fun facts: late november 1972, i had just turned twenty, i was a deckhand on the S.S. Edmond Fitzgerald. we were upbound on lake superior headed to silver bay to load ore. we were running the north shore for protection from the weather. alberta clipper was screaming down. -28 degrees and blowing 60. who knows what the wind chill was. the boat was rolling pretty good but not violently. come 11:00 pm, we deckhands were hanging in our room chilling. no tv, no radio. in come the 1st mate talking something about frostbite and put every piece of clothing on we had and made a joke about cutting two holes in our seabags and wearing them if needed.
i kept thinking 'who's he talking to', i ain't going out there. it was like a bad dream.
i never saw the water. the lake was steaming so bad. the old man had checked down and swung the boat into the wind using the forward cabins as our protection.
so i got dressed in my low tech gear, tied some 1" manilla rope around my waist, the bosun tied the rope to something, gave me a 16lb hammer and out on deck i went. wet ice
everything, decks, bulwarks, overheads, fence cables, ....., everything had a two foot thick coating of ice for the entire length of the 730' vessel.
it was our job to bust up the ice then hand pick it up then walk to the rail and throw it overboard. after 20 hours of completing nothing in real terms we got knocked off and went to bed. the wind abaited, we continued towards the port.
it took 48 hours ish to open the hatches to load after we tied up.
it took two weeks and a weather warmup to completely clean up that mess.
i started working as hard as i could to get upgraded and get off the deck and into the pilothouse.
i kept thinking 'who's he talking to', i ain't going out there. it was like a bad dream.
i never saw the water. the lake was steaming so bad. the old man had checked down and swung the boat into the wind using the forward cabins as our protection.
so i got dressed in my low tech gear, tied some 1" manilla rope around my waist, the bosun tied the rope to something, gave me a 16lb hammer and out on deck i went. wet ice
everything, decks, bulwarks, overheads, fence cables, ....., everything had a two foot thick coating of ice for the entire length of the 730' vessel.
it was our job to bust up the ice then hand pick it up then walk to the rail and throw it overboard. after 20 hours of completing nothing in real terms we got knocked off and went to bed. the wind abaited, we continued towards the port.
it took 48 hours ish to open the hatches to load after we tied up.
it took two weeks and a weather warmup to completely clean up that mess.
i started working as hard as i could to get upgraded and get off the deck and into the pilothouse.