The Trial of the Edmund Fitzgerald: Eyewitness Accounts from the U.S. Coast Guard Hearings

Drawing on thousands of never-before-seen pages of expert testimony, this book retraces the loss of Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on the Lake Superior in November 1975.

The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the most famous shipwreck stories in Great Lakes history. It is also one of maritime lore’s great mysteries, the details of its disappearance as obscure now as on that fateful November day in 1975. The investigation into the wreck, resulting in a controversial final report, generated more than 3,000 pages of documentation, a mere fraction of which has been made available to the public. In the words of search and rescue personnel, ship designers and inspectors, scientists and naval engineers, former crewmen of the Fitz and the Arthur M. Anderson (the nearby ore carrier that captured the damaged vessel’s last communications), this book recreates the doomed ore boat’s final minutes, the suspense of the search and rescue operations, and the drama of the subsequent Coast Guard inquiry. We follow the investigation, the speculation, and expert testimony to a problematic conclusion-countered by an alternate theory that the Anderson’s captain maintained to his dying day. By declaring the Edmund Fitzgerald an official gravesite, Canada closed the wreck to further exploration. But here the exploration continues, providing a unique, and uniquely enlightening, perspective on this unforgettable episode in America’s maritime history.