The Gales of November

His father and grandfather ran a Milwaukee shipyard. His grandfather's five brothers were master mariners on the Great Lakes. Fitzgerald himself spent many of his younger days amid the sweet-smelling wood shavings and tarred rope yarn found within the yard. So it seemed a natural fit when, as president of Northwestern Mutual in the 1950s, Fitzgerald pushed for the insurance giant to invest in what would become, at the time, the largest bulk carrier ever to ply the inland oceans. More than two football fields long and weighing more than 13,600 tons when empty, the ship was an engineering feat and christened in 1958 with a champagne bottle by Fitzgerald's wife at a dock on the Detroit River. The iron ore carrier made 748 round trips from western Lake Superior to Detroit and Cleveland without incident. Today is the 30th anniversary of its interrupted 749th trip, when the "Mighty Fitz" sank during a storm on Lake Superior, scant miles from safe harbor, killing the 29 men aboard.