an interesting incident story behind this wreckage and offer a free gCaptain t-shirt to the reader that best enlightens us with the facts. Also check out the full color photo of the Edward Bohlen HERE.

Pakistan’s Daily Times has the scoop on China’s newest museum;

China is building a giant underwater museum to preserve and exhibit an ancient shipwreck. The museum, the first of its kind in the world, is to contain a sunken ship more than 800 years old and its treasures.

Archaeologists say the ship is China’s most exciting underwater excavation. Named the Southern Sea Number One, it lies under 24 metres of water and two metres of sand and soil.

Archaeologists took more than 6,000 treasures from one small room on the ship in 2002. The Guangdong provincial government has now allocated £10 million to building a five hall underwater museum to preserve the wreck.

Expert’s say, “Since the ship and its treasures have become accustomed to being underwater, it’s better to keep them there.” Read More…

Interested in Underwater Museums? Take a look at Divester’s post; “The World’s Coolest Underwater Museums”
Links:

• Official Underwater Museum Page
• The Guangzhou Salvage Bureau
• Watching The Water Rise - China’s Three Gorges Dam