Comment by shagie

https://www.michiganseagrant.org/lessons/lessons/by-broad-co... and Reexamination of the 9–10 November 1975 “Edmund Fitzgerald” Storm Using Today’s Technology - https://www.michiganseagrant.org/lessons/wp-content/uploads/... (pdf from 2006)

    The captain of the Arthur M. Anderson later indicated that as it moved into the area where the Edmund Fitzgerald was lost (Fig. 2) waves were between 5.5 and 7.5 m and winds gusted between 70 kt (35 m s–1) and 75 kt (37.5 m s–1).

   ...

    Wave heights of individual waves generally follow a Rayleigh distribution (Lonquet-Higgins 1952) so that the maximum wave height in 7-m seas, although rare and unlikely, could be as high as 14 m. It is particularly noteworthy that the most severe conditions in the simulations occurred between 0000 and 0100 UTC, coincident in time and location with the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald.