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50 YEARS AGO, THE EDMUND FITZGERALD, A ‘ROCK STAR’ SHIP, SANK IN
LAKE SUPERIOR  
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Neda Ulaby
November 6, 2025
NPR
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_ The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald helped change safety standards.
There has not been a single major commercial shipwreck on the Great
Lakes, he says, for the past 50 years. _

The largest and longest vessel ever built on the Great Lakes, the
729-foot ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald, slides into the launching
basin, on June 7, 1958, in Detroit, Mich. , AP/AP

 

No one was more surprised than Gordon Lightfoot when his ballad "The
Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" became one of the biggest hits
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of 1976, less than a year after the disaster it commemorates. The
Canadian musician had agonized over writing the song in the first
place.

"He feared being inaccurate, corny or worse, appearing to exploit a
tragedy for profit," writes John U. Bacon in his new bestseller, _The
Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald_. "But
more than that, as a fellow sailor and a child of the Great Lakes …
this song — whatever it was — was deeply personal."

The success of Lightfoot's song elevated the Edmund Fitzgerald's place
in popular history. But its tragedy was hardly unique.

"From 1875 to 1975, there were at least 6,000 commercial shipwrecks
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on the bottom of the Great Lakes," Bacon told NPR. "So that is one
shipwreck a week every week for a century. That is one casualty every
day for a century."

While shipwrecks may have been common, the Edmund Fitzgerald was not.
Named — perhaps ironically — for the president of the insurance
company that paid for its construction, the freighter has been
described
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as a freshwater Titanic.

"It was, in fact, the greatest ship on the Great Lakes when it
launched in Detroit in 1958," Bacon said. "Fifteen thousand people
came out to see the launching. When it went through the Soo Locks or
Detroit or Duluth, people would wait half a day to see this ship come
through. It was a rock star."

Great Lakes maritime trade first took off in the 1770s, as wealthy
Europeans clamored for luxurious beaver pelts
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later, hundreds of long ships crowded the five inland seas carrying
lumber, limestone, copper, cars, crops, and iron from Canada and the
Midwest down to the Saint Lawrence Seaway that eventually leads to the
Atlantic. The Edmund Fitzgerald was loaded with 26,000 tons of pellets
containing iron ore when it sank. To slip through the narrow Soo
Locks, such ships are only 75 feet wide.

"That's less than the space from home plate to first base," Bacon
observed. "What's the problem with that? They can't handle rough
seas." And the Great Lakes do get rougher over the winter, even more
so than the ocean. Salt helps regulate and weigh down waves, so
freshwater waves can become huge and erratic. The Edmund Fitzgerald
was caught in a savage storm with hurricane-force winds around
100-mile-an-hour and waves up to 60 feet, crashing down on the
freighter every four to eight seconds, says Bacon.

When Gordon Lightfoot read news accounts of the tragedy, it didn't
feel far away. He was an experienced Great Lakes sailor who knew those
waters well. He kept noodling with a ballad about the disaster during
breaks while recording his album _Summertime Dream _in 1976. His
bandmates and a studio engineer eventually talked Lightfoot into
trying it out. In _The Gales of November_, drummer Bill Keane said
that the first take — also the first time the band ever played it
— was the version that ended up on the album. 

"We all just played what we felt," he said.

And that's how a six and a half minute folk dirge with no hook, no
guitar solo, and 28 two-line stanzas became a hit. When it came out in
1976, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was the number two song on
the Billboard Hot 100, right after Rod Stewart's "Tonight's the
Night."

Today, Lightfoot's song is treasured by the families of sailors who
died. The singer became close to these families
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and attended their reunions to commemorate the tragedy. And he
established a scholarship fund at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy,
which lost a cadet and an alumnus when the freighter sank. "On many
occasions, cadets had an opportunity to meet him when performed in the
area," the Academy's superintendent, Jerry Achenbach, told NPR.

Ultimately, said author John U. Bacon, the wreck of the Edmund
Fitzgerald helped change safety standards. There has not been a single
major commercial shipwreck on the Great Lakes, he says, for the past
50 years.

 

_Neda Ulaby reports on arts, entertainment, and cultural trends for
NPR's Arts Desk._

* Edmund Fitzgerald
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* Great Lakes
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* Maritime accidents
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