Tregurtha is a Great Lakes-based bulk carrier freighter. She is the current Queen of the Lakes, an unofficial but widely recognized title given to the longest vessel active on the Great Lakes.
Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot inspired popular interest in this vessel with his 1976 ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The Edmund Fitzgerald was lost with her entire crew of 29 men on Lake Superior November 10, 1975, 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan.
SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk there.
Most newly built Lakers are constructed to Seawaymax limit to allow for off-Lakes use, but there are some larger freighters used on the Lakes that cannot pass to the Atlantic Ocean. These larger Lakers are confined to the upper Lakes (Superior, Huron, Michigan, and Erie) before the Seaway canal locks.
For the first time in decades, a new bulk freighter has been built on and launched on the Great Lakes. The Fincantieri Bay Shipbuilding Company in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin unveiled the Mark W. Barker earlier this year after spending nearly three years constructing it.
Lake Superior is the Cleanest and Clearest Great LakeBecause of its somewhat isolated location and long cold winters, not much farming is done along Superior's shores. This means lower amounts of nutrients, sediments, and organic material are floating around the lake.
Lake Superior is the world's largest freshwater lake by area (31,700 mi2 /82,100 km2). It is also the coldest and deepest of the Great Lakes, with a maximum depth of 406 meters (1,332 feet). By most measures, it is the healthiest of all the Great Lakes.
For some who study the Great Lakes, relative size is a defining factor, particularly with Lake Superior, which is the world's largest lake by surface area (aside from the much larger Caspian Sea—if you're willing to call it a lake).
Chicago, on the southern shore of Lake Michigan, is the largest city in the North American Great Lakes region; the metro area has a population of 9.6 million people.
Lake Michigan is the only one of the Great Lakes that is entirely within the United States; the others form a water boundary between the United States and Canada.