The Edmund Fitzgerald

A fully documented 1975 loss, located and protected as a grave site

SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a Great Lakes freighter, 729 feet long, launched at River Rouge, Michigan, in June 1958 for the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee and named after its president and chairman. She was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes at her launch and remains the largest ever lost there. For 17 years she carried taconite iron ore from Minnesota to the steel mills of Detroit and Toledo, setting seasonal haul records six times, and one of her captains, Peter Pulcer, was known for piping music over the intercom on the Detroit and St. Clair rivers.

On the afternoon of 9 November 1975 she left Superior, Wisconsin, under Captain Ernest McSorley with about 26,000 tons of ore for Zug Island, Detroit, and soon made contact with the Arthur M. Anderson on a similar route. A storm that had been building over the plains moved north. The National Weather Service had issued a gale warning that evening and upgraded it to a storm warning at about 2 a.m., and the two captains took a northern course toward the Canadian shore for shelter. On the afternoon of the 10th the wind backed to the northwest and the fetch lengthened across open water, the Anderson reported steady winds of 43 knots and waves of 12 to 16 feet, and the Fitzgerald reported a fence rail down, two vents lost and a list. Later she had lost both radars and was taking heavy seas over the deck. At 7:10 p.m. McSorley's last message to the Anderson was that they were holding their own. Shortly afterwards she sank, without a distress call, in 530 feet of Canadian water, 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, a little over an hour from shelter. All 29 men died, and no bodies were recovered.

A Navy aircraft located the wreck by its magnetic signature on 14 November, lying in two large pieces. Whether she was swamped, broke up, suffered topside damage, grounded on a shoal or met some combination remains unknown, and the loss brought mandatory survival suits, depth finders, positioning systems, more freeboard and more frequent inspections to Great Lakes shipping.

Gordon Lightfoot wrote his 1976 ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, after reading a Newsweek article, and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum calls hers the most mysterious and controversial of all Great Lakes shipwreck tales. On 4 July 1995 an expedition with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, the National Geographic Society, the Canadian Navy and the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians raised her 200 lb bronze bell, now on display at Whitefish Point as a memorial, where a ceremony is held every 10 November.