The Witch of November

I lived in Duluth, Minnesota, in 1975, and I remember November 9 when my wife and I walked down one of that city’s steep slopes toward our apartment. Few leaves remained on the trees, and an icy wind blew fiercely. The sky, dark purple and heavy with clouds, looked menacing. 

A partial view of Lake Superior was between the buildings flanking the sidewalk. As an ore carrier on Lake Superior glided by that narrow view on its way east with a load of iron recently mined from the Iron Range nearby, my wife said, “I can’t believe they are going out in weather like this.”

It was a valid concern. The ship we saw was the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank to the bottom of the lake with all 29 men on board the following evening. Evidence suggests that the ship broke in two while still on the surface, and it happened so fast that the crew had no chance to respond, send a distress call, or escape death in the ship’s two lifeboats. 

In late fall, when a low-pressure system over Lake Superior pulls warm and cold air together, the winds from the north whip up to hurricane strength. These violent gales push the lake’s water into enormous waves, some as high as twenty-eight feet. This phenomenon is known as the Witch of November to the people who live near and work on Lake Superior.

A commonly accepted theory about what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald on that stormy night is that leaky hatch covers allowed water to flood the hold, which mixed in with the load of iron ore pellets, creating a heavy sludge that sloshed back and forth with the waves. As a result, when the ship nose-dived in a swell, the weight slid forward, driving the bow underwater. Stress then fractured the ship in two. It is hard to imagine the terrifying sound of a 730-foot-long ore carrier ripping apart.

Built in 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ore carrier on the lakes that year and held the sobriquet “Queen of the Lakes.” The ship was 17 when it went down. 

The Edmund Fitzgerald was not the Witch of November’s first victim. In November 1905, a storm that lasted two days destroyed 30 ships. On No. 11, 1913, the witch sank 18 ships and killed 254 people. 

Today’s Great Lakes ore carriers are larger than the Edmund Fitzgerald and benefit from technological advances that make shipping on Lake Superior safer. Just as our TV meteorologists can warn us of an approaching storm, so can they alert shipping authorities to weather forecasts for the lake. If the Witch makes her entrance in November, the ships are out of harm’s way by the time the tempest erupts. 

Today, the bridge of an ore carrier contains an array of computer screens that tell the ship captain exactly where he is on the lake, what the weather is like around him, and warn him when the ship approaches shallow water. Bilge alarms alert the crew if the vessel is taking on water. 

In 1976, the Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot, an avid Great Lakes sailor, released his song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a hit that memorialized this tragedy. He references the witch:

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing.
And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did, too
’twas the Witch of November come stealin’.

More information about this and other Great Lakes shipwrecks can be found at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Michigan https://shipwreckmuseum.com/.Steve Bailey grew up in the Panama Canal Zone, was educated in Minnesota and taught middle school for 32 years in Virginia. He can be contacted at [email protected].