How safe are the Great Lakes for sailing after the freighter accident?

Technology has greatly improved the safety of ships and their crews on the Great Lakes over time. We have a better understanding of weather patterns, better equipment to detect them, and potential dangers in the water. And overall, centuries of experience in navigating these inland seas have been passed down from captain to captain in learning how to survive.

That’s not to say that bizarre accidents don’t still happen and that ships can still be lost or at least seriously damaged on the Great Lakes. But how often does that actually happen?

Michipicoten runs aground in 2024

Just recently, a 200-meter-long Canadian freighter named Michipicoten had to radio the Coast Guard and Transport Canada to report that it was suddenly taking on water and listing. The ship was loaded with taconite – a type of low-grade iron – and was passing Isle Royale when the incident occurred.

Officials towed it safely to Thunder Bay, Ontario, where both Canadian and American officials will conduct investigations to determine the cause of the ship’s hull damage – whether it ran aground, whether it was hull damage or a combination of both.

Fortunately, none of the crew were injured and, with a few exceptions, everyone was allowed to leave the ship when it docked.

However, if it did run aground, it would be a strange occurrence since the ship sailed from Minnesota and was en route to Thunder Bay using normal shipping lanes that authorities say were NOT blocked at the time of the incident.

So what happened? Well, until the authorities can determine the cause, it’s safe to assume that the ship simply ran aground. But that can’t be an everyday occurrence in this day and age when we have the latest technology, can it?

How often do shipping accidents occur on the Great Lakes today?

Since the 1970s, very few large ships have sunk in the Great Lakes. One of the last and largest ships to ever sink was the famous Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975 on Lake Superior. Since then, most documented accidents involving ships sinking have mostly involved small boats – fishing boats or even tugboats.

The most recent incident recorded involved the Canadian vessel True North II, a glass-bottomed tour boat that was in about 15 meters of water off the coast of Tobermory, Ontario in Georgian Bay. This vessel unfortunately claimed the lives of two students who were on the tour with a class of 13 when the vessel was caught in rain and squalls.

BUT all indications are that the ship’s captain ignored warnings for small boats in the area, which was likely to blame.

But since the 1980s, it has become extremely rare for ships to run aground or even crash. There are practically no reports of sinkings anymore.

Additional weather monitoring technologies, along with constantly monitored systems and up-to-date vessel monitors, have made Great Lakes shipping one of the safest forms of travel in North America. Aside from lost swimmers caught in the surf, shipping accidents have been responsible for fewer than a dozen deaths in recent decades.

In fact, the Edmund Fitzgerald is considered the last major shipping disaster, which makes this latest incident very odd given how safe sailing on the lakes has become. It will be interesting to see what officials discover about what really happened.