I'm thinking they recently send a robot thingie down there, did it ascertain the cause?
With well over 200' of the center of the ship destroyed, I doubt there will be anything conclusive. There will be theories and claims.
There were known issues. It is possible she hit bottom at Caribou Shoals, Bernie Cooper believed she did, and she was seriously damaged. There are claims a rock was retrieved from the Shoals with her paint on it. But there's no sold evidence. She was known to have structural issues, and a loose keel. She was loaded to a dangerous level. It was a "100 year storm". Bernie Cooper said a series of massive waves known as "the Three Sisters" common to the lake hit the Arthur M. Anderson, and would have hit the Edmund Fitzgerald hard. He always said he believed she just couldn't recover from them in her condition. She had lost her reserve buoyancy, she was in a trough, and the Three Sisters hit her from behind, her bow went under, and she never recovered. That was his theory, and it adds up.
