In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
The church bell chimed, ’til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they say, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.
Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Today is the 42nd anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald which sent 29 mariners to a watery grave and was immortalized by Gordon Lightfoot in what was probably the most famous song about a workplace disaster. WXYZ in Detroit notes that “Of the more than 1000 ships in the graves under the icy waters of the Great Lakes, the Edmund Fitzgerald is still the largest to ever go down.”There has been speculation that the Edmund Fitzgerald broke in half on the surface as the bow and stern rode the crests of two large waves. However, the Coast Guard’s final report suggests the Fitzgerald instead nosedived into a large wave and was not able to recover and plunged to the bottom of Lake Superior in only seconds.
As the cargo of 26,116 tons of taconite pellets quickly shifted forward while the Fitzgerald was going down, the bow of the ship hit the bottom with such extreme force that the vessel snapped in two.