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Date 1-15-08
S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald's
50th Birthday
Ric Mixter
When we think of
anniversaries it should be a positive recollection that
comes to mind. In this regard, I'd like to remember the 50th Anniversary
of
the most famous ship to ever sail the Great Lakes on its birthday- not
for
its untimely sinking.
The Fitzgerald was
built in 1958, just downriver from Detroit. It was one
of the final hurrahs for the Great Lakes Engineering Works, which would
only
turn out two more freighters after the 'Mighty Fitz'. As hull 301, it
was
designed to haul more cargo than ever imagined, stretching 729 feet
in
length with three massive cargo holds. It was so big it could fit several
famous ships on its main deck; including the Mayflower, Nina, Pinta,
Santa
Maria and even the ironclad Monitor.
Richard Bone watched
the construction of the ship with a view like no other.
As a gantry crane operator, he helped lift large sections of the ship,
putting them in place for welding. These twin cranes ran on railroad
tracks
that stretched 800 feet long, and despite their immense weight, they
would
often rise up from the heavy lifting.
"Some of those
loads we would pick up with the boom out", Richard explains,
"the trucks would lift off several inches on the rail." This
was especially
true when the two gantries were used in tandem to pick up the boilers.
"We
had to take two cranes to lift one half of the boiler, and it took 6
tons of
rigging to pick those things up. We had to pick it straight up and over
the
ship. The other guy was more experienced than me and he did the controlling
of bringing those cranes together and we still couldn't get it over
to the
middle of the ship. They had to put it on rollers and roll it in the
ship"
The boilers were
84 tons apiece, requiring installation before launch.
Unlike most ships of her age, The Edmund Fitzgerald would be built with
most
of its machinery already below decks before the ship hit the water.
Shipyard workers
built well into the night to complete the ship, and Richard
says that darkness was rarely a problem when the welders were working.
"Here
I am looking at all this arc and they don't stop until they burn up
a rod..
And with 22 welders under you.. You couldn't see hardly."
Another difficult
spot was inside the ballast tanks that run the length of
the ship. Many of these places were riveted, and it was Roland Peters'
job
to squeeze into the very bowels of the Fitzgerald. "I hated it
down there,
when I had to go down to the sea chest a space that high and I had to
crawl
in there and haul all that junk in there and drill the holes in that
sea
chest"
Roland was paid
eight cents for every hole he drilled, boring as many as 400
rivet holes to make 32 dollars each shift. "I had a guy in the
machine shop
and he would sharpen my bits and I could get 200 holes out of one
sharpening.. So he was good!"
Progress went quickly
and soon the midsection of the ship was in place, a
massive 870 thousand cubic feet of space within three cargo holds. Ten
months after the keel was laid, the ship was ready for launch. Roland
remembers that the ship was launched by sheer muscle power. "They'd
use
sledge hammers and wedges and pick the ship up. maybe an eighth inch.
and
then trigger her down.. Down she'd go."
On June 8th, 1958,
The shipyard swelled as 15 thousand onlookers waited for
the guillotine to send the Fitz into the Detroit River. Local newspapers
heralded it as 'the largest object ever dropped into freshwater'.
Mrs. Edmund Fitzgerald
arrived with her family and scores of dignitaries
from Oglebay Norton and Northwestern Mutual climbed the stairs to the
launching platform. 20 shipyard workers climbed aboard the Fitzgerald;
caulkers and chippers who were to plug any holes discovered once the
keel
got wet. Ed points out that he is in the film and photos taken from
the
stern view of the ship as it entered the slip. "I'm the guy with
the death
grip on the stanchion when she went in, and after we stopped bobbing
around
I said 'what do we do now?' The foreman said 'now we go down into the
double bottom and listen for water running in.' I said 'if we hear running
water, you will hear the sound of running feet.. That's me getting off
the
boat.' But we never had any leaks"
Finishing work continued
after tugs maneuvered the Fitz in the narrow slip
located just downriver from the Ambassador Bridge. The aft deck was
added,
and the smokestack with the Columbia Star was perched atop. The gantry
crane was also used to build the forward end. It was one of Richard's
final
projects on the ship. "When they put the texas deck on.. I picked
that up
in one piece and put it on. I don't think it weighed more than ten or
fifteen tons."
17 years later a
killer storm would rip the ship into two large sections,
killing all 29 of its crew. In 2007, Ed and Richard returned to the
former
site of the launch basin, near the Great Lakes Yacht Club in River Rouge.
Floating over the site where the Fitz was first 'baptized' into the
Great
Lakes was emotional for Ed Bone. "I never thought 50 years later
I'd be out
here banging around in the same slip", he said as tears welled
up in his
eyes, "it meant a lot to me then.. and it means a lot now."
(Ric Mixter features
the complete building of the Fitzgerald from early
films at the shipyard in his new documentary "The Edmund Fitzgerald
Investigations". It is the only DVD to feature every expedition
to the
shipwreck, including his dive in the submersible DELTA in 1994)
www.lakefury.com or (989) 498-4550 for more details
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