I picked up John U. Bacon's 2025 book "The Gales of November" because I thought it would tell me the story of the wreck of Edmund Fitzgerald, the freighter that sank in a storm in Lake Superior in 1975, taking the lives of 29 men with it.
The book does tell that story, but it also has a lot more. Bacon describes the history of shipping on the Great Lakes, the ships, the work, life aboard the vessels, the men who worked on them, and even the crew's families.
Frankly, this is the kind of storytelling that often makes me impatient. "C'mon," you'll find me saying. "Let's get to the important stuff."
But Bacon is such a talented writer and thorough researcher, that every bit of this book is interesting. Bacon conducted hundreds of interviews and scoured through historical records, collecting truckloads of illuminating stories. Every page of the book is filled with details that surprise or educate, sometimes both.
In all, "The Gales of November" is one of the best books I've ever read.
To start, Bacon takes the reader back a couple centuries to explain the how Great Lakes shipping began with the transportation of beaver pelts, then moved on to copper and lumber and eventually to taconite, the rock that gives us iron. Taconite is dug out of northern Minnesota, then shipped to Detroit or Toledo for processing so the iron can be extracted and made into steel. Long the "cash crop" of Great Lakes shipping, there were 26,000 tons of taconite aboard the Edmund Fitzgerald on its final voyage.
While most of us don't spend much time thinking about Great Lakes shipping, Bacon shows that it has been vital for the development of the United States. The auto industry, for one, depends on it. He makes a compelling case that America wouldn't have won World War II without the freighters of the Great Lakes bringing the elements needed to make planes, ships and vehicles for the military.
But shipping on these inland lakes comes with significant hazards. The storms and unruly waves they produce make the Great Lakes more dangerous for ships than the ocean. Bacon recounts the storm of 1913, which sank 19 ships and left 254 people dead. "For two weeks bodies surfaced on the coasts of the Great Lakes."
The launching of the Edmund Fitzgerald 1958 was a game-changer. The biggest and fastest freighter on the lakes, the famous "Fitz" drew crowds to its launch, broke records, and attracted VIP guests to well-appointed dining room and first-rate cabins. Even though some bigger and faster ships were eventually built, the Fitzgerald retained its status as the most respected and renowned on the lakes.
Bacon introduces us to the men who made this their career(at the time, there were no women crew members). For nine months of the year — they took the winter off when ice clogged the lakes — the men went back and forth across the lakes, earning good pay but rarely seeing their families.
In the summer, the workers in the engine room found the metal on hand rails so hot you could leave skin on them if you weren't careful. "If it was 90 degrees outside, it could be 120 degrees in the engine room," Bacon writes. "The engine crew would sweat so much they'd leave white salt lines on their blue work T-shirts from the sweat drying."
Not that other jobs on the boat were easy. Three deckhands had the chore of latching and unlatching 1,428 hatch clamps on every departure and arrival — and they had to do it quickly, because everyone else was waiting for them to finish.
Many of the men didn't know how to swim, Bacon notes. Some said it didn't matter — the lakes were so cold, if your ship sank you would die quickly regardless.
At off loading, a giant crane would grab huge "fistfuls" of taconite, then lower a bulldozer into the holds of the ship to push the rock into piles that could be more easily grabbed. Once that hold was empty, the crane and the bulldozer moved on to the next one.
Bacon finds nice side stories, too. He tells of the only boat in the U.S. with it's own zip code, the J.W. Westcott, which delivers mail to the sailors on Great Lakes ships.
If Bacon had stopped here, even with no mention of the sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald, he would still have had an excellent book.
When he does tell of the final journey of the Fitz, in in the final 40 percent of the book, the story grows tense. It can be painful to read. You know it's going to end in tragedy, but even as you're reading it, you're hoping that something, anything, will take them down a different path.
The voyage began inauspiciously. As the Fitzgerald left the dock at departure at Superior, Wisconsin, the weatther was uncharacteristically calm and relatively warm for November.
Soon, however, two monstrous storms, one from the northwest, one from the southwest, came together over Lake Superior, kicking up winds of 85-miles-hour and turbulent waves.
It is impossible to know for sure why the Fitzgerald sank since there were no survivors and there was no "black box" in the pilot house. Bacon finds clues in looking at other ships that were in the water that day, particularly the Anderson, which was similar size to the Fitz and just a little behind it when it disappeared.
If you want a full explanation for the sinking, you should read the book, but I'll try to sum up the key factors.
First, it was epic storm, one of the all-time worst. The storm produced 30-fout waves that rolled over the Fitzgerald's deck. It knocked out the ship's radar and pushed and pulled on the ship in extraordinary ways.
Second, they were carrying too much taconite. It wasn't unusual for the freighters like the Fitz to push, and even exceed, weight limits. The company earned more money and the captain often got a bonus if they carried more. But in November, with its more perilous weather, captains usually avoid being overweight, Bacon explains.
Third, they were going too fast. The Fitzgerald almost always went fast; that's what it was know for and that helped its owners make more money. But the severe conditions of this storm required a slower pace to allow the ship to synchronize with the waves, rather than fight them, Bacon explains.
Fourth, they failed to pull into safe harbor when the storm turned bad. One ship, the Wilfred Sykes, did, pulling into the protection of Thunder Bay, but the Fitz was bigger and had survived many a storm, possibly leading to overconfidence of Captain McSorley (Bacon goes out of his way to emphasize that McSorley was considered the best captain on the lakes, but may have still made mistakes on this day).
It's also possible that the breakthrough design of the Fitz was a factor. The ship had been built with fewer rivets (but more welds) to save weight. Crew members had often commented on how much the ship bent in heavy waves. Supposedly this was an advantage, allowing the ship to bend but not break. But in this storm, the ship did break, splitting in two. Did the design make it too weak?
Bacon also outlines a tepid response from the Coast Guard to calls from McSorley, but it's likely that any rescue mission would have come too late.
Finally, the mere mention of this tragic voyage likely reminds you of Gordon Lightfoot's famous song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Bacon doesn't ignore this, spending a fascinating chapter describing how Lightfoot, a recreational sailor on Lake Superior, wrote lyrics for the song after reading the news coverage.
Lightfoot agonzied over the song, fearful that doing it wrong could come off as tone-deaf or look like he was simply cashing in on the tragedy. It was only because Lightfoot's band had some extra studio time that he agreed to even try recording the song at all.
As it turned out, the recorded version — the one you've surely heard many times — come from the very first time Lightfoot and his band did the song. No one but Lightfoot even knew the lyrics until that moment. They later did three or four more attempts with the song, but eveentually decided the first take was the best.
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