50 years ago this week: The Edmund Fitzgerald sinks in Lake Superior
The S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sunk on Nov. 10, 1975 along with all 29 members on board. The exact cause of how the ship sunk in Lake Superior is unknown to this day.
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50 years ago this week, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sunk in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, claiming the lives of all 29 of its crew members.
The fabled ship, immortalized by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, that once championed The Great Lakes met a mysterious end that remains contented five decades after its ill-fated sinking.
The fateful journey began on Nov. 9, when the 729-foot freighter departed Burlington Northern Railroad Dock in Superior, Wisconsin, bound for Zug Island in Detroit, Michigan, hauling 26,000 tons of taconite pellets made of iron ore.
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On the rough seas of the largest of The Great Lakes, the Fitzgerald was accompanied by the Arthur M. Anderson, a fellow Great Lakes freighter that departed Two Harbors, Minnesota the same afternoon.
View of the 729-foot ore boat SS Edmund Fitzgerald, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, 1972. The ship sank, losing all hands, over the night of November 10, 1975. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)
((Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images) / Getty Images)
The November sky turned gloomy and weather conditions deteriorated on the morning of Nov. 10, when a gale warning was upgraded into a storm warning, packing 50 knot wind gusts and seas of 12 to 16 feet, according to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.
Throughout the afternoon and into the evening, the Fitzgerald was in contact with the Anderson as both freighters traversed through the monstrous storm, with Captain Ernest M. McSorley reporting that the vessel had sustained significant damage.
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Both ships charged on for Whitefish Point, where they could seek shelter from the strengthening November storm.
According to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, Captain Bernard "Bernie" McSorley and his crew aboard the Anderson had lost sight of the Fitzgerald due to the growing storm, although the ill-fated ship was visible on radar.
Shortly after brief radio communication between the two ships, the Fitzgerald disappeared from radar and did not return future calls for communication.
"That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed when the gales of November came early," Lightfoot sings in his anthem titled "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
The ship sunk, claiming the lives of all 29 crew members on board. Exactly how the ship succumbed to Lake Superior is unknown to this day, although a report from the U.S. Coast Guard said, "the most probable cause of the sinking was the loss of buoyancy resulting from massive flooding of the cargo hold."
The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was located by an underwater naval device 17 miles from Whitefish Point, over 500 feet below the surface of Lake Superior.
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In honor of the shipwreck's 50th anniversary, on Nov. 10, a number of organizations held memorials to remember and honor those lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
One year after the tragic sinking of the ship that was once the largest freighter on The Great Lakes, Lightfoot immortalized the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald in the 1976 song that artistically communicates the story of the doomed ship.