'Water's got power': MPR archive interview with local sailor day after Edmund Fitzgerald sank

Monday marks 50 years since the Edmund Fitzgerald took its final voyage, before getting swallowed by Lake Superior in a November storm. All 29 crew on the ship died.

MPR News was reporting on the story at the time. The day after the ship sank, MPR News reporter Claudia Hampston spoke to Erling Hansen. He was a boat engineer with experience sailing on Lake Superior. Here is Hanson’s reaction to news of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975.

Use the audio player above to listen to the archive interview.

Hansen: You know, nobody knows what happened. The boat must have capsized. It must have capsized. What else? You couldn't break. I don't think it could break.

The northwest storm, in that 75 mile wind sweeping down from the northwest, in that spot she was in, there's nothing there that can help you. Not a thing, not a thing. And no doubt, we figured that he was trying to get behind Whitefish Point, get into Whitefish Bay.

What they can understand is why everything shut off so completely. The phone shut off, the radar shut off, the current shut off, everything shut off and the boat disappeared. And that's what they can't understand yet.

Hampston: I guess I'd like to ask you if, when you've been out on that lake, and you said you've been out there and everything Mother Nature had to offer, if you ever felt like you were going to go down.

Hansen: Yeah, coming out of Chicago once. Oh, there was a swell going. And I thought she'd never come back, you know the boom on it, on the deck. She went so far over, she ain't gonna come back. But she did come back. You know what I mean, she straightened out again. Went the other way.

Hampston: You said earlier that, “there is no way this could have happened” when we were talking on the phone. You said, “how could this happen on a boat like that?” How could it happen?

Hansen: Well, that's the question, that is really the question. And like I say the harbor cub, when we discuss it out there, these are all retired ship captains, and they can understand it. With a new boat like the Edmund Fitzgerald, a big boat, a tremendously big boat. It had to be a tremendous sea. It had to be a tremendous sea, not a little thing. It had to be big. It had to be big. So the water, blue water, come in through the ventilators and stuff like that, when you get blue water coming into a boat through the ventilator, you're in trouble.

Hampston: What do you learn in 40 years about that lake out there?

Hansen: You know that Lake Superior is the worst, and it's the nicest one too. It really is. I have been a lot of storms in Lake Superior, and it's, I'm not mad at it.

Hampston: I guess maybe it's a matter of having a tremendous respect for power.

Hansen: Yes, oh, water’s got power. Oh, has it got power. This poor guy, he didn't make it. That's all. He didn't make it. It wasn't they were just a sick thing that happened. And that's all I can say. He didn't make everybody agrees on that. He trained hard because he was a good captain, and he did. He got caught. He just got caught. Simply got caught. You go through a storm and you forget it. It's so easy, there's no kidding. Then you wait for the next one.

Correction (Nov. 14, 2025): An earlier version of this story misspelled Erling Hansen's name. The story has been updated.

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