Max Corcoran

ON THIS DATE IN 1975: SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk there. By late in the afternoon of November 10, sustained winds of over 58 mph were recorded by ships and observation points across eastern Lake Superior. The ship Arthur M. Anderson logged sustained winds as high as 67 mph at 4:52 p.m., while waves increased to as high as 25 feet by 6:00 p.m. Arthur M. Anderson was also struck by 81 to 86 mph gusts and rogue waves as high as 35 feet. At approximately 7:10 p.m., when Arthur M. Anderson notified Edmund Fitzgerald of an upbound ship and asked how she was doing, Captain Ernest McSorley reported, "We are holding our own." She was never heard from again. No distress signal was received, and ten minutes later, Arthur M. Anderson lost the ability either to reach Edmund Fitzgerald by radio or to detect her on radar. She was located in deep water on November 14, 1975, by a U.S. Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies, and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces. Gordon Lightfoot read about the sinking in a Newsweek article — "The Cruelest Month," in the November 24, 1975 issue — and within weeks had written "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," one of the most remarkable feats of songwriting in folk music: a six-minute ballad, in an unusual shifting meter, that tells the story almost like a news report set to a hymn. "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 her 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"