"The church bell chimed til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald."   -Gordon Lightfoot

Yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the sinking.  At about 7:10PM on 11/10/75, without issuing a distress call, the Fitzgerald disappeared from the radar of the Arthur Anderson, another iron boat that was 10 miles behind her in a particularly violent November gale.

She went down with all hands.  Her ending was abrupt.

Since that night, the sinking of Edmund Fitzgerald has been the subject of debate and no small amount of acrimony.  The initial Coast Guard report on the sinking blamed her demise to "improperly applied hatch clamps."  The [i]Anderson's[/i] captain was convinced that she bottomed out on the six fathom shoal, a well known (but poorly charted) hazard to navigation.  Ohter armchair historians point toward the condition of the vessel herself, heavily laden and with numerous stress cracks and a loose keel.  

A final hypothesis is the documented appearance of two forty foot rogue waves.  These waves struck the [i]Anderson[/i] at roughly 7:00PM.  Their height was confirmed by the damage done to a lifeboat on the upper deck.  

As I was writing "And The Seal Shall Yield Up,"  I attempted to involve each of these hypotheses as accomplices to the sinking of the [i]Eileen McSorley.[/i]  Having read several books, the USCG and Canadian reports, as well as the dearth of interview footage featuring the Anderson's captain and aux crew from the Fitzgerald, I tend to believe that it was a number of these failures combined that sent her to the bottom of Lake Superior.

Regardless, twenty-nine families were forever changed.  I hope that my portrayals of fictional crew and captain were sufficiently respectful of those involved in the inspiration for this story.