I've loved the song since my childhood but was disappointed when I learned G.L. took some artistic license with the lyrics.

quote:

Originally posted by hjs157:
I've loved the song since my childhood but was disappointed when I learned G.L. took some artistic license with the lyrics.

It is a song, not a historical treatise.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
Fellas its been good to know ya.

That would be a good cut.

I love that lyric as well

I only remember what I've been told by my dad. I was a kid living in Wisconsin when it happened. But my dad loved Gordon lightfoot so I was exposed to the songs, and his recollection of the timeline as reported in Wisconsin, many times as a child

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Originally posted by Gustofer:
How can you hate a song with arguably the best lyric ever put music:

Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours...

I think I mentioned last year that I was in college in Marquette when the storm hit. First we went to the park in town to see the storm. The road was washing out. For those that have been to Marquette Lakeshore Drive was not protected with boulders then, they were placed there in response to the storm. Later we went to Sugerloaf to watch from up high. The waves looked like small mountains moving across the lake. They said the waves were 30 feet bur every so often you would see one three times higher than the others. One theroy is the boat got up on two of these and split.

The storm last week produced waves that measured 37 feet. I believe if you look up Marquette Mining Journal web site you may find some video.

Some people consider Lake Erie more dangerous than Superior because it is so much shallower.

Jim

quote:

Originally posted by BB61:
How does a storm on the Great Lakes compare to one in the deep ocean?

A few years agp a US Navy frigate IIRC, docked at Navy Pier in Chicago. I was talking to one of the sailors on that ship and this question came up. He told me that he had sailed all over the world and that the storms on the Great Lakes were the second worse he had ever seen, the worst being on the Arabian sea IIRC.

One of the crewmen listed as 'lost', was a Mr. John D. Simmons. Do any of you fellas who live up in MI know if he was related to the Simmons brothers of Simmons Airlines? Thanks.

I was stationed at KI Sawyer when the Fitz sank. For our civilian employees, many who knew the crew, it was a real shock.
Comparable to the loss of the Space Shuttle, just more local.
And we had a similar storm just a week or so ago. Huge waves at Presque Isle Park swept 2 sightseers off the rocks. The bodies have yet to be recovered.

quote:

Originally posted by Pal:
One theroy is the boat got up on two of these and split.

In the book Gales of November one possible theory is that based on the path the Fitzgerald took (she was followed by another freighter and the Captains were in communication with each other) she may have passed between two islands with shoals between that had the depths marked differently, depending on which chart was used at the time.

Supposedly, the Fitzgerald bottomed out on the shoals, gashing the hull, which lead to uncontrollable flooding in the cargo holds.

That aside, a haunting and beautiful song.

Excellent song, and tragic story. My wife and I honeymooned in the UP, and we've been back 5 or 6 times since. Whitefish point is one of the places we hit every time.

Lake Superior is beautiful, but can turn deadly really quickly. At Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, if you walk the 1.5 mile stretch of beach between Hurricane River and Au Sable light station, you can see the remains of three wrecks that have washed up in just that short distance.