“The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead when the skies of November turn gloomy…” 35 years later
My fascination with the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald goes back as far as I can remember. It sank just a month after I was born. Like most people who know about the disaster, it was Gordon Lightfoot’s song that first made me aware of it, probably playing on a bad AM radio in my parents’ car in the early ’80s. Trips to Duluth — still one of my favorite cities after traveling far from Minnesota — always had to include a visit to the maritime museum there, and I could have looked at the Fitzgerald exhibits all day. But as nostalgic as it is to think back on this childhood fascination, I was reminded by one of the pages linked below that this wasn’t just a mysterious calamity that became a romantic ballad. It was a tragic loss for 29 families who have been without one of their members for 35 years now.
Photo source: www.mhsd.org
From cimss.ssec.wisc.edu:
On November 10, 1975 the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior. All 29 crew members died. At the time, it was the worst shipping disaster on the Great Lakes in 11 years.
Gordon Lightfoot’s song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976, Moose Music, Ltd.) is a tribute to this ship wreck and the men who lost their lives. Some of the lyrics of the song are given below along with descriptions of related events.
From ssefo.com
Why has the sinking become such a fascination of so many people? Surely the mystery has contributed to this, but for me, the stories of the twenty-nine men lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald tell an even greater story: the value of family. A ship was not the only loss in 1975. Twenty-nine families mourned the loss of a loved one, and the memories of their loved ones will never be forgotten.
From www.thestar.com:
Gordon Lightfoot has changed the lyric of his 1976 hit, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, to remove the implication that human error played a part.
