It was November 1975, and Bruce Hudson was ready for adventure. Freshly 22 years old with wide eyes and a youthful mop of brown hair, Hudson had taken some time off from studying at Ohio State and acquired a job that appealed to his desire for exploration: a deckhand on a massive 729 foot Great Lakes freighter.
So began LSA junior Isabella Casagranda’s literary journalism article about the Edmund Fitzgerald, an assignment for a class taught by English faculty member Michael Hinken. The piece set out to answer the question: Out of the thousands of Great Lakes shipwrecks in existence, why has this one been immortalized in Midwestern culture?
Casagranda grew up in Pittsburgh, far from Lake Superior—yet she was captivated by the story of the freighter that sank on Nov. 10, 1975, killing all 29 people aboard. She knew of it from a documentary she saw when she had a sick day during high school. The documentary included Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting song, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
“The more I looked into it, the more I realized that this story is even sadder than you’d think it would be, and that’s why I don’t think it has left the cultural zeitgeist. The song helps, for sure, but I think there is something about it where you can place yourself immediately in their shoes,” she says.
“There were several individuals on the ship who were planning on retiring and that this was supposed to be the last trip of some of their careers. I start my story with a college student who was going to go on a cross-country road trip after the shipping season was over, and he never got to do that. Their stories are so relatable, and so human.”
The Gales of November
Those human details are precisely what drew LSA history alum and bestselling author John U. Bacon to examine the stories of the 29 crew members. The resulting book, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, was published last month by the Liveright imprint of W.W. Norton & Co. and is a New York Times best seller.
“I was able to talk to six crewmen who had been on the ship before it went down. They were phenomenal. They had been on the ship in ’75, so they knew this crew,” says Bacon (A.B. ’82, A.M. ’94). He also spoke with a crew member from the last ship that was in contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald that night, “so it’s as close as we can get to an eyewitness of what those conditions were like,” he says.
Bacon also spoke with family members of 14 crew members. “A few things stick out. One is that the company didn’t call anybody at any time, didn’t answer any phone calls, which is pretty cruel. So these families found out on Channel 10 in Duluth and Channel 11 in Toledo. And one woman found out listening to the radio on her way to work the next day at the Bonnie Bell cosmetic factory near Cleveland that she lost her only child,” he says.
Mystery still surrounds some aspects of the wreck, particularly what caused it. One theory suggests it was toppled by rogue waves of 35 feet that were reported by another ship that day. Others say it hit a shoal, causing the ship to flood and sink from the damage. Still others attribute the wreck to structural flaws.
Knowing the precise cause didn’t matter to the families he spoke to, Bacon says. “Their thinking is: what could that possibly change?”
Bacon—well known for his books about history and sports, including several about University of Michigan coaches and teams—learned through his research just how vital the shipping industry is to the economy of Michigan and the country.
“In the three decades following World War II, Detroit was the beating heart of the most robust economy the world had ever seen, and Great Lakes shipping served as the circulatory system,” Bacon writes in Gales. “When it comes to hauling goods, trains are roughly twice as efficient as trucks, but ships are almost three times more efficient than trains, and six times more efficient than trucks. The difference between ships and trucks is not 6 percent or 60 percent—margins any corporation would covet—but 600 percent, an astronomical savings.”
Shipping is “an invisible industry,” he says in an interview. “But the cement in your basement, the car in your driveway, and the food in your table—guess what? That’s all from these ships.”
It’s a dangerous industry, as the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy illustrated all too well. Even when everything goes right, though, the lifestyle of a crew member is brutal. “Nine months out of the year, these guys back then had no vacations, no birthdays, weddings, graduations. They’re not in your Rotary Club, they’re not coaching their kid’s baseball team,” Bacon says.
There are trade-offs, though.
“Great little story from John Hayes, a guy I talked to who was a Great Lakes sailor as well as an ocean sailor,” Bacon recounts. “He said, ‘Nothing felt better after nine months, than coming home with a big bonus check for a good season. Your kids run up and give you a big hug, and they say, Dad, you smell like a truck. And I say, no, that’s what a paycheck smells like, kid.’”
A Teacher and a Student
The story of Bacon—an alum and often a faculty member at LSA—converged with the story of LSA junior English major Casagranda when she interviewed him for her class assignment. The well-established journalist and author lent his voice to the paper written by Casagranda, who is just beginning her journalistic journey.
In her article, Casagranda writes that Bacon “brushes aside the conspiratorial theories about why it sank and focuses on the men themselves, aiming to bring this regional story to a national audience.”
She adds that Bacon attributes the ongoing fascination with the Edmund Fitzgerald to an ancient relationship between humans and ships. “Car wrecks, train wrecks, truck wrecks, and plane wrecks are mechanical. This is man versus nature in the most elemental, Noah’s Ark kind of way,” he told Casagranda. “I think something about that resonates.”
Photo: LSA junior Isabella Casagranda, alum John U. Bacon, and the cover of Bacon's new book.
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