Arthur M. Anderson - First Return To Duluth Since Coming Out Of Layup

Quick note: Be sure to watch the video to the end. It's only half over after it passes under the Aerial Lift Bridge.

After four years of recording lakers in the Duluth-Superior area, I finally managed to capture the Arthur M. Anderson in action. For a while, I wasn't certain it would happen, especially after she went into layup in January 2017 with no clear indication if she would ever return to service again. (Some rumors were saying she was done for good.) That return came on July 25, 2019 after the Anderson was given a thorough inspection (and new paint job) at Fraser Shipyard in Superior, Wisconsin. I missed her initial departure from Duluth, but captured her first return to Duluth here on the evening of August 1, 2019, as she completed her first round-trip since returning to service.

She is seen here coming in with a load of limestone to be discharged at the C. Reiss dock in Duluth. After capturing her entry through the Duluth shipping canal, I then relocated to the old highway bridge that connected Duluth to Superior (which now has a deck for people to watch boats from), capturing the Anderson as she went under the Blatnik bridge (which replaced the old highway bridge in 1958), slowly making her way to the C. Reiss dock.

For those not familiar with the Arthur M. Anderson, she was built in 1952, originally 647 feet in length. It was the second of eight AAA lakers built in the early 50s. She was lengthened to 767 feet in 1975. The Anderson is probably most famous, however, for being the ship that sailed across Lake Superior with the Edmund Fitzgerald on her final voyage. The Anderson was roughly ten miles behind the Fitzgerald, staying in radio contact with the Fitzgerald as both vessels rode through the storm on the evening of November 10, 1975. The Anderson received the last radio call from the Fitzgerald at 7:10pm, stating that "We are holding our own." A few minutes later a snow squall made the Fitzgerald invisible to the Anderson. When the squall cleared, the Fitzgerald was gone, having taken a nosedive to the bottom of Lake Superior.

About 10 minutes before the Fitzgerald disappeared, Captain Bernie Cooper of the Anderson reported that they took two large waves at the stern of the Anderson. The waves were tall enough to reach the upper deck of the stern section. (Make note of that when you see her stern pass by in this video.) The waves pushed the Anderson's bow deep into the water, but she had enough buoyancy to come back up. Captain Cooper estimates those same waves probably reached the Fitzgerald at the time she disappeared... and were probably what sent her to the bottom, The Fizgerald had already been taking on water since passing Caribou Island a few hours earlier and lacked the buoyancy that the Anderson had. Whether she was taking water in through bottom damage, a stress fracture, or the deck hatches still remains a subject for debate to this day.

The Anderson was the first boat to report the Fitzgerald missing. By the time they could convince the Coast Guard that the Fitzgerald was actually in trouble (as few really believed she could sink), the Anderson had already reached the safety of Whitefish Bay, where the wind and the waves were considerably less. Since the Coast Guard had no vessels or planes in the area to begin an immediate search, they asked the Anderson to turn around and go back into the storm to make a search. Despite great concerns for the safety of the Anderson and her crew, Captain Bernie Cooper turned their ship around and made a valiant, but unsuccessful, effort to find the Fitzgerald and her crew. (She was later joined by the William Clay Ford in her search efforts.) Only some debris and broken lifeboats were found.

The story of the Anderson will be known to some viewers already, but it's worth repeating for those not familiar with her place in Great Lakes history. "The legend lives on..."

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