Why the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking still haunts us 50 years later – National

It's such an infamous wreck, a song that inspired and cemented its legend that many critics and listeners consider one of the greatest songs of all time.

Fifty years ago, on November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a severe storm in Lake Superior while sailing from Superior, Wisconsin to Detroit. All 29 crew members died in Canadian waters.

A year later, the disaster was immortalized by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot with the release of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” The song became an unexpected hit single in 1976 and remains popular to this day as a Canadian cultural totem and source of online memes.

“Between 1825 and 1975, approximately 6,000 commercial ships were wrecked on the Great Lakes. Everyone knows one of them because of this song,” says John U. Bacon, author of the new book “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Historians say the scale of the shipwreck itself also sets the island apart.

The Edmund Fitzgerald remains the largest ship ever sunk in the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes were a particularly booming industrial region in the mid-20th century after World War II, with hundreds of merchant ships transporting raw materials each year between rapidly growing port cities on both sides of the border.

Before sinking, the more than 200-meter-long cargo ship spent 17 years transporting taconite ore, a low-grade iron, from mines in Minnesota to steel mills in Detroit, Toledo, and other ports.

Great Lakes sailors regularly have to contend with severe weather, but residents of these cities are familiar with it. Lightfoot's songs are highlighted by repeated references to the “November gales,” a month that brings particularly strong storms.

“The Great Lakes are more dangerous than the Atlantic Ocean, and you can't even get close to it,” said Bacon, who spoke with former Fitzgerald crew members and families of more than a dozen shipwreck victims for his book. “Those guys (former sailors) told me that over and over again.”

Experts say the culprit is due in part to a flammable mixture of seasonal inflows of arctic air, still-warm lake water and moisture left over from the summer.

“It's the collision of temperatures that drives these strong Great Lakes storms,” ​​said Anthony Farnell, chief meteorologist at Global News.

“These storms can cut from the Gulf of Mexico south to the Great Lakes, producing very low pressure and some pretty intense winds and waves in November.”

Farnell noted that the 1975 storm that sank the Edmund was particularly intense, with near-hurricane winds of more than 100 km/h and waves as high as 11 meters.

“It’s been a while since I’ve competed at that level,” he said.

Dan Rose, collections coordinator at the Museum of the Great Lakes in Kingston, Ont., said the shared experience of severe weather is part of what has brought people on both the Canadian and American sides of the lake together.

He specifically pointed to the so-called White Hurricane of 1913. The hurricane hit around the same time in early November, pummeling the region with a powerful snowstorm that killed more than 250 people and blanketed cities from Toronto to Cleveland in snow.

“I think there's something very unifying about being able to endure such a dangerous and trying situation and be able to look at your neighbor across the water and say, 'Oh, isn't it amazing that we were able to endure and endure these trials and tribulations?'” he said.

“It makes you realize how unifying it is to face things head-on and work together to solve problems.”

That bond was only strengthened by the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy and a shared love of Lightfoot's songs, Rose and other historians said.

Edmund Fitzgerald's legacy also continues with improvements in Great Lakes transportation safety and weather tracking spurred by shipwreck investigations.

That's partly because of Lightfoot, Bacon said, whose songs “embarrassed” the shipping industry.

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Farnell said forecasters will be able to see days or weeks in advance that a major storm is approaching, giving shippers plenty of warning. Ship captains are also less willing to run into severe storms just to get to port on time, and they carry more advanced navigation and location beacons on board in case disaster strikes.

To this day, no commercial cargo ship has sunk in the Great Lakes since the Edmund Fitzgerald.

However, historians still make a point of celebrating the shipwrecks of the past.

“We're using the sinking of the Fitzgerald to draw attention to all the other sailors who lost their lives on the Great Lakes,” said Billy Wall Winkel, field curator at the Detroit Historical Society. The association hosted several events and exhibitions to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the shipwreck, leading up to Monday's annual Lost Seamen Memorial Ceremony.

“We want to honor the people who built the country, not just the people who designed it or financed it.”

The Fitzgerald family's tragic story is just part of the reason Lightfoot's songs continue to resonate with listeners in Canada and the United States today.

Roughly six minutes long without a chorus, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” relies on a repeating circular melody, allowing Lightfoot to detail the history of the Great Lakes and that fateful night.

“It's very fascinating,” said Maria Virginia Acuña, a professor of music history and musicology at the University of Victoria, whose research focuses on early modern musical theater. She said she first heard the song after being asked to discuss it for this story.

“It is soothing, but also sad and tragic, like a lament… But its repetition fascinates us and makes this historical event more familiar and universal.”

Acuña, who grew up in Argentina, said her Canadian-born husband told her “how important this song is and how big a part of our culture it is.”

The song, which reached number two on the Billboard 100 in 1976 and number one in Canada, became even more popular after Lightfoot's death in 2023. The artist himself said that this is the song he is most proud of.

“It has a timeless quality,” Acuña said. “And I think, like all music, we pick up songs at different moments in our lives and they acquire new meanings.”

Over the past few years, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” has inspired countless memes on TikTok, Reddit, and Instagram. The lyrics to “November Gale,” in particular, have been used to refer to everything from the overwhelming forces of nature to seasonal depression to the journey to your girlfriend’s house, connecting a new generation of listeners to this iconic story and song.

People online are also amazed that this sinking happened relatively recently, or even at all, rather than in the 1800s or early 20th century.

“Not only Gen Z, but even baby boomers are saying they had no idea,” Bacon said, adding that he's not surprised why Edmund Fitzgerald's stories continue to attract new generations of listeners and readers.

“I think it's also something really fundamental and fundamental about human nature. The image of humans in boats fighting for their lives against nature has fascinated us since Noah's Ark. So it's nothing new and continues to fascinate us.”

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