What I Read -- The Gales of November

My latest "available now" audiobook selection was The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It is, as it sounds, an investigation into the causes of the wreck of the famous ship on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.

As with much of the start of the Challenger, my previous read, the early part of the book is dedicated to the personal stories of the people involved: the executives at the shipping companies, Master Captain Ernest McSorley, the 28 other men aboard the ship (and one who had a narrow miss), and their families.  As with Challenger, it probably could have used a bit of editing but I though it was better done in this book because the call-backs to this information were better tied in at the end. 

Also loaded up - which I loved - was a history of the shipping industry on the Great Lakes, including shipped materials (in the case of the Edmund Fitzgerald, it was taconite iron ore), ship construction, weather, and winds.

Much in the nature of The Perfect Storm (the story of the wreck of a fishing boat off the coast of Nova Scotia) and so many similar stories, it was a series of small decisions - probably none of which alone would have individually caused a catastrophe - that added up in ways that were impossible to predict, leading to tragic results. 

I wonder how much any of us would know about the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald if not for the famous song written by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot?  (Fun fact about the song: the released version was the first take.  Not the first take in the recording studio, but the first time the band had ever heard the full song all the way through, let alone joined in to play!) 

Lots of ships have gone down in the Great Lakes, many of whose names are nearly forgotten and whose stories are long-since lost, but we all remember the Edmund Fitzgerald.  A substantial portion near the end of the book and the epilogue are dedicated to the story of Lightfoot's song's writing and release, and the the ongoing annual reunions held by the family members and descendants of the men who died when she went down.  The story is kept alive by the younger generations; one of the granddaughters has a tattoo on her forearm of the last words ever dispatched over the ship's radio: "We are holding our own."