Trevor Collins

That it was lower in the water and that issue was exacerbated by the hogging and sagging created by the waves.

Just gets worse and worse.

And the fact that the ship was broken into two parts at the bottom of the lake makes a lot of people go, hmm, that makes sense.

And when you put that into mind with the two waves that swept over the Anderson and went after the Fitzgerald, it stands to reason that maybe that was the straw that literally broke the ship's back.

Yeah.

Now, in addition to that, you know, I kind of say that it's technically unsolved, which it is.

I want to point to the Coast Guard's report.

They have more authority on the matter, and they state that while the official cause of the sinking cannot be determined...

They say it's likely that it was due to the massive amount of flooding in the cargo hold which caused it to lose buoyancy.

So now they're going to focus more on the cargo hold getting filled with water and less on the bending and flexing and snapping.

So in their theory, the Coast Guard states that the cause of the flooding was due to the quote, "...ineffective hatch closures as boarding seas rolled along the spar deck."

End quote.

Suffice to say, water pouring over the deck and you know when they say batten down the hatches?

That literally means securing the hatches that are on top of the deck and sealing them up, making sure they're watertight.

These hatches are large, watertight openings that are used to access below deck, whether it's to stow and access cargo or to access machinery, the mechanics of the ship engine, what have you.

It is a way to kind of access below deck.

And if those aren't properly battened down, so to speak,

then water can, through all these waves dumping over the rails, could make their way down in there and through a heavy storm, bring enough water on board to just have it, off it goes.

Right, right.

If the water starts flowing into the front or the back, it's going to weigh it down more, which means more water, very much like the Titanic.