The practice of dangerously overloading cargo ships in the 19th century prompted a crucial maritime safety innovation: the load line. As shipping expert Nicolette Jones notes, “Overloading impacts crews’ ability to operate vessels safely, and before the introduction of the load line during the 1870s, sailings often resulted in fatalities” (Jones, Nicolette. “Plimsoll at 200: The Legacy Beyond the Load Line.” Lloyd’s Register (Horizons), February 2024). At the height of the industrial era in the mid 19th century, some ships were so dangerously overloaded and overcrowded that sailors dubbed them “coffin ships” (“Samuel Plimsoll and Ship Safety,” Royal Museums Greenwich, online). In 1870, British member of Parliament and coal merchant Samuel Plimsoll undertook a study of overloading and its effects on ship safety. He then campaigned for a law establishing the minimum required freeboard—the distance from the water to the main deck—for ships at sea. The resulting “Plimsoll line” is still in use today and was once so well known that it inspired the name of a style of shoe many people still wear: The rubber-soled, canvas sneaker known as a “plimsoll” is so called because the dark line traditionally painted just below the point where the sole joins the upper shoe resembles the Plimsoll line painted on ships.

In The Gales of November, Bacon explains how these regulations governed Great Lakes shipping but collided with intense economic pressures. Companies and crews developed methods to “cheat” the line, such as hosing down a sun-warmed deck to make the ship contract, thereby gaining a few crucial inches of load capacity before inspection. The financial incentive was significant: “If the Fitzgerald crew could cheat the Plimsoll line by a single inch, that allowed them to carry an additional one hundred twenty long tons of taconite” (85). This culture of pushing limits was compounded when regulators lowered the Fitzgerald’s required November freeboard by over 39 inches between 1969 and 1973. This narrowed the vessel’s safety margin, leaving it lower in the water and increasingly vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the massive waves of a late-season gale on Lake Superior.