I remember hearing about the Derbyshire. I understand that it had to do with the many hours of wave action pulling the tops off the ventilators going into the bosun's locker in the foc'sle. This allowed water to slowly seep in, and when it hit the magic point the ship just nosedived. This is a particular feature of ore carriers (which is what the Derbyshire was) and is also relevantly similar to what happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald.

One of the big features was a bosun from a sister ship demonstrating how to secure certain kinds of hatches with ropes due to a design flaw; it meant that they couldn't blame the captain and crew for either incompetence or negligence leading to the sinking.

The nosedive bug/feature of ore carriers in particular is well known... they have the dubious distinction of literally sinking like a stone when they hit that magic point of negative bouyancy; they go from floating to completely submerged in less than ninety seconds.

Here's an interesting factoid for you; when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, it went bow first. The bow plowed a five hundred yard long furrow along the bottom of the lake as the ship telescoped itself in before finally (literally) shattering. During that period, the stern was quite possibly still above water; the Edmund Fitzgerald was over 800 feet long while the water was only about five hundred feet deep.

Not that that would've helped anyone in the stern.