Fall has long been the killing season for mariners. Owners and captains taking one more run before laying up till spring, tired vessels and crew worn from a long shipping season, and unpredictable weather (like the nor’easter that just buried the east coast) have conspired to wreck many vessels over the years. Greed, exhaustion and weather–the unholy trinity of autumnal wrecks.
Nowhere is this phenomenon more pronounced than on the North American Great Lakes. By one account, “a third of all the storm-related shipwrecks on the lakes have occurred during the eleventh month.” And no wreck is more emblematic of Great Lakes shipwrecks, at least in the public’s eye, than the Edmund Fitzgerald. November 10 will be the 36th anniversary of the Fitzgerald‘s wrecking in Lake Superior during a massive November gale. In honor of that anniversary, Michigan’s Saginaw Valley State University will be showing the documentary “Edmund Fitzgerald Investigations” by documentary filmmaker Ric Mixter (enjoy the promotion video above).
According to the Midland Daily News, the film is:
The culmination of 16 years of research and features footage of the construction near Detroit (including interviews with workers who put the freighter together) as well as video and interviews with expedition leaders who dove to investigate the shipwreck in 1994; this expedition was the first to find the remains of the 29 crew members.
Sounds like quite the evening!
Ships on the Shore 