45th Anniversary of The Wreck of The Edmond Fitzgerald

Ugh, ship wrecks give me the heebie jeebies. Hairs on my arm stood up reading those lyrics. I spent 6 months on a Helo carrier and we went through some pretty nasty stuff but it was a huge ship so it just rolled and pitched and made some haunting sounds on the bigger rolls. I was on the top bunk and remember holding on from going over the side, and that ship was 40,000 tons 830' long and 130' wide. I looked from our O-10 deck and saw our LSD Anchorage rolling about 30 degrees as it had a flat bottom. We had M60 Tanks in the V-deck popping 10K gripes and sliding around. That was my job for the first 3 months, combat cargo. We had to take watch turns to make sure the cargo and vehicles stayed griped down. Glad that's over with! Wanna go on a cruise? Hell no, I saw The Poseidon Adventure!
>> Scary fact: During a record-breaking trip across the Atlantic, Queen Mary (carrying more than 16,000 troops) was hit by a rogue wave estimated at 90 feet. It was calculated that the ship tipped 52 degrees and would have capsized had it rolled 3 degrees more. That would have sucked! <<