The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald [Paperback]

Frederick Stonehouse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1996

Peter L. Waters has just finished his first year of law school at the University of Michigan. With the help of Jamie, Peter's bride-to-be, he lands a great summer job aboard the Great Lakes freighter the Edmund Fitzgerald. Determined to give his future bride the wedding of her dreams, Peter decides to skip the fall semester at law school to work aboard the ship. If all goes well, the bonus he'll earn will pay for their wedding and launch their new life in style. The decision will cost him his life. Based on the actual sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which occurred on November 10, 1975, the last days and hours of the crew members-including the captain, first mate, cook, a father-and-son engine room team, a lawyer-hating deckhand, and Peter-are imagined in this work of contemporary fiction based on a tragic reality in Michigan's history. The Edmund Fitzgerald slipped below the waves that fateful November night in 1975, and her story remains one of great sorrow and mystery.

Product Details

• Paperback: 230 pages
• Publisher: Avery Color Studios; 5th Updated edition (January 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0932212883
• ISBN-13: 978-0932212887
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #888,626 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Stonehouse has a serious beef with the Coast Guard., November 17, 2004

By 

debeehr "debeehr" (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Paperback)

Others have called this the "definitive account" of the Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking, and it certainly is comprehensive. Stonehouse takes all the facts as they are known and lays them out for the reader to draw his or her own conclusions. He also (and this is highly commendable) includes the actual texts of the various documents pertaining to the sinking, along with pictures, sketches and diagrams, to give the reader as much of the evidence as possible.

However in the section entitled "A Conspiracy of Ineptitude," Stonehouse goes off onto a tangential rant about the incompetency of the modern Coast Guard and how they are not prepared for lifesaving on the Great Lakes and their equipment is outmoded and their training is inadequate and so on and so forth and boy, aren't the Coast Guard just a bunch of sorry yokels? all of which has very little to do with the Fitz's sinking. Now it may be entirely possible that the Coast Guard is in a dreary state today, and I'm sure that most right-thinking people would agree that the Coast Guard should have the facilities it needs to do its job. Can't argue with that. However, as even Stonehouse admits several times, there was nothing the Coast Guard *could* have done on the night of the Fitz's sinking, even under optimum conditions, because the ship just went down too fast. Therefore, his hatin' on the Coast Guard is seriously irrelevant to the topic of the book, the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. (This may be why he saved it for an epilogue; but really, no more than a brief mention is necessary, and Stonehouse could have/should have saved this for another book--it might have gotten more attention in that way as well.)

The book is also somewhat confusingly organized; the primary documents are in the *middle* of the book for some reason when they could have been saved for an appendix, and the same could be said for the photo sections. There apparently also seems to have been more sections added for the 1996 rerelease of the book, and these were simply and oddly appended at the back of the book; though they could easily have been worked in with the main text.

The negatives here, however, are mostly minor stylistic stuff; the substance of the book is good, solid, and well-documented (indeed, Stonehouse's inclusion of the primary texts is invaluable). For anyone interested in researching the sinking of the Fitzgerald, this book is a must read.

33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars IT IS THE BEST BOOK I HAVE EVER READ ON THE BIG FITZ, May 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Paperback)

I HAVE JUST BOUGHT THIS COPY OF THE BOOK AND I COULD NOT PUT IT DOWN. I HAVE BEEN STUDING THE BIG FITZ NOW FOR ABOUT A YEAR NOW AND THIS BOOK IS THE BEST I HAVE SEEN . THERE ARE PARTS THAT I DID NOT AGREE WITH . BUT OTHER PARTS THAT I DID. THE PICTURES WHERE EXCELLENT AND THE SONG AND THE NAMES OF THE CREW MEMBERS WHERE A NICE TOUCH TOO. OVER ALL I HAVE TO RATE THIS BOOK AS THE BEST BOOK WRITTEN ABOUT THE EDMUND FITZGERALD. ALTHOUGH I PAID 25 DOLLARS FOR IT I WOULD SAY IT WAS THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER BOUGHT ON THE EDMUND FITZGERALD! THANK YOU MICHELLE GREEN

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Doesn't sink into idle speculation, July 24, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Paperback)

This is a very good book about the Fitzgerald wreck. However, two things I wish the author had done:

1. Get off his soapbox about the deficiencies in the Coast Guard Rescue services in lake Superior. I think it needed mentioning, but not in the detail he chose. He also ignores the Canadian rescue facilities.

2. Label the photographs instead of making the reader refer to other pages to determine what they are looking at.

Otherwise, the book is excellent and was well worth the money.