- Jan 7, 2002
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http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0511/04/A08-371921.htm
John Polacsek, curator of the Dossin Great Lakes Museum in Detroit, only slightly exaggerates when he says there are "45,000 variations" on theories as to why the Edmund Fitzgerald sank 30 years ago in Lake Superior.
"The mystery and the mystique will always be there," he says. "No one has really answered the reason, to anyone's real satisfaction, as to why she went down."
The Whitefish Point beacon was out that night, and the Fitzgerald captain reported that he lost radar. Other than those facts, about the only other item undisputed is that the wreck rests in two pieces on the floor of Superior, the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes. The stern is upside-down, 170 feet from the bow section. And in between, littering the lake floor, are the shredded remains of the ship's 200-foot collapsed center section.
Tom Farnquist, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, has directed three expeditions over the years that explored the wreck with robot-submarines and manned submersibles.
He's convinced the Fitzgerald did not break in half on the lake surface due to wave stress, as one early theory suggested.
"All our dives indicated that the ship did a nosedive, that it plowed a trench 400 feet on the bottom" with the propeller still turning, he says. "The bow stopped solid when it hit bedrock 30 feet below and the weakest part, the center section, started collapsing with all the weight of the cargo (iron ore pellets) and engines moving forward."
At that point, Farnquist surmises, 200 feet of the stern twisted off and settled upside down 170 feet from the bow section, which is right-side up.
Yet the key question remains: Why did the Fitzgerald initially take on water and lose buoyancy?
http://www.detnews.com/2005/metro/0511/04/A08-371921.htm
John Polacsek, curator of the Dossin Great Lakes Museum in Detroit, only slightly exaggerates when he says there are "45,000 variations" on theories as to why the Edmund Fitzgerald sank 30 years ago in Lake Superior.
"The mystery and the mystique will always be there," he says. "No one has really answered the reason, to anyone's real satisfaction, as to why she went down."
The Whitefish Point beacon was out that night, and the Fitzgerald captain reported that he lost radar. Other than those facts, about the only other item undisputed is that the wreck rests in two pieces on the floor of Superior, the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes. The stern is upside-down, 170 feet from the bow section. And in between, littering the lake floor, are the shredded remains of the ship's 200-foot collapsed center section.
Tom Farnquist, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, has directed three expeditions over the years that explored the wreck with robot-submarines and manned submersibles.
He's convinced the Fitzgerald did not break in half on the lake surface due to wave stress, as one early theory suggested.
"All our dives indicated that the ship did a nosedive, that it plowed a trench 400 feet on the bottom" with the propeller still turning, he says. "The bow stopped solid when it hit bedrock 30 feet below and the weakest part, the center section, started collapsing with all the weight of the cargo (iron ore pellets) and engines moving forward."
At that point, Farnquist surmises, 200 feet of the stern twisted off and settled upside down 170 feet from the bow section, which is right-side up.
Yet the key question remains: Why did the Fitzgerald initially take on water and lose buoyancy?
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