The Courage of the Arthur M. Anderson

It was fifty years ago this week that the SS Edmund Fitzgerald set sail on her last run of the 1975 Great Lakes shipping season. Her crew, having already made their season’s quota of cargo, had decided to make one last trip late in the season for the bonus money they would earn. So on November 9, 1975 she departed from Superior, Wisconsin…bound for Eternity. Immortalized in the Gordon Lightfoot masterpiece, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” the story of the freighter’s final hours has passed into history: a massive storm, generating high seas (the “worst seas” he had ever seen, the veteran captain of the Fitzgerald, Ernest McSorley, claimed as he radioed for help) caused vent covers to come off the ship. Having also had leaky hatch covers over the cargo hold, the ship took on water and began to list. “Green water” (waves several feet high) crashed over the deck whose hatch covers were never designed to carry their weight. In contact with a nearby ship, the SS Arthur M. Anderson (then ten to fifteen miles away),  McSorley reported losing his radar and requested that the Anderson provide a bearing so that his endangered ship might make a course for the relative safety of Michigan’s Whitefish Bay.

Things went from bad to unbearable as the Anderson lost radar, visual, and radio contact with the Fitzgerald shortly after their last transmission at 7:10 pm on November 10, 1975. The Edmund Fitzgerald had sunk with all hands. 

So goes the story, and so entered the “Fitz” into legend.

I was eight when the Fitzgerald went down—the age when children begin to realize that the world isn’t always a safe place. That a modern freighter could go down in the late 20th Century with its entire crew—and it took days to find the wreck—shook me. When Mrs. Hansen, my fourth-grade music teacher, played “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” for our class, the haunting song brought up all those anxieties again: this time with a soundtrack.

At eight years of age we don’t have the language or experience to process tragedy—and so the world can be an especially scary place. The problem is that as we get older, the world doesn’t become any less so. But this is where the tale of the Edmund Fitzgerald should give us hope.

While Gordon Lightfoot gave us a brilliant account of her sinking, he left out an important part of the story. The Anderson, herself buffeted by twenty-to-thirty foot waves, had made it into port after several harrowing hours of fighting the storm. Radioing the Coast Guard station in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, the Anderson’s captain, Jesse “Bernie” Cooper, asked about the status of the Fitzgerald. The coastguardsman responding had no answer, but knowing that his station had no ships capable of weathering the violent storm that was still raging, asked Cooper for help in finding one.

The following is an excerpt of their interaction:

Coast Guard (CG) : “Do you think there is any possibility…ah…you could…ah…come about and go back there and do any searching?”

Captain Cooper : “Ah…God, I don’t know…ah…that…that sea out there is tremendously large. Ah…if you want me to, I can, but I’m not going to be making any time; I’ll be lucky to make two or three miles an hour going back out that way.”

CG: “Well, you’ll have to make a decision as to whether you will be hazarding your vessel or not, but you’re probably one of the only vessels right now that can get to the scene. We’re going to try to contact those saltwater vessels [there were three, stronger-built, ocean-going ships on the lake, but not as close to the last sighting of the Fitzgerald as the Anderson was] and see if they can’t possibly come about and possibly come back also…things look pretty bad right now; it looks like she may have split apart at the seams...Well…do you think you could come about and go back and have a look in the area?”

Cooper: “Well, I’ll go back and take a look, but God, I’m afraid I’m going to take a hell of a beating out there… I’ll turn around and give ‘er a whirl, but God, I don’t know. I’ll give it a try.”

CG: “That would be good.”

Cooper: “Do you realize what the conditions are out there?”

There was no reply from the Coast Guard station, so Cooper tried again.

 CG: “Affirmative. From what your reports are I can appreciate the conditions. Again, though, I have to leave that decision up to you as to whether it would be hazarding your vessel or not. If you think you can safely go back up to the area, I would request that you do so. But I have to leave the decision up to you.”

Cooper: “I’ll give it a try, but that’s all I can do.”

This interaction was captured on audio and is available on YouTube. Reading the interaction gives us a sense of Captain Cooper’s mindset—listening to it smacks one in the face. In the interaction, Cooper was calm and professional, but he was clearly afraid: he wanted to help—knew he was the only one who could potentially save his fellow mariners—but he understandably didn't want to risk death. He’d already been out on the lake, brought his crew to safety, and didn’t want to put his crew back into danger. He was looking for a way out. At the same time, the Coast Guard commander wanted him to go out, but also recognized the gravity of the situation. One gets the sense that he didn’t want to ask Cooper to return to the lake…but he did. 

Summoning his crew, Captain Cooper asked them if they would be willing to search for the Fitzgerald, despite the risks. The crew unanimously agreed to go.

Jesus said “No one has greater love than this, than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (Jn 15:13). In all humility, I beg to differ. It seems to me that the greatest love is to lay down—or be willing to lay down—one’s life for strangers. While there is a “duty to render assistance” to imperilled vessels in international maritime law, that duty extends only "in so far as [a ship’s captain] can do so without serious danger to his vessel, her crew and her passengers". Captain Cooper and his men were under no legal or moral obligation to brave the waters of Lake Superior that night. Yet this is exactly what the crew of the Arthur M. Anderson did.

Years after that fateful evening, Fred “Mr Rogers” Rogers, responding to parents trying to comfort children in the wake of disasters, gave the advice his mother gave to him: “always look for the helpers [because] there will always be helpers.” 

We all need “helpers.” To aid Jesus after He faced His temptations in the desert, “angels came and ministered to Him” (Mt 4:11). God has given us each a guardian angel (Hb 1:14, Mt 18:10) to help us in this life…And then there are those “angels in disguise” sent by God in the form of doctors, and firefighters, and nurses—but just as often in the form of construction workers, and truck drivers and food kitchen volunteers—to help us in our need. Those “helpers” always seem to be there in our most difficult moments. Like the crew of the Arthur M, Anderson. 

We just need to look for them. Adults too.

The men of the Anderson were ultimately unable to render the help they risked their lives to offer: the Edmund Fitzgerald had gone down too quickly, in too brutal a sea, to have any survivors. But with the courage that seems to invest good men and women in moments of crisis, they remind us that through His people God reaches out to us, even in the most difficult of times.

And that there may be times when we too may be unexpectedly called to be His helping hands.

Though it was fifty years since the Anderson was called to go “above and beyond the call of duty” to help the men of the Fitzgerald, many of her crew are still with us and should be honored for what they were: heroes—and “helpers.” 

Sadly, Captain Bernie Cooper is not among them, having passed away in 1993. 

But I like to think that when he passed he was met by the crew of the Fitzgerald, who welcomed him home to the place where reigns the One who calmed the stormy sea.

 

A.M.D.G. /B.V.M.H.