Shipwreck: The Mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald (1995) FULL DOCUMENTARY
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.พ. 2025
- Shipwreck: The Mystery of the Edmund Fitzgerald (1995) FULL DOCUMENTARY
The complete version of the Discovery Channel's 1995 documentary on the Edmund Fitzgerald. Although other TH-cam channels have uploaded this same documentary, Worden Entertainment brings to you the complete version thanks to careful editing and splicing together various versions of the documentary as it was edited down for commercials for runtime.
This video upload is dedicated in loving memory of the lost 29 crewmen, their families, as well as the crew of the Arthur M. Anderson and the late Canadian singer, songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
This documentary was uploaded for education and preservation purposes.
NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED
All rights of this footage belong to the Discovery Channel.
All rights of the song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" belong to the estate of the late Gordon Lightfoot.
I was 9 years old when the Fitz went down, I still remember watching the local news out of Duluth broadcasting the tragedy and how saddened I was , thank you for video
I’ve lived in Michigan all my life and I will never forget this. The lakes are all beautiful but can be dangerous too. My birthday is November 11th and is always a reminder. RIP to the crew and Gordon Lightfoot who created this remarkable tribute.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤
Happy late Birthday
When this first came out a bowling friend of mine made a VHS tape for me I played it so many times it broke I am so glad someone has it on You Tube I cry ever time I watch it.
I recommend the Penlee Lifeboat documentary on TH-cam. You will be moved.
Lake superiour has its own weather system. I live in the u.p. it has worse storms than the oceans do sometimes. Its essentialy a fresh water ocean.
Well said. Lake Superior is a more furious and compressed 'mini ocean'. Not to be underestimated in any regard. Cheers!
@@vikingmike8139 lots of shipwrecks and loss of life to verify that.
I’m from a small town in west Alabama, and I had a jr high science teacher that played basketball at Lake Superior State. She drove me and another kid to a science fair once, and she told me all about the U.P. and I’ve wanted to visit ever since then. The pictures of towns and countryside I’ve seen appear beautiful, and I bet the residents would get a kick out of my southern accent since they probably don’t see many southerners up there.
@@upchu005 wait till you hear our yooper accent.
Rebound waves pushing up a shoal can collide with prevailing waves creating some real monsters. My friends face turned white while describing his experience on Georgian Bay. So funny to watch when you know in your soul exactly what he is talking about. I still get the chills.
I've had family that made their living on the water they had their mishaps and accidents but luckily they always made it home safely and I have watched many many documentaries and movies and i have always loved watching them it feels like a small tribute to all the families and friends of those who never made it home again and I have to say to the families of the Edmund Fitzgerald i am so tremendously sorry for your loss and i don't know why but fr some reason the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald touches me way deep in my heart and soul and I dont know why but every time I hear the song or watch a documentary it literally shatters me inside and out may the 29 men who lost their lives in the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.....,.R.I.P !!!!!!!!;
I remember the night the EF was reported missing and the day I’d was confirmed lost. It left a hollow sick feeling in my gut. I was hundreds of miles from Superior, but it felt like I’d lost part of my family. I was almost 19 years old.
Thank you for posting. Rip.
That Man looking for his brother to bring home brought a tear to my eye. God bless them both.
Has pbs done a show on this ship they need to tell everyone about this I enjoyed this myself thanks for sharing this video
You are very welcome
Great lakes storm seas are so different... Grew on Lake Erie, that shallow little lake has teeth. Storm Waves, we called them Cross-Chop... Just like the Coast Guard Capt. During a storm, you have three different seas all at once
It may only be 62 feet deep on average but it doesn’t take but a few feet to kill a person, I wouldn’t want to be out there in a storm
This is nostalgic for me because this is one of the first Edmund Fitzgerald documentaries I watched on TH-cam and right now I'm 16 but I found out about Titanic in school, and S.S Edmund Fitzgerald was the second ship I found out about from my uncle letting me know about this and Britannic
Edit: I mean elementary school I found out about Titanic
Thank you for posting this great documentary!
Good job piecing these all together. I've been wanting to do that for a while myself. Is there anything that can be done with the glitchy audio though?
Sorry I can't fix the audio issue. I would like to fix it, but unfortunately I can't.
My late husband loaded the iron ore on the good ship Edmund Fitzgerald
I’m sorry you lost him.
Never underestimate the depravity of corporate greed. RIP to the sailors of the "Ftiz", and may God grant grace to the families of the crew.
That is not fair. From 1958 until 1975, the boat, and the company that owned it provided a good living for many people. And their families and dependants. Including the people who built it.
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, had the ship built for $8.4 million in 1958. $8,400,000 in 1958 money is equivalent in purchasing power to about $91,750,089.97 today. Are you going to make an investment to put people to work today? Or do you just work for someone else who figures out how to put bread on the table, and provide a living for others? Who should make the $91 million dollar investment that keeps industry running? Or should we go back to the horse and buggy?
The captain was not forced to sail. He CHOSE to sail. As well as the captain of the Anderson. Stop revising history, as if this happened today, instead of 1975.
"Shortly after leaving Superior, WI, the National Weather Service had issued gale warnings for the area of Lake Superior the Edmund Fitzgerald was going to be traveling through on its voyage to Detroit, MI.
This warning led the Fitzgerald and the other vessel sailing from Superior that day, the Arthur M Anderson, to change their plotted course on their journey to the Soo Locks at the opposite end of Lake Superior.
Just as so many of us do, we work with the best information we have at a given moment. This, according to many weather experts, was a fatal decision for the Fitzgerald.
It isn’t that they made the wrong choice, the technology available was simply primitive compared to the weather technology we have access to today. You don’t know what you don’t know. When we have information to make a clear, informed decision, we typically will make it with no second thought.
The logic used to make the decision to go north and cut over to the North Shore of Lake Superior was simply to avoid the sweeping winds across the open waters of Lake Superior. The forecast as it was able to be read at the time, showed the winds would come from the Northeast.
The simple science you need to understand in this scenario is, the more open water the wind travels across before it reaches the ship’s location, the bigger the waves. Going north and hugging the Northeast corner of Lake Superior would reduce the distance of open water between the land and the Fitzgerald, thus reducing the waves and wind the ship would face.
At that time, the models weren’t complex enough, nor was radar clear enough to accurately depict where the most severe patterns of weather were occurring. They simply appeared as white blotches on a screen.
The models were wrong, and instead, the wind came from the Northwest corner of the lake, and now the distance between the Fitzgerald and the land breaking the wind, was nearly at its theoretical maximum.
As the journey and the day of November 10th continued to play out, the Fitzgerald found itself in the worst possible position, in what is still to this day one of the worst recorded storms on Lake Superior.
From the data readings that live on from both weather observation stations onshore, and from the Captain of the Arthur M Anderson, there were recorded readings of sustained wind speeds between 50-60 mph, with gusts varying between 80-100mph. "
Please do tell us all about the depravity of the corporations that forced all the people to work, Building the ships. Mining the ore. Loading the ships. Running the ships. Operating the locks. All the money that funneled into Canadian and United States treasuries through taxes. From the mining of the ore to the making of automobiles. To the commerce facilitated by the autos produced. People at work. Should we go back to a barter economy? Forgo a monetary system? Outlaw corporations? Do away with the federal highway system? Disband the military? Get rid of FEMA? Do away with social security? In 2019 there were a total of 132,989,428 U.S. employees. While larger companies (500+ employees) make up less than 0.5% of entities they employ 23% of the workforce. Approximately 42% of tax revenue in the US comes from individuals. The largest percentage. And 23% of that.. comes from individuals.. WHO WORK FOR CORPORATIONS. And the corporations, pay 6% of the taxes going into the US treasury. State and local governments collected a combined $99 billion in revenue from corporate income taxes in 2021. Do you enjoy any state or government services? Food stamps, roads, courts? All helped to be paid for, via corporations.
@@Orcinus1967not all but many
@@truesoulghost2777 I did not say I was for laissez-faire government. Corporate polluters will never be "better off self regulating". Nor farmers using pesticides and herbicides. Regulated by former chemical company employees. Chlorpyrifos being one of my pet peeves. Funny how the funding to study that wonderful chemical got pulled...
Has Hollywood made a movie about the edmund Fitzgerald someone should tell them
I'm in the process of writing a screenplay for a film about the Edmund Fitzgerald. I wish I knew someone in Hollywood to get it noticed.
The footage in the documentary was originally intended for a movie back in 78 and 79, but the project fell through and the footage was supplied to NOVA for this documentary.
@@wordenentertainment1997Sadly, it would probably be over dramatized with some quasi soap opera elements thrown in. Directors and producers would site artistic license while turning into a totally unrealistic fantasy.
@@stargazer5784Like Cameron’s “Titanic”. Peyton Place meets the Poseidon Adventure. 😢
Too many white guys for Hollywood!
I remember seeing the wreck in the Detroit News on the bottom it was a such a sobering site. R.I.P. to all fair winds and following seas.😢😢
I still find it hard to believe shoaling occurred to the Fitz. I would've thought that even if it wasn't McSorley, someone else would've reported it from the ship, or one of the engine crew would've heard it. There was a survey done of the Six Fathom Shoal and other shoals in the area the Fitzgerald sailed through, none of them showed signs of a recent collision, and there was no damage to the Fitz's propellor or rudder, which you'd think would come with shoaling somewhere. I support the theory of a stress fracture. Former crew say the ship's hull would bend and sway in rough weather, and she was welded together, not riveted, and some who had inspected the ship before claim the welds weren't of the best quality.
@@Tyrunner0097 Well I know a crew member who was in board the Anderson that night. Captain Cooper stated that the waves would've caused rocking motion and would've been hard to feel any impact towards the bottom. Plus Cooper stated the Fitz was in the area of the shoal. The ship likely sideswiped on the shoal which tore the ballast tanks on the starboard side and caused the list. I believe it was a combination of both a shoaling and stress fracture that led the ship sinking.
“We found all kinds of them loose”…buddy…the ship got beat up and torn apart on the surface during a violent storm, and then sank within minutes in 530’ of water. I guarantee some of the hatch clamps that you “found loose” came loose between getting ripped in half and plunging to the bottom. Complacency is a bit of a coward’s motive to take when none of those guys are able to defend themselves.
I do not agree at all with the coast guards findings. Imo the clamps very likely came loose when the ship hit bottom, which would've caused the hull to compress and break in two, not to mention the taconite shifting. The crew of the Fitz were among the best sailors and did everything they could. Imo the ship accidentally got too close to the Caribou shoal and scraped on her starboard side like the Titanic did with the iceberg, which was where the ship was listing and that was the direction Caribou was to the Fitz. From there she took on more water than she could pump out and got nose heavy and dove to the bottom from a huge wave from her stern and once she hit, the ship compressed, hatches popped, and broke in two. No mayday or distress call, she just dove in at a fast rate. Basically the coast guard and Oglebay Norton were trying to avoid wrongdoing and put the blame on the crew, which was not the case. Oglebay ran her hard and the coast guard approved her condition at the time.
@@wordenentertainment1997I agree with that scenario as well. I think it was a stress fracture more so than a puncture in her hull since McSorely reported a fence rail down, the ship bowed more than usual in the rough seas.
@@wordenentertainment1997 I don't see why it is necessary for the ship to have struck bottom on Caribou Shoal for it to sink in those sea's. The Fitz was known to push for load totals at the end of the year so everytime it went out it went out fully loaded and then some. Former crew members said the captain cheated by underfueling the ship as in taking just enough to get to its destination with very little in reserve during the summer months so it could get even more onboard. That is a hard way for a ship to lead its service life so I am in the crowd of, the boat didn't hit bottom, and the crew also secured all the hatchcovers but it didn't matter because the hull was fatigued and it was out in a storm it had no right to be out in. There's a reason why there are no heavy weather captains currently captaining these ships on the great lakes today, because they have all seen the results.
@@BType13X2 That's another good explanation. Keep in mind McSorley was dealing with a lot of pressure from Oglebay Norton, the company that owned the ship so he had to fulfill their orders of how much tonnage the ship could carry at that time. One big reason why the ship may have hit the shoal was a number of factors. The ships radars were not functioning correctly, the tonnage in the cargo, and the charts they were supplied were outdated, which put the shoal further toward the island than where it was. Captain Cooper reported that the Fitz was in fact too close and it's very likely she hit bottom, as well as suffering fatigue stress in the hull. McSorley while at times a rough Captain was very well experienced and did everything he could given the circumstances.
@@wordenentertainment1997 The issue with that theory is that when they dove the shoal after the ship sunk there was no evidence that it had been impacted by a ship. Further as you stated the charts were inaccurate and modern surveys show that the shoal is closer in to caribou island and the Fitz would not have come close to its actual location. Finally there is no indication of grounding of either the propeller, rudder, stern or bow on the fitz. If it had struck a shoal there would be damage indicators in those area's. The grounding theory is just that a theory. The ship breaking up on the surface due to years of hard service and overloading is much more likely because it is widely known how hard the fitz was ran. And that isn't a jab at the captain in any degree it is just what the boat owners expected as you said. I do not understand the desire to mythologized or give further reason as to why the Fitz sunk other than, horrible storm, and stress fatigued hull ='s boat sinks. We have seen 2 other large lake freighter have that exact same thing occur without hitting a shoal.
Thoughts and and prayers to the families, Thank you for your sacrifice❤
R.I.P The crew aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10 1975. May God Almighty rest there soul's i hope there familes find peace.
I Believe A Stress Fracture Of The Hull Caused The Big Fitzgerald To Sink. Especially With The Type Of Damage That Captain Mcsorley Reported. A Broken Fence Rail And Missing Vents. Rest In Peace To The Crew. 🙏🙏
I agree, although I feel it was a combination of factors that led to the ship taking on water. I believe that the overloading of the ore, keel problems, possible shoaling on Caribou, and possible hogging led to the starboard ballast tank rupturing and weighed the ship down until it nose dived into Lake Superior suddenly.
@@wordenentertainment1997 I also agree with you on this too.
Know how many times I watch this video I ALWAYS fill sad.
I have a Canada $20 silver coloured coin of the Edmund Fitzgerald in my private collection.
@@abrahammorrison6374 Nice. I have an original Columbia Transportation cup that was likely on the Fitz on a previous corporate voyage. They were given to families of corporate clients as souvenirs.
@@wordenentertainment1997 Every penny made from the song, Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was given to the families of the 29 hands that were lost.
I’ve lived in WNY my whole life. Even those who dare not tread in the stormy lakes suffer its effects each winter with “lake effect” snow.
My Fathers birthday was November 10 he will gone 24 years Sept 24 I always think of the Fitz on his birthday .
Ever gone swimming in the Great Lakes Nikolas?
Yes
Lake superiour and lake michigan.
There were problems with the ship's keel ,it had no business being out there in November,but money being our God they didn't care,the whole entire tragedy is Unacceptable!
When they were loading they knocked out a 20-ft section on the bottom of the boat. They offered to weld it up but McSorley was in a hurry and just laid down at 20 ft section of steel over the hole and then dumped all the taconite on it. When he went back Caribou shoals because they had rescinded the load lines and she was overloaded it bottomed out. Remember she was 27 ft down loaded at least 10 ft sees and 36 ft of water near Caribou shoals mean she hit. Water does not compress that's why the vent covers were gone and she hog backed that's why the fence broke. Also two of the blades that they had replaced on the pop were on the deck that probably washed off. They could have poked holes in the side on the way down and the hatch covers were in deplorable condition. If you watch some of the videos of the Fitz sitting on the bottom you see kesner clamps are not dogged.
I believe it did hit bottom, but overall it was a combination of factors that doomed the ship and crew.
Why do you keep reuploading Nikolas?
There were a few errors made with the last upload, as some of the footage was cut from a different airing of this documentary. I left it up until today as it was the anniversary a few days ago. This is the fully fixed and perfect version and is staying. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I’m grateful for it. First saw this as a kid when it debuted on GlobalTV (Canada) not long after the bell was raised and it’s surprising to see that so much was cut. I suspect it was so networks could squeeze it into a certain amount of time (much like how some stations “trim” a movie’s run time).
@@wordenentertainment1997I think it’s wonderful that you’ve gone to so much effort to tell the story…. This is very well done and I thank you for it!
You gotta feel for those families especially Mr.Cundy’s wife, whatever ‘friend’ she had sounded like an absolute idiotic jackass saying ‘Guess what?’ Then just saying the ship sunk and all the men were dead. Idk if that’s just how people were back then but damn
@@zachhoward9099 it definitely was not the appropriate way to let someone know that their loved one was lost in the cold, harsh storm.
mile long swells on the ocean are not too much of a problem for a 700 foot long vessel that short steep seas would over stress
Wasn't it "the Fitz" rather than "big Fitz"? I used to jump off "the Dunn".
It was called many nicknames. Many referred to it as The Fitz, Big Fitz, Toledo Express, and even Titanic of the Great Lakes.
They will return
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