Great Lakes Triangle (was Re: [DL] Erie Canal {Warning...LONG})

["Daniel Gwyn" <dgwyn@colba.net>]

Hi,
    Regarding the Great Lakes Triangle.  It is about as substantial as the
Bermuda Triangle.  That is to say it is a hyped hoax.  Back in the
seventies, the television program Nova made a study of the "mysterious
events" of the Bermuda Triangle.  It found that in every case put forward by
writers on the subject that there was usually very explicable causes which
the writers had either ignored or had twisted into supernatural.  In many
cases there were examples poorly constructed conclusions,  omission of
relevant facts (my favourite was neglecting to mention that a winter storm
was blowing the night a small yacht "disappeared") and the ever popular
twisting of common phrases into the supernatural.
    The basic point of the Nova episode was not so much about the ocean off
Bermuda but how writers contrive the unknown out of the prosaic.  I think
that the J.L. Gourlet is probably guilty of this.  While he mentions that
1/3 of all American sea and air disaster occur in the Great Lakes region, he
doesn't mention what fraction of sea and air traffic occur in that area?
Unless I've misread things, there is a hell of a lot of traffic in the area.
    What's more, the Great Lakes (combined with the Great Plains) naturally
produce some nasty weather, which amateur pilots and boaters can easily get
into trouble with.  In the words of the late and much lamented Stan Rogers:
"Don't take the lakes for Granted/They can go from calm to a hundred knots
so fast they seem enchanted."
    The Edmund Fitzgerald was known to be in trouble before she went down,
at night, in a november storm that was generating 60-foot waves.  She was
having trouble with her navigational equipement, including some of her
radios.  Unless I am very much mistaken, her last transmission read
something like "We are holding our own."  That doesn't mean they weren't
having trouble.  Just that they thought they could deal with it.  The best
theory about what happened to her, was that she first briefly hit a shoal
damaging her hull (thus weakening her structure) and began to fill one of
her holds with water (and thereby creating an added weight just where the
structure was weakest).  When a huge wave later hit the ship, the stress of
the wave broke the ship in two, causing it to sink almost instantly,
precluding the launching of life boats.  Metal fatigue may also have played
a part as the Big Ftiz was a fairly old ship.  Merchant ships are actually
fairly flimsy structures in relation to their size.  You can break a
supertanker in half by not filling the ship's tanks in the correctly.
    This e-mail is not say you can't use the myth of the Great Lakes
Triangle in a Deadlands game, just to make it quite clear that it is purely
mythical.  I'm sorry if I sound a bit aggressive, but I really don't like
bad science being used to create a hoax.
          Daniel Gwyn

"Y si yo vuelvo a nacer, yo los vuelvo a matar.
Padre no arrepiento, ni me da miedo la eternidad,
Yo sé que allà en el cielo el ser supremo nos juuzgarà
Voy a seguir sus pasos, voy a buscarlos al mas allà."

From "El Preso Numero Nueve (The Ninth Prisoner)" author unknown