Lake Superior in North America. The largest freshwater surface in the world.
Paralyzingly cold in summer and plagued by terrifying autumn storms. We had 30ft seas. I mean that’s like a
three and a half story building. You know you’re going to die. Hundreds of ships have sunk here. Most
famous, the Edund Fitzgerald, the Titanic of the Great Lakes. A freighter
deemed invincible. You see that that scallop effect? You wouldn’t build a a ship that way today.
There were no survivors and no witnesses. Just a wreck that was split in two.
Completely shredded. It’s like no man’s land. Three decades later, father and son diver explorers Mike and Warren Fletcher
investigate what happened. That’s brutal. And new science about freak waves may
finally lay the Edmund Fitzgerald to rest. This had to have happened very near the
end. [Music]
[Music] Gary, this should be the last of it.
I think we’re ready to go. I’m good. Clear. Looks like a nice morning. And
it’s approximately 25 mile run. Okay. [Music]
Lake Superior is one of the world’s largest freshwater lakes. 560 km east to
west. It’s a place of extremes. A place where icy polar air hits warm, wet
southern winds in a violent collision that can create a supertorm.
Nearly 300 ships have sunk there, so the massive freighters working the busy shipping lanes are built to withstand
the tempests. On June the 7th, 1958, more than 10,000
people turned out to see the launch of a Leviathan.
The Edmond Fitzgerald was the biggest, fastest bulk carrier on the Great Lakes.
More than two city blocks long and eight stories high, she was the largest man-made object ever launched into fresh
water. But on the 10th of November, 1975,
she sank during a violent storm. All 29 crew on board perished.
She went down so fast there was no time for a mayday call.
And when she was eventually found, she was broken in half, her hull shredded.
An official US Coast Guard inquiry suggested that human error had been to blame.
It said hatch covers had not been properly secured, leading to the ship taking on water and sinking, then likely
breaking in two when she hit the bottom. The general consensus is the vessel
filled with water for whatever reason flooded. The bow probably hit bottom first and it was in that that position
or attitude for some time and then the sea action and the weight of the ship
broke it. But recent sonar scans suggest something different. The positioning of
the ship in two distinct halves indicates she may have split in two before she went down.
I wonder if we can’t shift the thinking to this to this other possibility and that is that the Fitzgerald flexed and
broke open on the surface and flooded simply because her hall broke in half and of course ended up in two pieces. A
huge freighter breaking up on the surface sounds incredible, but it happened before. 9 years earlier in
another November storm just 350 km away on another great lake called Hiron.
But there was one big difference. That ship, the Daniel J. Morell, had a
survivor. Dennis Hail is now going back to the scene for the first time.
[Music] When the Morell sank in 1966,
Hail was a 26-year-old crewman. This is going to be a a good thing for
me. Yeah, I think I need this for my own
mental health if nothing else. Yeah. Hail spent years recovering from his experience. He’d been asleep in his bunk
in the bow of the Morell when he was woken by a terrifying sound.
The outside temperature was near freezing, but Hail ran on deck wearing just a peacacoat over his underwear and
realized that the noise had been his ship breaking in two. Hail pulled on a
life jacket and swam to an open life raft with three other men. She’s directly under our feet right now.
He was rescued 38 hours later in the middle of a blizzard, semi-conscious and delirious next to three iceclad frozen
figures. the sole survivor in a crew of 29.

When I first saw the the raft, no one was on it. And then uh when by the time I got to it, two other men had climbed
aboard. Right away, I grabbed the flares and and fired off a parachute flare.
When the flare went out, the other guys remained laying down. I noticed kind of a little glitter out of my left eye.
It was this uh huge wave. It had to be at least 30 35 ft. I thought this is
going to come down on us and kill us, you know, and we had those waves most of the night.
Dennis Hail’s eyewitness testimony is a starting point for the Fletchers.
I’m really looking forward to diving and getting to the point where the ship actually broke apart. Structural failure
was blamed for the sinking of the Morell. The Fletchers plan to compare the damage on Hail’s ship to the
Fitzgerald. Similarities could suggest the Fitzgerald also broke up on the surface, which means hatches and human
error may not have been to blame.
Diving the Great Lakes is very different from warm water scuba diving.
The water here is just 7° above freezing and will lower a divers’s core temperature.
Their neoprene dry suits are 4 mm thick, but the pressure at these depths compresses them to half that, reducing
insulation. So, they wear four layers of thermals and fleece under their dry suits to try
to hold on to body heat during their 60 m descent to the morel’s bow section.
[Music] The wreck has been on the bottom for over 40 years, preserved by the cold
freshwater. There’s always a different feeling knowing you’re diving on a wreck where there still could be bodies inside. We
need to see the fracture point, but can’t forget that this is a graveyard.
[Music]
On the surface, Hail holds the guideline tied to the Morell,
his first physical connection to the ship in over 40 years.
[Music] Fear is a terrible thing. It drives you to places you don’t want to be, you
know, in your mind. [Music] Just imagine all of a sudden this turning into a raging sea.
Just totally unbelievable. [Music] A late autumn storm on these lakes is
called the witch of November. Temperatures can drop below freezing. Winds can reach hurricane force and
freak waves can exceed 16 m. When the cauldron is stirred, no ship is
safe. The Edund Fitzgerald was the largest ship ever to lose its battle
against the witch. When the Edmond Fitzgerald uh sank, it
it it’s like my ship sank all over. I went through all these same emotions. Uh
there were times that I I would think about it and bring just bring a shiver to me think of those guys in the cold
and uh my concern for them.
The Fitzgerald lies 160 m below surface, a grave site where diving is forbidden.
But her bell was recovered and every year it tolls for the men of that ship. Once for every lost soul.
On the afternoon of Sunday, November 9th, 1975, the freighter set sail from Burlington
Northern Railroad Dock in Superior, Wisconsin. There were 29 men aboard,
fathers, sons, and husbands. The freighter was loaded with tachinite,
reddish brown pellets of low-grade iron ore. It was headed for the steel mills of
Detroit, a journey of over 1,000 km that would take around 47 hours.
Loading had gone smoothly, and by early afternoon, the crew was clamping closed
the 21 cargo hatches.
Bruce Lee Hudson was one of the men whose job was to clamp down the hatches that day.
He’d been a crewman on the Edund Fitzgerald for over 7 months. He loved shipboard life so much he was thinking
of signing up as a cadet at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy. Bruce was an only child. His family
heard about the tragedy from a newscast. [Music]
9 years earlier, Dennis Hail had also been a 20-something crewman on a Great Lakes frighter, the Morell, a ship split
in two by the witch’s fury.
Today, the lake is calm. 60 m below, the Fletchers search for the break point
where the morel broke in half on the lake surface. [Music]
They look for key signs of structural damage to compare to the Edund Fitzgerald as they investigate if that
ship also broke up on the surface. [Music]
They examined the torn steel and twisted decking at the break point of the morale, ripped apart at her cargo holds
near the center of the ship. It’s roughly the same place that the
Fitzgerald broke into.
It’s shocking that the power of the waves during the winter storm was able to split the morel right in half and do
it while she was running on the surface. Well, Dennis, I know I’m nowhere near as
cold as you were, but I’m cold. At one point, I was wondering whether I wanted
to stay down and finish my decompression or just come out and face the consequences.
It’s brutal. It’s absolutely brutal down there. To look at her on the bottom today, you
don’t get the sense that that boat broke in half in a storm. No. Well, the only part that really gets
damaged is the center, though. Yeah. The last I saw her, the the steering pole was out of the water.
The last chapter of the Morell is known only because of Dennis Hail.
There were no survivors from the Fitzgerald. She went down with all hands.
Diving on her is prohibited, protected by law with a $1 million fine for anyone who breaks it.
[Music] But the men’s families still grieve. [Music]
And many of them are reluctant to talk to outsiders. One man believes he knows why. Discover
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description. Raymond Ramsay is one of the few surviving members of the team that
designed and built the Edund Fitzgerald. He says families of the victims were offered a cash settlement not to sue.
The idea was to push up these people and they will not go and try and make for a
big claim with the owners of the ship. It’s all about go. Was that the case
with these big ships? And no, no, no. When it comes to spending a lot of money on maintenance.
I arrived just when the Cald Bradley went down and there were other ships in
that history, morale, you name it. Mhm. And I said, “Doesn’t anyone get concerned these ships may not be strong
enough?” His answer to me was, “Don’t worry about it.” Not once was they mentioned of the human
life and that bothered me.
[Music]
[Music] The official US Coast Guard inquiry
concluded that cargo hatches had not been closed properly, allowing massive amounts of water to flood the
Fitzgerald’s hold and sink her. A controversial finding that effectively blamed the crew.
So, I guess these just go on. I was thinking they actually bolted them down, but they probably go on and then snap
closed like this. The crew of the Edund Fitzgerald would have been knowingly risking their own
lives by not fastening the hatches. So, the team want to know what today’s Great Lakes sailors believe.
Captain Brandon Durant has spent much of his 15-year career on Lake Superior.
As far as them finding that the hatches weren’t dogged down properly, um, you
don’t head into any storm without even sending people around to red dog the hatches or to check it.
As the Fitzgerald left harbor on November the 9th, the water was calm.
Storms were forecast for the following day, but Superior is so big, she’s like
an inland ocean, and every captain knows she makes her own weather.
November is the worst month. Do you do you have days where you just don’t go? You were at times under pressure to move
and to maximize uh profit. You are pressured that uh seasickness of certain people shouldn’t be a factor or you were
under pressure with which to make the millionaires their money. Uh but then you’re also pressured that
in doing that you have to protect their assets and their people here. This freighter is the same type as the
Fitzgerald and carrying the same cargo iron ore. Today she’s sailing some of
the same waters. Her sonar reveals they are directly over the wreck.
So we’re really close to the Fitzgerald right now, right? Oh, kind of a weird feeling.
Yeah, 500 ft. 500 ft between you and that ship.
Definitely uh a good thing to respect the family and the and the guys that are down there.
At 700 a.m. on Monday, November 10th, 1975, the Fitzgerald was close to the center
of Lake Superior.
She was 17 hours into her journey, a third of the way. But the storm was
taking hold. They were just 12 hours away from tragedy.
Ransom E. Kundi was one of three watchmen aboard. He was a father of two daughters, one of whom had been killed
just the year before. The death had affected him badly. The
man who had been a joker and prankster was now sad and withdrawn.
Ransom could not swim a stroke. He said that if his ship went down, he would go to the bottom with her.
The Fitzgerald was carrying over 26,000 tons of iron ore, roughly 15% more than
her original design specs. Loading rules had been relaxed over the years. Great
Lakes freighters were allowed to load deeper, making them more vulnerable in the high seas of autumn.
Raymond Ramsay, one of the Fitzgerald’s original designers, believes this was a contributing factor.
The load line rules were changed to allow the ship to load deeper,
and she was allowed to go down about another 4 ft in order to carry more cargo. Even the two latest captain did
say the ship handled differently. Well, of course it did. It was 4T further in the water.
Strict regulations govern freeboard, the height a fully loaded ship must sit above the water line. Easing of these
rules meant the Fitzgerald went on her final journey with 3,600 tons of additional weight.
She was sailing a meter lower in the water than on her first outing 17 years before.
The extra water washing over her added stress to her hull. She was designed to
bend, but there were limits. As the ship moved through the waves, she
became less able to recover from the rolling and rocking forces of stormy seas.
And there’s another reason why the storm hit the Fitzgerald so hard. The Calumeat
is also a Great Lakes freighter. She’s being cut up for scrap at an Ontario salvage yard, which gives the Fletchers
a chance to examine her guts. The Fitzgerald was uh 100 ft longer than
this ship approximately and 10 ft wider uh and I believe five or six feet
higher. During loading, it’s critical that freighters are kept level in the water.
If the cargo weight is not evenly spread, the ship could list.
The Fitzgerald’s load was distributed over three massive holds, each one the height of a three-story building. But
even properly loaded cargo can shift, triggering a list while the ship is running low and unstable in stormy
waters. And the Fitzgerald, loaded to the max, was being battered by waves.
This giant crosssection shows how the Fitzgerald’s internal structure could have made her even more unstable and
vulnerable in a storm. These ships have what’s called a centerline bulkhead. Right in the very
center of the ship is a solid bulkhead, a solid steel wall that keeps water on
one side of the ship or the other. Can only go as far as that center line bulkhead unless there was a leak in the bulkhead.
So if the water’s on that side, obviously she’s going to tip this way, but it and is stopped from flooding from
that side by a bulkhead underneath here. That’s right. In the case of the Fitzgerald with the drain in the center,
you can see how if this ship begins to list, how much water a ship could take
on. Yeah. Let’s let’s draw one listing over to the side. Look how much water it could take
on before it gets to the drain. Right. And in the case of the Fitzgerald, we know from the communications from the
captain that the ship couldn’t get rid of its water that it had taken into the the cargo holds. So on a ship this size,
that amount of water could be even hundreds or even thousands of tons, right? That would be thousands of tons. Yes.
Just one cubic meter of water weighs a ton. And the storm toss seas of Superior were
raining down on the Fitzgerald the night she sank. The findings of the official inquiry
attributed her sinking to a massive flooding of the cargo hold, but it went further to suggest that ineffective
hatch closures were to blame. and the crew at fault.
Michael Eugene Armagost was the Fitzgerald’s third mate. He was a good husband, 37 years old when he lost his
life. The Fitzgerald was setting sail as his wife and young children arrived to
surprise him and wave him off. They called to the ship’s cook who told
them Mike was below deck resting before his shift. They never saw him again.
His family say it is impossible the crew failed to secure the hatches. The relatives aren’t the only ones who
reject the inquiry’s finding. The Fletchers are among the skeptics, but they want to test if open hatch catches
alone could have doomed the ship.
Marian Gabowski is a naval architect in Ontario. He has evaluated cargo hatches
on freighters for more than 20 years and helps set the industry standards. Okay, Nick, let her rip.
Let’s bring on the water. Cargo ships sailing the Great Lakes must be safety inspected every year. The
Fitzgerald’s last inspection was October 31st, 1975, 10 days before she sank.
Water pressure is adjusted to match the force created by 8 m waves that the official report said the Fitzgerald
encountered. [Music] The ship they’re testing today is
similar in structure. So, the test should reveal how the hatch covers coped with the storm.
The clamp style is the same. The actual physical type of hatch cover is the
same. This fits Joe. So, it’s a fair comparison. It’s fair comparison. Yes. Okay. Oh, there by war. Here she come.
Warren, did you see any weapons coming through the middle of the hatch? Negative. I haven’t seen any water yet.
There is one clamp which is open. So, we’ll see if water is leaking through there.
We’re going to see water. It should come in right here.
And the water. Thank you.
Yeah, definitely a small amount of water came through. We sprayed for a half a minute and you got enough water about
the equivalent as the amount of cream you put in a coffee. Uh, a couple tablespoons. Not a couple
teaspoons, but a couple tablespoons. Not certainly going to sink a ship this size.
Uh, not unless it was uh getting sprayed like that for a few months or a year. Let’s ramp it up. Let’s take every other
clamp off and see what happens. So, I’ll grab the tool. The team want to see if the hatch can still do its job if a
ship’s crew left half the clamps undone. I don’t think we’ll get a ton of water coming through, but I think there will
be a bit. There we go. We got a little bit of a squirt coming through there now.
Is this coming more than before? I’d say at least double, maybe three or four times as much as before. We’ve
taken every other clamp off. We’ve got the equivalent of 25 ft wave applied
directly at the opening on the hatch cover.
What’s the most water that you saw come out? Maybe at the worst a liter a minute generally on on as the waves were
breaking on the deck. They were breaking like down here, right? So that means they wouldn’t even affect us. We’ve gone
to a huge extreme and we’ve put the wave way up there which means that we actually compressed
the gasket with 3 m of water head. Right. Which is means it’s only pushing it down more which is the equivalent of
putting more clamps on. Yes. I’m not buying the idea that the
Fitzgerald sank just because water got into closed has cover. It just doesn’t make sense.
Yeah. There you are. Nice glasses. You like those? Yeah. Where are yours? I
hope the Ministry of Labor comes give you a big fine. [Music]
You were too young to remember, but in fact, you weren’t born yet. But I remember the day the Fit sank. I
remember, you know, the mood of the people when they heard about a a giant
what we considered modern lake freighter that sank because of a storm on Lake
Superior. We didn’t think that was even possible anymore. Yeah. Of
course, this footage looked at the wreck. It was really hard to see anything in
it. When the official inquiry was held into the sinking of the Edmond Fitzgerald,
the only wreck footage available was lowgrade and grainy. But the team have accessed eight hours of highdefin
footage filmed in the 1990s and they want an expert opinion on what it
reveals. The Fletchers analyze video of the Fitzgerald with Claude Daly, a
specialist in the structure of ships. You can really see the structural breaks. This is way better resolution
quality. And so, and this taken in the ’90s. There’s been no formal investigation since this was taken.
The forensic video clearly shows the damage sustained by the Fitzgerald.
Daly wants to look at the cargo holds where the freighter broke apart. And look at that. It’s just totally
completely shredded and mangled. Yeah, it’s like no man’s land. I didn’t realize just how severe the
damage was in between the two sections. Look on here now. You see that that scallop effect? That’s not a modern uh
way of putting together steel. They thought at the time that this was reasonable, but we know now that that
leaves a flaw at every one of those welds. It’s a place for fracture to start. You wouldn’t build a a ship that
way today. The welds create a weakness in the hull that could lead to cracking if overstressed. It adds weight to the
theory of a surface breakup. We’ve got to look at that kind of evidence to try and figure out did that
happen on the surface or did it happen on the bottom of Lake Superior. Mhm. My problem with thinking that the damage
happened on the bottom, I can see a big crack happening in a in a vessel that goes down to the bottom as one piece and
then hits and cracks. Okay, fine. But how do you get that much damage? Whereas
I’m thinking if it’s still on the surface when the crack happens and it’s working now, right? The waves, another
wave, another wave, and it’s working and it’s, you know, it’s grinding away. There there has to be some reason for
that. I mean, you know, it it wasn’t an explosion. And there were some it was natural, you know, wave forces and
stresses that tore all that apart.
The evidence suggests an extraordinary outside force broke the Fitzgerald
apart, not cargo hatches leaking through human error.
Dennis Hail was in the bow of another Great Lakes freighter, the Morell, when she broke in half on the surface. He
could hear the sound of breaking metal above the ship’s alarms.
The noise that night was unbelievable. The wind whis going through the wires. You could hear the sound of steam
escaping and the engines just uh you could hear him laboring.
I heard a noise towards the stern and u I looked and the main deck was starting
to tear. Was tearing real slow like a piece of paper. And the next thing I knew, I was in the water.
Hail paints an eerie image of the scene he witnessed on that stormtossed lake.
As the power went out on the bow, he watched the ship’s stern steaming away into the night with her lights blazing.
It was 13 years before both halves of his ship were found. They were more than 8 km apart.
Like imagine this crazy thing sticking up out of the water. Land isn’t all that far away from here. And there is a
lighthouse. So yeah, and if you think about it where this where the bow sank, uh relative to where
the stern sank, it’s in a line towards that lighthouse. It’s hard to even imagine what would
have been going through people’s minds in that point. You know, I know these guys at least had a fighting chance. Their half of the ship was afloat and
they had power and everything, but you know, the guys on the fish trail, I don’t think they were that lucky.
A ship is a complex structure that fits together like a human skeleton, and each side of the breakpoint offers clues to
its cause. The team prepare for a second dive on
the morale. This time, they’re diving on her stern to investigate the breakpoint
damage at the other side to see how it compares to what can be seen on the Fitzgerald footage taken in the 1990s.
They start their search at the Morell’s cargo holds where this ship ruptured just like the Fitzgerald.
[Music] You can see the twisted metal and appreciate the forces that must have
been exerted on this ship as she came apart. And the damage here is actually more
defined than it was at the bow.
The team noticed an open hatch. It leads down to the engine room.
[Music] Mike finds the ship’s telegraph, a
communication hotline from the stern to the pilot house on the bow.
It stuck beyond full reverse, supporting their theory that after the morell snapped in two, the crew left in the
stern may have tried to power her toward land in the hope of surviving. [Music]
The Fletchers move through the engine room’s maze of pipes, being careful not to get trapped in the debris.
[Music] Then, high above the ship’s water line, they discover massive damage.
The rear ladders and smoke stack are twisted, crushed, and dented. It looks
like wave damage, but this is 20 m above the ship’s safe water line.
The height of this evidence suggests gigantic waves smashed down on the stern of the ship.
It’s a clue that reveals the massive trauma waves can cause to ships as big
as a Great Lakes frighter. Trauma they can now look for in the forensic footage of the Fitzgerald.
Well, there’s a lot of clues on the bow of the Ed Fitzgerald here. Uh, this is the wheelhouse. This was way above the
water line, but still a lot of damage for being way above the water line. A good deal. This
visor over the uh on the front of the wheelhouse, it would have taken a considerable amount of impact from
something. The reported wave conditions at around 25 ft would be really challenging for this vessel. But if
there was some more extreme version, you know, if there was a really large wave that came by, some rogue wave, um then
uh this kind of bow and side damage might well have been caused by a wave impact on the surface.
Rogue waves, they were once dismissed as sailor’s myths. Now they’re blamed as a
major cause of shipwrecks around the world. On the Great Lakes, rogue waves can
tower over 17 m high. They’re unpredictable and can come from unexpected directions.
Some scientists believe they are born when a series of waves traveling at different speeds and directions sink up,
merging into a gigantic wall of water. Could a freak wave have sunk the
Fitzgerald?
Tom Haltquist is a weather scientist, a specialist who has evidence for the Fletchers about rogue waves on the Great
Lakes. Well, rogue waves exist and they’re actually defined by waves that are at least 2.2 times the significant
wave height, which in this case with significant waves of 25 ft, you’d be talking 55 ft for a rogue wave. So
extremely significant. Haltquist uses computer weather prediction models to reanalyze the storm
that hit the Fitzgerald in November 1975. His study uses simulations and computer
modeling and tracks warm moist air from the Gulf of Mexico that collides with a
mass of icy arctic air. It reveals a perfect storm with hurricane force winds
and giant waves that sweep across Lake Superior. What ended up happening is as they got into this eastern part of the lake here,
the winds really shifted around more to the west and the northwest. So, it had all of this space of Lake Superior over which to generate waves. So they were
just really in the wrong place at the wrong time and wrong course. Everything was working against them. Yeah. The Fitzgerald couldn’t have found
itself in a worse location at a worse time. Storms can create much larger waves over
long open stretches of water. On Lake Superior, the wind can blow uninterrupted for more than 300 km.
It was a beast of a storm. It was something that doesn’t happen very often. They could have encountered
a very significant wave beyond perhaps what some of the other boats out there saw. By midday, the storm is behaving like a
tropical hurricane. As the storm takes hold, the Fitzgerald changes course and
heads towards the Canadian shore, seeking shelter from the winds.
The Arthur M. Anderson, another bulk freighter following the Fitzgerald on the lake, does the same. The storm is
now whipping up the entire lake. The sky is low, gray, and waves are picking up strength and speed. Waves towering as
high as 11 m crash over the Anderson’s pilot house. Then the waves move on,
chasing the Fitzgerald across the lake. Bernie Cooper, who died in 1993, was the
Anderson’s captain. Those two seas were the biggest that we ever we ever had going down there. And
it happened about 6:30 in the evening. And I just wonder if those two seas didn’t catch up with the Fitzgerald. I
just got to thinking about it afterwards. If those seas were that big, they rolled up his deck and was going to
put his bow down under the water. [Music]
Ernest Michael Msurley was master of the Fitzgerald. He’d been married for many years.
Once the youngest master on the Great Lakes, he’s now 63 years old and much
respected for his years of experience. By 6:30 p.m. on November 10th, his ship,
the Edund Fitzgerald, is fighting for her life.
Water is pouring into her ballast tanks, causing her to list. She’s lost both radar antenna.
It’s dark. There’s no sky, just violent winds and swamping waves. But the
shelter of the Canadian shore is still more than an hour away. At 10 7 with
screaming winds and tons of water pounding her decks, the Fitzgerald has her last radio contact with the
Anderson. We are holding our own. 10 minutes later, she is no longer visible
and cannot be raised on her radio telephone. At 7:30, the storm begins to
wne.
One of the most sophisticated wavegenerating tanks in the world is in the seafaring port of St. John’s,
Newfoundland. It belongs to the Canadian National Research Council’s Institute for Ocean Technology, Navies and
Commercial Shipping Lines use it to test ship designs of the future. But today,
the tank containing 5 million L of water is being used to look into the past to
evaluate what happened to the Edund Fitzgerald. It’s a scientific first, an
experiment never undertaken here before. A scale model of the Fitzgerald is
waited to replicate the specific condition of the freighter as she battled the storm.
Well, we know the Fitzgerald was already in trouble. It was listing, had some damage on the deck. They had lost some
deck vents and they were taking on water already. So a ship that’s already heavily laden with cargo unstable listing with these
giant waves is that’s a lot for an old ship to take. Data from the Noah scientists recent
weather study will be used to replicate the storm. The test will create the entire spectrum of waves that were
possible on that night, including a rogue wave. They set up a high-speed
camera to record what happens. and Warren sets up below the surface to capture the impact from beneath.
Bruce Colburn is a naval architect who has studied waves and their impact on ships for more than 15 years.
You will see some big waves, some small waves, and it all depends on how the various components add together.
52 hydraulic underwater paddles synchronized with the computer data generate the waves. A rogue wave is
essentially a statistical fluke that occurs when you get an unusual
combination of waves that appear in one place and they all add together and you
get an extraordinarily large wave. And in pure science and math and physics tells us that that will happen.
That’s right. Statistically, that should happen. The test replicates the range of wave heights the Edmund Fitzgerald actually
encountered during her final hours. Running 20% lower in the water, the
Fitzgerald would have been swamped by even the storm’s smaller 8 m waves, stressing her hull to its limits.
You can see a lot of the waves are coming up over the deck here, and we know that there were damaged ballast vents and things, so there’s definitely
going to be a lot of water getting into the hull. But data from the Noah team says a wave towering 17 m or higher could have
struck the Fitzgerald. So, let’s make it happen. That’s okay.
[Music] There’s a big one. There’s our roadway. Wow.
Oh, there we go. That was pretty washed over the That’s right, too. There the whole boat.
That pretty well washed it from one end to the other.
High-speed footage shows the rogue wave in all its deadly power.
It towers over the stern of the ship, striking high on the pilot house. An impact that would cause damage the
Fletcher saw in the HD footage of the Fitzgerald. Here’s a big one. Here it comes.
Look at that. Picks the stern right up. Yeah. Rolls right across the whole deck and then just shoves the bow right under.
Yeah.
Just jam the wheelhouse straight under. Right. These ships, they’re designed to take big seas. They know there’s going
to be big storms up there, but are they designed to take that freak, you know, one in a million rogue wave?
The team have seen what the waves likely did to the Fitzgerald on the night she sank. Next, they plan to apply their
data to the ship itself using a unique machine.
The Fletchers are on board a $17 million marine simulator. It’s one of just two
such simulators in the world and the only one with hydraulic motion. Here in Newfoundland, they can accurately
replicate the conditions on the Fitzgerald’s bridge the night she went down. When we got the data for the
Fitzgerald itself, the lines plans, the engine arrangement, the uh the weather model, we were really keen on uh
recreating the realism of every event. It’s the first time this system is being used to investigate a marine accident.
For all intents and purposes, you will be on board zero.
Well, we’re going to feel a gentle lifting now as the unit rises up on its hydraulic uh hydraulic. There it goes.
The ship’s simulator weighs roughly 25 tons. Its hydraulics are mounted on a
six° motion base to precisely imitate the movement of the vessel through the storm. 3D projectors display a 360
degree view from the bridge. It holds more than 30 people, one of the largest simulators of its kind in the world, and
processes massive amounts of complex data to create an ocean environment.
This is typical of what you would find steaming along in about a 2 to threeft sea. That’s you’re not going to feel much in a big
ship. No, you’re not going to feel very much. Heavily laden uh and deep in the water. This is this is a typical experience.
Jim, if we can pick up the seastate now, we’d increase some of the uh the wind as well.
The simulator also provides views from outside. This allows the Fletchers to see the effects of the storm on the
entire ship. And with that kind of a load of iron ore on board, the vessel would have set
pretty low in the water. One thing I’m really noticing is just
how the waves are stretching out over the length of the ship. You know, you got one wave at the front and one wave at the back. And man, that
would put a lot of force in the middle of the ship. We’ve got to look at that kind of evidence completely shredded.
You’re getting water that’s covering the vents, uh, the vents into the tanks.
We’re twisting. And we’re twisting. We feel the boat twist.
Certainly the hatch covers have to be doing their job or you’re in trouble.
So
the brooing seas uh on deck a lot of force uh breaking off anything that’s
not really really really well secured. And we got to think that the pits was seeing at least at least 10 m waves that
night. Not all 10 m, but the odd one would definitely with still the possibility that there was the odd freak
or rogue wave. Jim, can we get the maximum sustained wind speed?
Vessels reported wind speeds of 160 km an hour. Hurricane force, creating the
perfect conditions for a rogue wave.
Here’s the big one. Look at it, war. It’s coming right through the back windows. the roadway.
That would have the entire bridge. Yeah, that had taken the back windows out. Wow. Feel that. You can feel we just just
pinched deeply that time. Yeah. There’s your wall of water now. Oh, yeah. Right now, this would be very near the
end of the Fitzgerald right here. We just felt that. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Right. That was a really freak. A giant wall of water 17 m high strikes the
ship, smashing the deck and driving the pilot house underwater. [Music]
It’s a lot of forces. A lot of things are going on here right now. I could see where that would easily snap a ship like
this in half. That would have been it. Nah. No ship.
The Edmund Fitzgerald was beaten and battered by a November storm on Lake Superior. She took nearly a year to
build, but just one day to destroy. On Monday, November 10th, 1975, she was
rocked by violent winds and pounded by waves, dipping and lurching until the
foundering ship was likely overwhelmed by a gigantic freak wave.
[Music] a massive wall of water that bent and twisted her steel like a paperclip,
shredding 61 meters of her hull.
She was the largest vessel ever to lose a battle against the witch of November,
an invincible Titanic lost along with 29 souls. The lake, it is said, never gives up her
dead when the skies of November turn gloomy.
with a load of iron ore 26,000 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.