DULUTH — The Duluth Public Library alone holds over two dozen books about the Edmund Fitzgerald. Yet, John U. Bacon’s new book, “The Gales of November,” is subtitled “The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
What could possibly still be left untold?
“Almost all the (existing) books are focused on what happened: the whodunit, mystery aspect of it,” Bacon said. While his book delves into that question, it also includes extensive information on the lives and experiences of the men who died when the ship foundered in a Lake Superior storm Nov. 10, 1975.
“We get six crew members who (were previously) part of this crew and knew the people on it and knew the ship. That’s almost unheard of,” Bacon said. Also, “we got the families, who otherwise don’t talk but were very generous with me.”
Bacon also wanted to put the Fitzgerald, which was launched in 1958, in its larger historical context.
“This area was the Silicon Valley of its time,” Bacon said. “It’s called the Rust Belt now, but Detroit was San Francisco in the ’50s and ’60s, and Minneapolis, right up there. Chicago, Green Bay, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Buffalo. These are enormous cities, very important.”
The result is a book that broadens the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Readers come to appreciate the life and times of the best-known bulk carrier ever to ply the Great Lakes.
“The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is a new book by John U. Bacon.Jay Gabler / Duluth Media Group
Bacon doesn’t take for granted, for example, that readers will know what a normal day might have looked like for crew members on a ship like the Fitzgerald. “The Gales of November” breaks the crew’s responsibilities down, job by job.
“I’ve been gratified, even from the family members, to hear they actually learned more about what their dads and uncles and cousins and so on did from this book,” Bacon said. “It’s very hard work. It’s pretty noble work. It’s essential work.”
Poignantly, Bacon even explores the question of how those crew members might have spent their last hours on shore as the Fitzgerald sat at Burlington Northern’s Allouez docks in Superior, Wisconsin. Some stopped at the President Bar, cashing checks and listening to favorite songs like “Brandy (You’re a Fine Girl).”
Some Edmund Fitzgerald crew members stopped by the President Bar in Superior, Wisconsin, the night before the ship’s final run.Jay Gabler / 2022 file / Duluth Media Group
(The 1972 Looking Glass hit about a harbor town girl who can’t compete with the sea for a sailor’s love was, Bacon learned, very popular among Great Lakes freighter crews of the era.)
“The heartbreaking part for me is how happy they were,” Bacon said. “The guys on the (Arthur M.) Anderson, just half an hour up the road in Two Harbors, they’ve got two months left. … (The Fitzgerald crew members) know that, because of McSorley’s wife, because of repairs that needed to be done, they’ve got two days left. This is their last run (of the season). This is it.”
Ernest McSorley, captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald, was planning to retire after the ship’s Detroit run. His wife was in ill health, and he was looking forward to having more time to care for her. As it happened, Nellie McSorley would outlive her husband by 18 years.
The Edmund Fitzgerald at a Burlington Northern ore dock near Allouez Bay in Superior. This photo is undated, but an inscription on the back describes it as the “last known photo of (Edmund) Fitzgerald at Allouez docks.”Contributed / Verne B. Hildebrandt / Lake Superior Maritime Collection at the University of Wisconsin-Superior Special Collections and Archives
The Fitzgerald and the Anderson, which left Two Harbors shortly after the Fitzgerald left Superior, both headed to the Soo Locks, and both initially planned to take their typical route across Lake Superior’s South Shore.
As the weather worsened, though, McSorley and, on the Anderson, Capt. Bernie Cooper, decided to follow a longer but more sheltered northerly route.
“You just gave that storm 14 hours to get there first,” said Bacon, referring to one of the systems that collided to cause the calamitous conditions the Fitzgerald encountered at the lake’s eastern tip. “You also gave the ship several more hours to fill with water. Otherwise, you’d be at Whitefish Bay. You wouldn’t be in great shape, but you’d be there and you’d be safe.”
McSorley also decided to slow down and wait for the Anderson near the end, when the Fitzgerald had lost its radar capability and was relying on the Anderson to help guide its course. At other points in the run, though, the ship sped ahead, potentially subjecting its hull to greater stress.
One of Bacon’s most revealing sources was Rick Barthuli, who was working in the Anderson’s engine room that night. According to Barthuli, the Anderson’s chief engineer quietly ignored Cooper’s orders to drive that laker harder than the engineer deemed safe.
“If you do the smart thing you’ll live to see another day,” Barthuli told Bacon. “So will the captain — even though he won’t know why, and he’ll probably think it’s because of something he did.”
Bacon said Barthuli “might be the last person” alive who was on the Arthur Anderson on Nov. 10, 1975. Bacon spent a full year trying to reach Barthuli.
“He does not have email. He’s in Florida half the year,” Bacon said. “Very, very independent soul, to say the least. Got a hold of him. At first, he’s reluctant, and then we become very good friends.”
In addition to telling the human story of the Fitzgerald, Bacon strove to present the story of the ship’s demise in all its complexity. The reality, he said, is that a combination of factors contributed to the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
“You’ve got all these safety nets that get pulled back one by one by one, and if you had half of them, you’d probably be OK, but you got rid of all of them, pretty much,” Bacon said.
That wasn’t just a matter of decisions made on the Fitzgerald’s final run, but all the decisions leading up to an arguably overloaded freighter proceeding into the gales of November.
“It’s me walking blindfolded around the Grand Canyon,” Bacon said by way of analogy. “If I had a blindfold on, I don’t know I was two feet from going over. If I go over, I’m dead, but if I walk back, I think that was nothing. Blindfold off. And that’s what they kept doing.”
After a half-century of media attention, often unwanted, many of the crew members’ relatives are wary of talking publicly about their loved ones. Bacon was pleased to earn the trust of several families, though, and his book offers the fullest account yet of the lives those men lived.
“It’s good to get that out — their full character, who they really were, what their lives were like,” Bacon said. He also wanted to communicate “the incredible sacrifices of these families.” A career in shipping meant, routinely, long hauls away from home.
A member of the Mark W. Barker crew, left, waves to the crowd in Canal Park as the laker travels through the Duluth Entry in December 2023.Dan Williamson / File / Duluth Media Group
“You don’t have a dad for nine months out of the year. How is that not going to hurt?” Bacon asked, rhetorically. “The sacrifices made before you get to the shipwreck were also, I think, a big part of the story.”
While researching his book, Bacon spoke with people across the Northland.
“Once I got in touch with one person, they told me about their friends, from Silver Bay to Two Harbors to Duluth to Ashland,” he said. With many of his sources being far from young, Bacon felt a sense of urgency.
“The accident is 50 years old,” he noted. “If you don’t get one final version down, this might be the last real chance to do it.”
