At the annual memorial service at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, Mich., the Rev. Rich...

1. The Edmund Fitzgerald, Beyond the Mystery « Liveshots
At the annual memorial service at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, Mich., the Rev.
Richard Ingalls Jr. quoted Gordon Lightfoot's famous ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,"
to help provide families some answers to one of the greatest mysteries of maritime history ... the
night in 1975 that the 729-foot freighter disappeared from radar and sank during an intense storm
on Lake Superior.
"Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" Ingalls
said.
"The answer is that it does not go anywhere, even if we in our mortal fear cannot see it."
During the ceremony, the Edmund Fitzgerald's bell, recovered in 1995, was rung 29 times, once for
each crew member who went down with the ship. But the Fitz's bell is an echo of another, one that
was rung on the same night 35 years ago. It was that bell's chime that was heard around the world.
It was Ingalls' father, the Rev. Richard Ingalls Sr., who climbed the bell tower at the Mariners'
Church in Detroit 35 years ago and tolled it 29 times.
"He stayed up, in touch with the Coast Guard station in Detroit," Ingalls said of his father. "At about
5:30 in the morning he called one last time and there was still no evidence of survivors. And they
knew that if someone had survived the sinking and stayed on the surface, they would not have
survived the night because of the coldness on the water."
"It was a shock," Ingalls said, "knowing that what had once been the largest ship on the Great Lakes
had suddenly gone to the bottom with all hands lost."

2. Ruth Hudson's 22-year-old son and only child, Bruce, was a deckhand on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
She says in the summer before the ship went down, Bruce talked about death a lot. Now she believes
it was a foreboding of the near future.
"I think he had premonitions," Says Hudson. "I think God was preparing what was to come."
Back then Hudson had worried about her son's new motorcycle, that it was dangerous. She says he
told her not to worry.... that "When I die, the whole world will know."
He was right.
Launched in 1958, The Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest, fastest, most luxurious iron ore carrier
plying the Great Lakes. It was known as "The Pride of the American side," in the international waters
the U.S. shares with Canada.
On Nov. 9, 1975, the Fitz steamed out of Superior, Wis., on a warm, sunny day, carrying 26,000 tons
of taconite pellets, used to make steel. About 15 miles behind her was another freighter, the Arthur
Anderson.
The next day, the north winds began to howl and bear down on the region. Maritime buffs call it
"The Witch of November," suddenly cold, wicked and vicious. It's why the big ships back then usually
ended their season by mid-November.
The storm clocked winds of 80 miles per hour, with gusts to perhaps 90. If you are looking for best
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The captain of the Arthur Anderson later reported a rogue wave at 70 feet.
The tempest took its toll. It knocked out the beacon and fog horn at Whitefish Point Lighthouse in
Michigan, the Fitzgerald's nearest harbor of safety. On top of all that, the Fitzgerald lost power to
both radars.
She was essentially sailing blind into the night during one of the worst storms in history. And it
pushed the Fitz beyond its limits. The last thing heard from the captain, Ernest McSorley, was that,
"We're holding our own."
Shortly after that ... nothing.
Theories abound as to what caused the ship to go down. There are suggestions that she hit the
bottom of some uncharted shallow waters and sustained damage that mde her more vulnerable to a
rogue wave.
"Everything that could go wrong did," says Tom Farnquist, executive director of the Great Lakes
Shipwreck Museum, who has gone on two expeditions to the Fitzgerald's resting place and has
investigated the ship's hull more than 500 feet below the surface.
"We may never know what put the final death blow to this ship," he says. "But it didn't even have
time to call for help. So the ship just disappeared off the radar, sailed into headlines and the history
books, and there it lays, 17 miles from our museum site."
But the legacy of the Edmund Fitzgerald lives on in the soul of the ship; its bell, which was
recovered in 1995; and in Gordon Lightfoot's haunting ballad, which the singer wrote just days after
the Mariner's Church bell rang.
The song and the church are forever intertwined. As the tale goes, according to Ingalls, when his
father chimed the somber bell on the morning of Nov. 11, 1975, an AP reporter waiting for the shops
to open in Detroit came running. Knocking on the church door, the reporter was greeted by the
Ingalls Sr., who told him that it was a tradition to ring the church bells for souls lost at sea. And he
told him of the sailors and their lives on the Great Lake long ships, and the day the greatest of them
all, the Edmund Fitzgerald, was born in a Detroit Shipyard.
That encounter gave birth to a story that went national. Inspired by the narrative, Lightfoot wrote
his famous song. It became a hit, and it provided spiritual nourishment for Ingalls Jr., who now is the
rector of Mariners' Church.
The question of "Where does the love of God go when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" speaks
to the larger human condition, Ingalls says.
We are all mariners navigating the seas of life, looking for safe harbors, he says. And mysteries like
the sinking of the Fitzgerald teach "a lesson that we are not in total control," and that there is only
one truly safe harbor.

4. "It's everywhere, in every place, at all times, throughout eternity."
http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/12/the-edmund-fitzgerald-beyond-the-mystery-a-strength
ening-faith/