Customer Reviews

Gales of November: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a great book about the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. If you have never read a book on the Fitz this is a great start. The author does a great job of introducing you to the crew and what life is like sailing on the Great Lakes. He takes several of the crew and introduces you to their personality and their history. This helps you to develope feelings for the crew member as they sail on the Lakes. Hemming also does a good job of presenting the facts of the sinking and helps you to understand what the last several hours were like on the Fitzgerald. The book is very inclusive when it comes to describing the factors that lead to the Fitz's eventual demise. The only complaint that I have about the book is that Hemming described vividly the crews last actions immediately prior to the sinking when no further contact was made with any other ships. Since nobody knows exactly what happen during this period of time the author may have created a scinario to keep the book real. He accomplishes this but it may compromise the facts. All in all I learned a lot about the story and I think most readers will too.

The Edmund Fitzgerald, immortalized in song by Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, was, at the time, the largest vessel to sail on the Great Lakes. At over 750 feet long, it was nearly as large as a World War II era battleship. The thing that made the "Fitz" so special was her large cargo capacity; she could carry well over twenty thousand tons of cargo in her massive holds. However, these holds might have ultimately led to her demise on a stormy night in November, 1975.

The Great lakes are famous for their storms and gales, but in early November, 1975, a storm of immense strength bore down on Lake Superior and unleased its vengance on the ships that dared sail on the lake. The storm was born in the southwestern United States, and as it moved slowly northward, it gathered tremendous amounts of moisture. Its warm winds, when coupled with the north's cooler air, made a cauldron of swirling winds, sleet, and snow. The winds whipped as much as one hundred miles per hour and made waves as high as thirty feet.

While this storm was intensifying, the "Fitz" set out on its trip across Superior. Another ship, the Arthur Anderson, was travelling in the same direction as the Fitzgerald and they kept in contact by radio. Soon, the rolling seas were slamming into the Fitz, and she began to take on water. Some water managed to leak in around the hatch covers, but, without radar to assist them, the Fitz was forced to rely upon charts from the U.S. and Canada to map a course across Superior. Unfortunately, the charts weren't completely accurate, and the Fitz's course sent her directly over a submurged shoal, which punched holes in the hull, allowing more water to enter the ship.

The ship began to list and the pumps were unable to keep up with the amount of water pouring in. Finally, a huge wave hit the side of the ship, driving the bow deep into the lake, and instead of popping back up, the bow kept on going down, taking the rest of the ship along. Twenty nine men died in the span of a few minutes as the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald came to rest in 530 feet of water at the bottom of Lake Superior.

This book gives an excellent narrative about the loss of the Fitzgerald and life on the Great Lakes in general. The reader also gets a glimpse into the lives of each crewman aboard, as well as some other memorable shipwrecks that occurred earlier on the Great Lakes. I recommend this book very highly. Maritime readers and adventure fans alike will surely enjoy it.

I've been fascinated with the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking for many years, partially because I've lived around the great lakes most of my life. This book answered many of the haunting questions about the ship and what happened to her. The examination of the incident by Hemming is excellent and his proposed explanation of the cause is far better than the Coast Guard's excuses. I highly recommend this book on several levels, especially for its writing and research. Thanks to Gordon Lightfoot for bringing this to our attention.

Hemming has written some excellent accounts of disasters on the Great Lakes (see "Ships Gone Missing"), and this book has some very good qualities.

The covering of the history of the Fitz, and that of her crew is well done, and the descriptions of the character bring them to life.

There are also interviews with surviving family members and those who came across the Fitz both before and during the final trip.

Hemming goes with what appears to be the main theory regarding the boat's sinking, that she took on more and more water and dove into a huge wave, unable to recover.

One of the problems I do have is the creative license Hemming takes in trying to recreate what happened on the Fitz, especially as the vessel sank. He did this as well in "Ships Gone Missing," but here I'm not sure if it was such a good idea.

To have people doing and saying certain things is impossible to know that they did anything like that. I can see where Hemming tried to place the men where he thought they'd be, but it's hard to say.

Some of it was a bit melodramatic, but for the most part this is a good book with many facts on the boat and what may have happened.

Frederick Stonehouse as also written a very good book on the Fitz, including testimony and reports from the Coast Guard and the Lake Carriers Association.

The Gales of November was purchased on the strength of the information I could access through the Amazon pages and online discussions I held at Encylopedia Titanica. It was a purchase well made.

As the Edmund Fitzgerald crosses Lake Superiror we are given background into the running of these kind of ships and one by one the names of the 29 are given lives as Mr Hemming shares the story of their backgrounds. As events worsen to the terrifying and rapid conclusion I am made to identify with these men which makes those few minutes even worse.

Mr Hemming resorts to informed artistic licence to give us asense of what may have taken place, and to my thinking he does it well. Some may not like this style which is also used in the film and book Perfect Storm but it is necessary if we are to create a narrative of the events that led up to the sinking.

I understand that a film is being considered. If so It will make frightful viewing especially for anyone who makes the living on the sea.

Thank you Mr Hemming, Gordon Lightfoot, Amazon and all who made this book possible.

Out of all the books written about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, this one remains by far the best. Not only is the book filled with stunningly accurate details about the ship, it reads like a gripping novel. I especially admire the way the author chose to piece together the facts that he knew to recreate the story of the ship's actual sinking. Most other books I have read on the Fitz have been afraid to tackle such a challenge. Robert Hemming's compelling story will leave you on the edge of your seat and sometimes even reduce you to tears. This one is hard to put down and a must have for any maritime enthusiast.

I have read most of the books published about the "Edmund Fitzgerald" and her tragic demise. Of that number, several are more informative and up to date, but in "Gales of November" Robert J. Hemming takes another approach to the sinking: he focuses on the crew. The book is nicely refined and ultimately readable prose that is more captivating than most books. The down side, which Hemming acknowledges at the outset, is that since the ship sank so quickly and without survivors, the onboard activities and conversations after the "Fitzgerald" left Superior, Wisconsin are informed speculation. I normally dislike conjecture in nonfiction accounts, but as with "The Perfect Storm" and other examples where nobody survived the accident, it is nearly impossible to avoid if the focus is on the human experience involved. The book as a whole is taut and well-paced, with the ambiance of an exciting novel (albeit one where the final outcome is already known.) Of all the books on the "Fitzgerald," this book contains by far the most detailed and finely written character studies of the 29 men who sailed on her, and was particularly strong in providing information on Captain Ernest McSorley, and his close friend First Mate John McCarthy.

Hemming clearly has an opinion on why and how the ship foundered, and presents that as the single narrative plot of the book. He is a strong proponent of the shoaling school of thought (which I admit does make a great deal of sense to me, too.) The book is a real pleasure to read until the concluding chapters when Hemming bristles at the conclusions of the Coast Guard and the NTSB investigations, making the final portion of the book more tedious. The book contains some errors. On p. 212 Hemming says the ship's bell was not found in examinations of the wreck: not only was it found, it was later raised for museum display and replaced with a duplicate with the 29 crewmen's names engraved on it. In fairness this was written before all the later expeditions were made to the ship. There are other small errors as well. For instance, on p. 234 Hemming refers to the then-new navigation system LORAN-C, which he calls "Lorain C." That's admittedly fairly trivial, but should have been caught by having a professional mariner proofread the manuscript.

Despite the occasional misstep, I still truly enjoyed reading "Gales of November." If you can accept the speculative nature of the narrative in chapters ten, eleven, and twelve, the book is a captivating account of the human side of the tragedy of the "Edmund Fitzgerald."

While it was an entertaining book, it read more like a soap opera than a serious attempt to explain the circumstances of the sinking. I found it difficult to interpret where the facts ended and the author's interpretation began. The book presents a clear and plausible view of what precipitated the wreck, passing over the shoals. Would have liked more time on this, rather than the attempt to develop the characters on the ship which was superficial at best. Can't compare it to other books on the Edmund Fitzgerald, as it is the first one I've read on the subject. Would have liked more factual information and less human interest stories.

The author started his book as a non-fictional work based on the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. However, that isn't how it ended up. Although it seemed that he did an admirable job in describing where and what each crewman might have been doing at the time of the ship's loss, I don't believe it did any of their families a service. In my opinion, the families should be left in peace. It also wasn't a service to the reader of a non-fictional book.

A reader new to Great Lakes shipping may have found some general information useful, however, beyond the fiction, there were factual inaccuracies. One of the most serious was the inclusion of the "larger than normal waves" theory, otherwise commonly referred to as "the Three Sisters". This theory assumed that several larger than average (if anything was average about the night of 10 November) struck the after section of the Fitz and pushed the bow beneath the waves, ultimately causing the ship to submarine. None of the other four ships in the Eastern section of Lake Superior that night noted this same wave action. Nor was the timing of the storm right for a type of wave action of this form - usually known in hurricane parlance as a "dome of water". Typically, such a "dome" comes ashore as the low pressure system associated with a hurricane makes landfall in the tropics. It was noted by several of the witnesses aboard the other vessels that the sky had cleared of the snow fall shortly after the RADAR return of the Fitz was lost, therefore, the low pressure system was already passing on it's way into Ontario at that time.

I was on Whitefish Bay in July 1994, and it was hard to believe that the beautiful body of water I was on could do the damage as evidenced in the Coast Guard Marine Causalty Report.

Gave you a good feel for what the last trip of the Fitzgerald was like. And for the people who sailed her. I especially enjoyed the descriptions of how storm systems affect the great lakes region. The author did work hard to include biography material on each crew member, but was careful not to over do these sections.

I enjoyed the book immensely and intend to read other works by the author.