Great Lakes Engineering Works

United States Est. 1902 Closed 1960s

Great Lakes Engineering Works operated out of River Rouge, Michigan, building vessels designed for a specific and demanding environment: the Great Lakes inland seas. The yard specialized in bulk carriers, the long, flat-decked freighters that haul iron ore, coal, limestone, and grain through the locks and channels connecting Lakes Superior, Huron, Michigan, Erie, and Ontario. Great Lakes ships are constrained by the Poe Lock at Sault Ste. Marie and the Welland Canal locks between Erie and Ontario. Every vessel is designed around these dimensional limits, producing the distinctive long, narrow profile of a laker. Great Lakes Engineering understood these constraints intimately and built ships optimized for maximum cargo capacity within them. The yard's most famous product is SS Edmund Fitzgerald, launched in 1958 as the largest ship on the Great Lakes. At 729 feet, Fitzgerald was a workhorse of the iron ore trade, hauling taconite from the mines of Minnesota to the steel mills of the lower lakes. The yard closed in the 1960s as Great Lakes shipbuilding consolidated into fewer, larger operations.

Heritage

Great Lakes shipbuilding is its own tradition, distinct from saltwater construction. The ships are designed for freshwater, for specific lock dimensions, for the short brutal storms of the lakes rather than the long swells of the ocean. Great Lakes Engineering was one of the premier practitioners of this specialized craft. Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, with all 29 crew lost, made her the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes. Gordon Lightfoot's ballad ensured that a generation of people who'd never seen a laker knew her name. The ship Great Lakes Engineering built in 1958 became, in death, the vessel that defined an entire maritime tradition for the American public.

Vessels (1)

SS Edmund Fitzgerald

When the Edmund Fitzgerald launched in 1958, she was the largest ship on the Great Lakes and a point of pride for the iron ore trade. She spent seventeen years hauling taconite pellets between the mines of Minnesota and the steel mills of the lower lakes. She set cargo records. People watched her pass through the Soo Locks the way they'd watch a parade float. She had a nickname: the Fitz. On November 10, 1975, she sank in a storm on Lake Superior. All 29 crew members died. There was no distress signal. The last communication was Captain Ernest McSorley telling the Arthur M. Anderson, "We are holding our own." Then she was gone. The cause is still debated fifty years later, and that debate has become part of the story. The leading theories are structural failure from stress fractures in the hull, flooding through improperly secured hatch covers, shoaling over Six Fathom Shoal that ripped the bottom, or a rogue wave. The Coast Guard blamed the hatch covers. The lake pilots' union blamed structural failure. Nobody knows for certain because the crew isn't here to tell us. Gordon Lightfoot released "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" a year later, and it turned a regional maritime disaster into a permanent piece of American folklore. The song plays in every bar in the Upper Peninsula. It made the Fitzgerald the most famous shipwreck in Great Lakes history, and it ensured that the 29 men who died would never be anonymous statistics. The wreck also forced real changes. The Coast Guard mandated stricter inspection schedules for Great Lakes freighters, required survival suits for crews, and tightened hatch cover standards. Twenty-nine men died to get those rules written.

1958-1975 · cargo-transport