The last ship to be in contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald on Nov. 10, 1975, was the S.S. Arthur M. Anderson.
The Anderson was sailing the Great Lakes earlier this year, as she went to Toledo for what was the winter layup.
The Anderson is owned by Keystone Shipping Co., and was launched on Feb. 16, 1952. The ship has not been out for the 2025 season.
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When the Fitzgerald was sailing across Lake Superior during Nov. 9 and 10, 1975, it remained in close contact with the Anderson, especially as conditions worsened.
At 7:10 p.m. on Nov. 10, 1975, the Anderson checked in with the Fitzgerald. According to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, the conversation between Morgan Clark, the first mate on the Anderson, and Fitzgerald captain Ernest McSorley went like this:
Clark: “Fitzgerald, this is the Anderson. Have you checked down?”
McSorley: “Yes, we have.”
Clark: “Fitzgerald, we are about 10 miles behind you, and gaining about 1 1/2 miles per hour. Fitzgerald, there is a target 19 miles ahead of us. So the target would be 9 miles on ahead of you.”
McSorley: “Well. Am I going to clear?”
Clark: “Yes, he is going to pass to the west of you.”
McSorley: “Well, fine.”
Clark: “By the way, Fitzgerald, how are you making out with your problems?” asked Clark.
McSorley: “We are holding our own.”
Clark: “Okay, fine, I’ll be talking to you later.”
Just a couple of minutes later, around 7:15 p.m., the radar signal for the Fitzgerald disappeared from the radar and did not reappear. At 7:22 p.m., Clark called again and there was no answer.
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Author John U. Bacon, who wrote a new book released earlier this year titled "The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald," spoke to a man who was on the Anderson that night.
Rick Barthuli, who was the second engineer on the Anderson, recalled that around 7 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 9, he knew the weather would be bad because of the route they were taking, going north, which is a longer route.
"It'd been a nice day, but once we saw we were heading north, instead of straight for the Keweenaw, we knew it was going to be s****y. When the wind's blowing out of the west, you stay along the north shore because that's going to be calm no matter what. That's the whole point of going that way, to avoid the worst of it. So just the fact that we're running on the north shore tells us it's gonna blow," Barthuli told Bacon in the book.
Barthuli later described what they were seeing on the Anderson while she was in Lake Superior that night.
"I think I saw twenty-five- to thirty-foot waves, biggest I've ever seen, but you really can't tell. You're in them! You could see the top of the waves getting blown off by the wind – like they were mountain ranges being strip-mined – so you couldn't tell how tall they were. But it was one hell of a night, I can tell you that. No one out that night can ever forget that one," he said.
He told Bacon that he was in the mess room when he found out the Fitzgerald was missing. The Anderson had made it safely to Whitefish Bay, but according to Bacon, the U.S. Coast Guard asked the ship to go back out to search.
"Going back out, we were smashing into the waves: bam, bam, bam! Okay, that's bad. But you knew you were going to take a horrible beating – and we did," he told Bacon.
The Anderson has not been seen on the Great Lakes during the 2025 season. We did reach out to Keystone to see if they have more information.
