by Paul Helfrich
1/700 SS Edmund Fitzgerald (Iron Shipwright)
"The legend lives on, from the Chippewa on down..."
I was in junior high school at the time of the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and while I don't remember hearing much about it at the time, I sure remember that Gordon Lightfoot song that came out shortly thereafter. I lived in Michigan for a few years and had opportunity to visit Whitefish Bay and other points of interest that figured in the story. Lake Superior is an awesome sight. Even in the calm days of summer, you can sense the power of this lake, by far the largest of the five. It looks peaceful and blue in June but you can tell right away you wouldn't want to see her angry. Storms can kick up quickly on the Great Lakes and can really pack a wallop. There's a couple reasons for this, including that fresh water is less dense than ocean water and therefore more easily moved by wind, and also, since the lakes are generally shallower than ocean waters, waves can build larger and faster than they can in open sea.
My Michigan experiences, plus some time spent living in Erie, PA, has made the ships that sail the Great Lakes a subject of great fascination for me. But models of these ships are almost non-existent, so when I saw this Iron Shipwright kit on an actual hobby store shelf, I just had to have it.
It's a multimedia kit, with a resin hull, plastic superstructure, and brass photoetched details. The only problem with it was a big one - the hull has a fairly noticeable warp. Since it was a one-piece hull, this was a pretty big problem that probably could only have been solved by sawing the whole thing in half, re-attaching the two pieces at the correct angle, and then filling the resulting gap.
Basically, I was chicken. I went ahead with it warped rather than taking the chance on it coming out looking like Frankenstein's monster. I'm very pleased with the result - as noted, there are hardly any models of Great Lakes freighters on the market, in any medium, and it's very cool to have this one in my 1/700 collection. Seeing the Fitzgerald next to WWII carriers and battleships really puts the size of the ship in perspective - it was huge.
"The lake it is said, never gives up her dead, when the gales of November come early..."
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