Description
Contemporary Books, Published 1981. Hardcover, xxiv, 248 pp.; 24 cm; illustrated with 8 pages of black-and-white photographs and Coast Guard drawings of the wreck, map of Lake Superior.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
112
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with a Good dust jacket. Dark blue faux leatherette boards with gilt lettering on spine, some nicking at head of spine, mild shelf wear. Binding tight. Mild foxing and toning to text, two small foxing spots to front free endpaper, otherwise unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket (Fitzgerald's deck and pilothouse from the bow, Gordon Lightfoot's lyrics on rear panel, priced $11.95) has a 3/4 inch tear at top edge of rear panel near spine, smaller nicks and short tears along edges, mild shelf and edge wear. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. The first hardcover edition of the earliest narrative account of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the 729-foot ore carrier lost with all 29 hands on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. Hemming, a Toledo newspaper editor and lifelong Great Lakes sailor, built the book from the Coast Guard and NTSB investigations and several hundred interviews with the crew's families and with the men aboard the Arthur M. Anderson, which was trailing the Fitzgerald that night. He reconstructs the final voyage from Superior, Wisconsin toward Whitefish Bay hour by hour, gives each of the 29 crewmen a biography, and reviews the competing explanations for the loss (hatch-cover flooding versus grounding on Six Fathom Shoal) that remain unresolved. Written before the 1989 and 1994 dive expeditions and the 1995 bell recovery, it stands with Stonehouse's 1977 account as one of the foundational books on the wreck; the hardcover is far scarcer than the 1984 and 1997 paperback reissues. Includes a full crew list with ratings and home towns, bibliography, and index. Contents: Preface; Acknowledgments; Author's Note; The Crew of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald; "I Just Hope He Didn't Take a Nose Dive"; "Nothing Is Certain"; "She Was for Homesteading"; "He Was a Good Friendly Guy"; "That Damned Computer"; "When I Go Out the Whole World's Going to Know about It"; "Ships Gone Missing"; "I'll Never See Him Again"; "He's In Too Close"; "I've Taken a List"; "She's Shaking Apart"; "We Are Holding Our Own"; "The Damned Thing Sank"; "I'm Going to Take a Hell of a Beating"; "Presumed Dead"; "With Loss of Life"; Bibliography; Index.