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lsandersonFor a Shipwreck of Legend, the Spotlight Dims a Bit
By JOHN CARPENTER
DETROIT, Nov. 10 — Thirty-one years after it occurred and almost as long since it was immortalized in a popular song, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald will finally recede into the ranks of other Great Lakes maritime disasters at an annual memorial service here.
The rector of the Mariners’ Church of Detroit, as well as families of the 29 men lost on the ship, say it is time to de-emphasize the wreck, particularly now that Canadian officials have put it off limits to divers, a goal of those who have helped keep the legend alive. So the service — this year’s is being held Sunday — will now remember all of the countless mariners lost on the lakes, as it once did, rather than just those on the Fitzgerald, as it has for three decades.
“I feel comfortable with this,” said Ruth Hudson of North Olmsted, Ohio, whose son, Bruce, was a deckhand on the Fitzgerald. “I think it’s time to do this. It’s time to let it rest.”
The Edmund Fitzgerald, a 729-foot ore carrier that was one of the largest freighters on the Great Lakes, left Superior, Wis., for Detroit on Nov. 9, 1975, and sank suddenly in a storm the next day. Most students of the wreck think the ship, having taken on water, nose-dived under a large wave before plummeting to the bottom. A nearby freighter reported that the Fitzgerald’s lights simply disappeared in the driving snow. There was no distress signal.
The Mariners’ Church, just a few hundred yards from the Detroit River and the passing freighters that still carry raw materials from the north to the steel mills of the Midwest, has been dedicated to sailors since 1848. When it became certain on the morning after the Fitzgerald went down that no one aboard had survived, the rector, the Rev. Richard Ingalls, quietly unlocked the bell tower and tolled the church bell 29 times, once for each man lost.
Mr. Ingalls, who died this year, had presided over the church since 1965. “It was his tradition to ring the bell every time a life was lost on the lakes,” said his son, the Rev. Richard W. Ingalls Jr., who succeeded him as rector. More
By JOHN CARPENTER
DETROIT, Nov. 10 — Thirty-one years after it occurred and almost as long since it was immortalized in a popular song, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald will finally recede into the ranks of other Great Lakes maritime disasters at an annual memorial service here.
The rector of the Mariners’ Church of Detroit, as well as families of the 29 men lost on the ship, say it is time to de-emphasize the wreck, particularly now that Canadian officials have put it off limits to divers, a goal of those who have helped keep the legend alive. So the service — this year’s is being held Sunday — will now remember all of the countless mariners lost on the lakes, as it once did, rather than just those on the Fitzgerald, as it has for three decades.
“I feel comfortable with this,” said Ruth Hudson of North Olmsted, Ohio, whose son, Bruce, was a deckhand on the Fitzgerald. “I think it’s time to do this. It’s time to let it rest.”
The Edmund Fitzgerald, a 729-foot ore carrier that was one of the largest freighters on the Great Lakes, left Superior, Wis., for Detroit on Nov. 9, 1975, and sank suddenly in a storm the next day. Most students of the wreck think the ship, having taken on water, nose-dived under a large wave before plummeting to the bottom. A nearby freighter reported that the Fitzgerald’s lights simply disappeared in the driving snow. There was no distress signal.
The Mariners’ Church, just a few hundred yards from the Detroit River and the passing freighters that still carry raw materials from the north to the steel mills of the Midwest, has been dedicated to sailors since 1848. When it became certain on the morning after the Fitzgerald went down that no one aboard had survived, the rector, the Rev. Richard Ingalls, quietly unlocked the bell tower and tolled the church bell 29 times, once for each man lost.
Mr. Ingalls, who died this year, had presided over the church since 1965. “It was his tradition to ring the bell every time a life was lost on the lakes,” said his son, the Rev. Richard W. Ingalls Jr., who succeeded him as rector. More
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Date: 2006-11-11 04:32 pm (UTC)K.