The Lore Lodge
The Lore Lodge
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What Really Happened to the Crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald?

Posted

November 7, 2025

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Go to or scan the QR code and use code LORELODGE to get your free FÜM Topper when you order your Journey Pack today.

The edge of the Alberta Clipper which had been following the Edmund Fitzgerald east crashed into the outskirts of the low pressure system moving up from the southwest, and everything went to hell. Waves exceeding fifteen feet battered the sides and deck of the ship, blinding snow left the pilothouse reliant on their instruments, and as they inched closer to Caribou Island, they discovered that the lighthouse had gone dark. Now fifteen miles behind Captain McSorely and his crew, Captain Jesse Cooper of the SS Anderson and his wheelsman “watched in horror as the gray blip on a black background, representing the Fitzgerald, seemed to run directly over Six Fathom Shoal, then slip too closely down the east side of Caribou Island…” and then, somehow, it kept going. By some miracle, it appeared that the Fitzgerald, overloaded and pushing the limits of the already lowered Plimsoll Line regulations, managed to avoid catastrophe as she steamed past the hazard - or so they thought. Welcome back to The Lore Lodge...

"The Fitzgerald would then hibernate in Toledo, where she would undergo her scheduled repairs. At just eighteen years old her best years were still ahead of her, and a half dozen or so lucky sailors would get the privilege of replacing the Fitzgerald veterans who would be retiring with McSorley. When the crew members boarded the Fitzgerald in Superior, Wisconsin, they would know that all of this, everything they had been working for all season long—and for some of them, decades—was now just three days and 784 miles away. They were that close.”

- John U. Bacon, The Gales of November

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Guests & Subjects Covered

FM TopperJourney PackAlberta ClipperEdmund FitzgeraldCaribou IslandCaptain McSorelyCaptain Jesse CooperSS Anderson

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