A group of long-distance swimmers will begin a journey this weekend to complete the voyage the ill-fated Edmund Fitzgerald started 50 years ago this fall. They will swim more than 400 miles: from where the ship sank in Lake Superior, across Lake Huron and down the Detroit River to its intended destination near Detroit, Mich.
The first group of swimmers plans to depart Saturday morning from the site where the Fitzgerald sank on November 10, 1975, in a ferocious storm on Lake Superior, 17 miles off the coast of Whitefish Point in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. All 29 mariners on board the ship died.
The swimmers plan to carry with them a small number of taconite pellets, to symbolize the 26,000 tons of iron ore the Fitzgerald was loaded down with when it sank.
“There’s a lot of symbolism involved in this event,” said organizer Jim Dreyer, who himself has swum across all five Great Lakes.
Known in swimming circles as “The Shark,” Dreyer completed his swim across the last of the lakes, Lake Superior, in 2005, when he swam nearly 60 miles across the lake unsupported. That year was the 30th anniversary of the Fitzgerald’s sinking.
“The swim is going to be something really special,” Dreyer said. “These swimmers are going to make history while they're commemorating history."
For the 50th memorial event, participants plan to swim in teams of four, alternating every half hour. Each swimmer will travel between five and nine miles.
They will begin the swim with a ceremony on the surface of Lake Superior, above where the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Canadian waters. Dreyer said they received a special permit from the Canadian government to begin the event over what is officially a grave site, one he said that boats are typically not permitted to pass over.
“It’s surreal,” said Tammy Lenarz Carruth, of Montevideo who is on the four-member team starting the swim. She said there are family members of crew members who haven’t been able to travel to the site.
“I really feel like I’m not worthy, like I want them to be able to be go out there. So it’s an honor to do that and to start there. Jumping in the water and starting to swim from right above the Edmund Fitzgerald will just be amazing.”
Lenarz Carruth has participated in long-distance swims around the world, from the Great Lakes to Ireland to a swim crossing the Arctic Circle from Finland to Sweden.
During the course of preparing for the swim, she’s connected with the family of Paul Riippa, a 22-year-old college football player from Ohio who was working as a deck hand on the Edmund Fitzgerald when the ship went down.
“They want their brother’s memory and his name kept alive, and for people not to forget the 29 mariners,” she said.
Three more swimmers in the event are from Minnesota, all from Duluth: Sara Morgan, Emelia Larsen and Gillian McNeal.
The 68 swimmers taking part in the roughly month-long journey have raised nearly $200,000 for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which will use the funds to help preserve the Whitefish Point Light Station at the far southeastern end of Lake Superior. It’s the oldest operating lighthouse on the lake.
“In a very sad irony,” said Dreyer, noting that the lighthouse “went dark the night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in the raging storm.” So it was of no help to the crew.
The swimmers are scheduled to complete the event on Aug. 27. The following day, they’ll present the taconite pellets they carried to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan during a memorial service at the Mariners’ Church of Detroit.
There, the church bell will be rung 29 times for each crew member who died, just as it was a half-century ago, as memorialized in Gordon Lightfoot’s Grammy-nominated song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral.
The church bell chimed till it rang 29 times,
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
