It was a shipwreck so infamous that it inspired many critics and listeners to create one of the greatest songs of all time—a song that helped cement the legend.
Fifty years ago, November 10, 1975, SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a heavy storm on Lake Superior while sailing from Superior, Wisconsin to Detroit. The entire crew of 29 died in Canadian waters.
A year later, the disaster was immortalized by a Canadian singer-songwriter. Gordon Lightfoot when he released”Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald“, which became an unlikely hit in 1976 and remains popular to this day as a cultural totem in Canada and a source of online memes.
“Between 1825 and 1975, there were approximately 6,000 shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. Everybody knows one thing, and it's because of the song,” said John W. Bacon, author of the new book. November Storms: The Untold Story of Edmund Fitzgerald.
Historians say the scale of the crash also makes it stand out.
The Edmund Fitzgerald remains the largest ship ever sunk in the Great Lakes.which was a particularly prosperous industrial region in the mid-20th century after World War II, with hundreds of commercial ships annually ferrying raw materials between booming port cities on both sides of the border.
Before sinking, the 200-meter-long cargo ship spent 17 years transporting taconite ore, a low-grade iron, from Minnesota mines to steel mills in Detroit, Toledo and other ports.
FILE – The Edmund Fitzgerald was carrying a cargo of 26,216 tons of taconite granules in a 1959 file photo with a crew of 28 to 30 people. (AP Photo, file).
Sailors on the Great Lakes regularly had to deal with harsh weather that residents of these cities are all too familiar with. As Lightfoot's song emphasizes with its repeated references to “November storms,” this month brings particularly severe storms.
“The Great Lakes are more dangerous than the Atlantic Ocean, and it's not even close,” said Bacon, who interviewed former Fitzgerald crew members as well as the families of more than a dozen shipwreck victims for his book. “These guys (former sailors) told me that over and over again.”
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One reason is a combustible mixture of incoming Arctic air with still-warm lake water and moisture left over from the summer months, experts say, as the seasons change.
“It's this temperature clash that causes severe storms in the Great Lakes,” said Global News Chief Meteorologist Anthony Farnell.
“These storms are pushing from the Gulf of Mexico as far south as the Great Lakes, and that could result in very low air pressure and some pretty strong winds and waves in November.”
The 1975 storm that sank the Edmund was particularly strong, with near-hurricane force winds exceeding 100 km/h and waves up to 11 meters high, Farnell said.
“We haven’t had this level in a long time,” he said.
FILE – Two U.S. Coast Guard members carry a life raft from the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald across the dock in Sault Ste. Mary, Michigan, November 11, 1975, after the raft was recovered from Whitefish Bay by the freighter Roger Bluff, a vessel assisting in the search for the missing Edmund Fitzgerald, who sank November 10, 1975, in Lake Superior. (Photo AP/YUCH, file).
This shared experience of severe weather is part of what unites people on both the Canadian and American sides of the lakes, said Dan Rose, collections coordinator at the Great Lakes Museum in Kingston, Ont.
He specifically pointed out the so-called White hurricane of 1913.which hit around the same time in early November and lashed the region with powerful snowstorms, killing more than 250 people and blanketing cities from Toronto to Cleveland with snow.
“I think there's something so unifying about long-term conditions that are so treacherous and difficult, and being able to look across the water at our neighbors and say, 'God, isn't it great that we were able to endure and endure these trials and tribulations?' – he said.
“It really shows how unifying it is to just face things and work together to solve a problem.”
That connection only strengthened after the Edmund Fitzgerald disaster and a shared love of Lightfoot's song, Rose and other historians say.
Edmund Fitzgerald's legacy also continues with improvements in shipping safety and weather tracking on the Great Lakes prompted by the sinking investigation.
This is partly due to Lightfoot, whose song Bacon said “embarrassed” the shipping industry.
Singer Gordon Lightfoot attends an event commemorating the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Michigan, in a 2015 handout photo. THE CANADIAN PRESS/XO-Deborah Champeau.
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Farnell said forecasters can now see large storms approaching days or even weeks in advance, giving shippers advance warning. Ship captains are also less willing to sail into severe storms just to reach port in time, and have more advanced navigation and location beacons on board in case of disaster.
To this day, no commercial cargo ship has sunk in the Great Lakes since the Edmund Fitzgerald.
However, historians still strive to commemorate those past shipwrecks.
“We're using the sinking of the Fitzgerald to bring attention to all the other sailors who died on the Great Lakes,” said Billy Wall-Winkel, field curator for the Detroit Historical Society, which has held several events and exhibits to mark the 50th anniversary of the sinking ahead of Monday's annual event to honor the lost sailors.
“We want to celebrate the people who built the country, not just the people who designed it or paid for it.”
Lightfoot's song is still alive
Fitzgerald's heartbreaking story is just part of why Lightfoot's song continues to resonate with both Canadian and American listeners.
Clocking in at nearly six minutes and without a chorus, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is based on a repeating circular melody that allows Lightfoot to detail the history of the Great Lakes and that fateful night.
“It's fascinating,” said Maria Virginia Acuña, a professor of music history and musicology at the University of Victoria who primarily studies early modern musical theater and who first listened to the song after being asked to discuss it for this story.
“It is soothing, but at the same time sad and tragic, like a cry… but the repetition captures us and turns this historical event into something much more accessible and universal.”
Acuña, who grew up in Argentina, said her Canadian-born husband told her “how important this (song) is and how important it is to our culture.”
The song, which reached number two on the Billboard 100 and number one in Canada in 1976, was received a new surge in popularity after Lightfoot's death in 2023.. The artist himself said that this is the song he is most proud of.
“It’s a timeless quality,” Acuña said. “And I think that, as with all music, we take songs at different points in our lives and they take on new meanings.”
Over the past few years, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” inspired countless memes on TikTok, Reddit and Instagram. In particular, the lyrics of “November Storms” has been used to represent everything from the unstoppable force of nature to seasonal depression to how long one has to walk to get to a friend's house, connecting a new generation of listeners to the iconic story and song.
People online are also surprised that the crash happened relatively recently and not in the 1800s or early 20th century, or even that it happened at all.
“It's not just Gen Z—even the Boomers said they had no idea,” Bacon said, adding that he's not surprised why the Edmund Fitzgerald story continues to attract new generations of listeners and readers.
“I think it's also something really fundamental and elemental about human nature. People on a boat fighting the elements for their lives have captivated us since Noah's Ark. So it's not new and we're still fascinated.”
