The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Fifty years ago today, a ship called the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. It’s the largest boat to have sunk in the great lakes, and if you already know about it, it’s probably for the same reason as me: Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about it, which I was introduced to one day by my elementary school teacher. I’ve since learned that this is some surprisingly well-known midwestern folklore, but I haven’t revisited the song in years. So today I’d like to do just that.

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was written in 1976, after Lightfoot read about the wreck in the news. Here are the lyrics. Feel free to listen along as you read, but you might have to pause a lot:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down 

of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee.”

The lake that we now call Lake Superior was originally known to the the Chippewa or Ojibwe people as “gichi-gami,” romanized to “Gitche Gumee” in the poem The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, which is why Lightfoot names it that way here.

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead

when the skies of November turn gloomy.

Typically, corpses in water sink at first then begin to float as they decompose, especially in buoyant saltwater. But Lake Superior is freshwater, of course, and more importantly it’s extremely cold, meaning corpses stay too preserved to decompose properly. Instead, they sink and they stay sunk, thus the saying “never gives up her dead.” I couldn’t find another official source for this saying other than Lightfoot himself, but I imagine it’s a long-spoken folk saying.

With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more

than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a freighter that shipped huge quantities of iron ore from mines on the north shore of Minnesota to various ports along the great lakes in Wisconsin and Michigan. On its final journey, it was carrying 26,116 tons of taconite.

that good ship and true was a bone to be chewed

when the “gales of November” came early. 

The “gales of November” refers to a seasonal pattern of heavy winds that occur across the Great Lakes every year, creating huge storms and making for dangerous sea travel. Extreme storms in the great lakes during this season have been recorded as early as 1905.

The ship was the pride of the American side

coming back from some mill in Wisconsin.

The ship’s construction was funded by a life insurance company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and named after the company’s president, Edmund Fitzgerald. It was built and launched in River Rouge, Michigan, but on its final voyage it had departed from a port in Superior, Wisconsin.

As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most

with a crew and good captain well seasoned,

At its longest and widest, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was 729 feet long and 75 feet wide, making it the largest ship on the Great Lakes at the time, and still the largest to sink there. The captain was sixty-three-year-old Ernest Michael McSorley, who had begun sailing on freighters at eighteen years old and had captained nine ships before the Fitzgerald.

concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms

when they left fully loaded for Cleveland.

As far as I can tell, the boat’s final voyage was actually headed for Zug Island in River Rouge, Michigan, but I suppose that doesn’t rhyme with “feelin.” Fair enough.

And later that night when the ship’s bell rang,

could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

The ship’s bell was recovered from the wreck in 1995 and was replaced by a memorial replica bell, engraved with the names of the captain and crew. The real bell was transported to the Great Lakes Shipwreck museum in Whitefish Point, MI, where it remains today.

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound

and a wave broke over the railing.

And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did too

’twas the witch of November come stealin’.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait

when the Gales of November came slashin’.

When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain

in the face of a hurricane west wind.

The Edmund Fitzgerald’s final voyage began on November 9, 1975, when the ship left the docks in Wisconsin at 2:15 p.m. At 7 p.m., the National Weather Service issued a gale warning for all of Lake Superior, which changed to a full storm warning at 2:00 a.m. on November 10. Conditions continued to worsen over the course of the morning, and by the mid afternoon the ship was sustaining physical damage, taking on water, and had developed a list. In the early evening, winds were reaching speeds of fifty knots, and rogue waves were as high as thirty-five feet tall.

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck

Sayin’ “Fellas, it’s too rough t’feed ya.”

At 7 p.m., it grew dark, it was then he said,

“Fellas, it’s bin good t’know ya!”

The captain wired in he had water comin’ in

and the good ship and crew was in peril.

And later that night when his lights went outta sight

came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

During its final hours, the Edmund Fitzgerald was in contact with another vessel, the SS Arthur M Anderson, a slower ship which had started out ahead on a similar path but was passed by the Fitzgerald some time early in the morning. At around 7:10 p.m., the Anderson asked how the Fitzgerald was doing, to which Captain McSorley responded: “We are holding our own.” That was the last communication heard from the ship. Within minutes, the Fitzgerald had disappeared from the Anderson’s radar.

Does any one know where the love of God goes

when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay

if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er.

The wreck of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was found only four days later, near the border between American and Canadian waters, about seventeen miles from Whitefish Bay.

They might have split up or they might have capsized;

they may have broke deep and took water.

And all that remains is the faces and the names

of the wives and the sons and the daughters.

There are a number of theories about the details that led to the fate of the ship, but no determinate conclusions have been reached, and no bodies were ever recovered. Since 2006, the Ontario government has protected the wreck site and its surrounding waters within five hundred meters as a registered archeological site, effectively a self-contained underwater cemetery.

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings

in the rooms of her ice-water mansion.

Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams;

the islands and bays are for sportsmen.

And farther below Lake Ontario

takes in what Lake Erie can send her,

And the iron boats go as the mariners all know

with the Gales of November remembered.

I like that Lightfoot takes time to characterize each of the Great Lakes, as if each has its own spirit with a distinctive personality. Who’s to say that they don’t?

In a rustic old hall in Detroit they prayed,

in the “Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral.”

The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times

for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.

On November 11, 1975, the Mariner’s Church of Detroit rang its bell twenty-nine times in mourning, once for each member of the crew of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Every year since, they have repeated the tradition. One ring for the captain, one for the first mate, one for the second, one for the third, one for the wiper, one for the steward, one for the cook, one for the cadet, two for the maintenance men and two for the porters, three for the oilers and three for the wheelsmen, three for the deckhands and three for the watchmen, and five for the engineers.

Since Gordon Lightfoot passed in 2023, the church has added one additional ring to its memorial tradition.

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

of the big lake they call “Gitche Gumee.”

“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead

when the gales of November come early!”