The Witch of November

The insurance company that built her wanted her to be named after Ed, the chairman of the board, but Ed wasn’t comfortable with the idea; Ed wanted her to be named, perhaps, the 𝘚𝘦𝘢𝘸𝘢𝘺, 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘸𝘢𝘶𝘬𝘦𝘦, or 𝘕𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘩𝘸𝘦𝘴𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯, but he was overruled. Why did a life insurance company want a ship to be built? It turns out they were heavily invested in minerals and iron, and wanted a ship that could promote that industry and built a huge ship to do so; the larger the ship, the cheaper the cargo could be moved, hence more profit; and so the huge ship was built, and the day came for her launch.

    She was acting as if she didn’t want to go into the water; afraid, as if a child, of a monster getting her.

    There were signs of her resistance, strange, as the water is exactly where ships belong. Elizabeth, Ed’s wife, was chosen to smash the ceremonial champagne bottle against her bow. It took three times to crack the bottle finally. A 36-minute wait ensued while the shipyard workers labored to free the keel blocks. The ship launched sideways, producing a huge wave that soaked the onlookers before slamming into a pier and righting herself. Subsequently, several witnesses claimed to have witnessed the ship "trying to climb right out of the water".

    If a ship could have premonitions and fears, clearly this massive steel lady was trying to get them across to her human parents, but she was now floated, and she was put to work soon after her sea trials.

    She was a beautiful ship; she featured tiled bathrooms, drapes over portholes, heavy pile carpets, and leather swivel seats in the guest lounge. There were two passenger guest cabins. The crew quarters have more comforts than usual and air conditioning as well. Meals for two dining rooms were provided by a spacious galley and a well-stocked pantry. The pilothouse was furnished with modern nautical apparatus and an exquisite map room. She was one of the largest of her kind and had the advantage of the best marine engineering and building materials.

    For 17 years she worked, breaking her records for the amount of materials moved and time it took, and by the end of her life, she had traveled roughly a million miles.

    During a terrible storm in late fall, she sank. No distress signal was sent, no panicky SOS, though the captain did radio with other ships about her turmoil.

    It just happened.

    𝘚𝘩𝘦 was gone.

    All she left behind was debris, the most striking being a lifeboat which some say looked like giant hands had crushed and torn it. Perhaps the hands of a witch; a 𝘕𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘮𝘣𝘦𝘳 witch.

    𝘚𝘩𝘦 was the Edmund Fitzgerald.