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| The Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in one of the worst "gales of November" on record, 50 years ago today. |
Thanks perhaps in large part to the song by Gordon Lightfoot, the Edmund Fitzgerald is easily among the most famous shipwrecks in U.S. history, right up there with the Titanic and the sinking of the fishing boat Andrea Gail during the 1991 "Perfect Storm."
At age 13 at the time, I was already a hopeless weather geek and to this day I clearly remember that storm, and the brief, scattered news reports at the time when the Edmond Fitzgerald sank.
Gordon Lighftoot turned the wreck into modern folklore with his iconic song about the disaster.
Every time the wind comes up this time of year - which is frequently - my mind goes to the vicious "gales of November" on the Great Lakes.
THE EDMUND/EDMOND FITZGERALD
The 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was the second time a ship by that name sank in the Great Lakes.
Back in 1870 a two-masted schooner, the Edmond Fitzgerald - Edmond spelled with an "o" instead of the "u" we had in the 1975 shipwreck - was built to carry grain and wood in the Great Lakes.
In 1883, the original Edmond Fitzgerald sank in yet another November storm in the Great Lakes. On November 14 that year, the two-mastered schooner was trying to get across Lake Erie with one last cargo of wheat before shipping closed on the lake that season.
The schooner got caught in a snowstorm with high winds. The crew got disoriented, and the Edmond Fitzgerald ran aground on a shoal near Long Point, Ontario. The schooner broke apart, and the crew of seven all died.
It's no accident that both ships of the same name were lost in November. The month is the scariest of them all on the Great Lakes.
The water in the lakes isn't exactly warm in November. But those lakes absorbed the sun's warmth all summer, so the water is now much tepid than the frigid air that starts to blow in from Canada this time of year.
The contrast between the increasingly frigid air and remaining mild autumn air to the south often makes storms in the middle of the nation pretty strong to begin with.
Once these storms enter the Great Lakes, the relatively mild water gives the storms an added boost of energy. The storms intensify, the wind howls harder than ever. Torrential rains and thunder peal in the warm air on the east side of these storms. Blinding snow and freezing rain rage on the west and north side of these powerful November Great Lakes gales.
Even as the storms begin to depart, strong, cold winds blow over the comparatively warm water, causing blinding lake effect snows.
For centuries, hundreds of long ships plied all five Great Lakes carrying lumber, limestone, copper, cars, crops and iron.
The modern day Edmund Fitzgerald was launched from Detroit in 1958. This was a big deal. As NPR reports:
"It was in fact the greatest ship on the Great Lakes," John U. Bacon said in his new bestseller The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald." "Fifteen thousand people came out to see the launching. When it went through the Soo Locks or Detroit or Duluth, people would sit half a day to see this ship come through. It was a rock star."
Late on November 8, 1975 the storm formed in the Oklahoma panhandle. By the morning of November 9, the fast-strengthening storm was over Kansas, on a path that would take it over Lake Superior on November 10.
While the storm was developing in the Plains, the Edmund Fitzgerald left port with its 26,000 tons of taconite in 21 watertight cargo hatches.
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| Weather map on November 10, 1975 shows an intense storm right over Lake Superior. |
A gale warning was issued for Lake Superior and the captain of the Edmund Fitzgerald acknowledged receiving the warning. Earlier forecasts had indicated that the storm would not be as intense as it turned out to be.
Subsequent forecasts increased the expected winds with the storm, but by then, literally, that ship had sailed. The Edmund Fitzgerald ended up in the teeth of the storm.
By mid-afternoon of November 10, the Fitzgerald had "a bad list" according to a radio transmission by the ship's captain.
Heavy seas were crashing over the deck in one of the worst seas the crew had ever seen on Lake Superior. Some weather observations on and near Lake Superior were reporting wind gusts of near hurricane force.
The last radio transmission from the Edmund Fitzgerald came at 7:10 p.m., when the captain radioed that they were "holding their own."
But very soon after that, the Edmund Fitzgerald was gone.
The best guess is that the ship suddenly sank shortly thereafter. There were no distress signals. The Edmund Fitzgerald sat 17 miles from the relative calm of Whitefish Bay. The ship was later found, broken in two, in 530 feet of water.
THE SONG
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| Gordon Lightfoot wrote and performed "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," a stunning story song that beautifully illustrates the tragedy of that shipwreck 50 years ago today. |
"The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" was easily among the best songs of the 1970s, created by one of the most gifted songwriters of the era.
It was an unlikely hit. It ran for six minutes, much longer than most pop songs. It really didn't have much of a chorus, or a hook. It was wordy.
But the melody, the arrangement and the meticulous storyline Lightfoot crafted made "The Wreck Of the Edmund Fitzgerald irresistible.
It hit its peak on the Billboard charts just about a year after the actual sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. The highest it reached was #2 on the charts during the weeks of November 20 and 27, blocked from the top spot both weeks by "Tonight's The Night," by Rod Stewart.
To give you a sense of how awful the music charts could sometimes be in the mid 1970s, I'll give you this nugget: At the same time "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" was in the Billboard Top 10, so was "Disco Duck" and "Muskrat Love."
Go figure.
But at least Gordon Lightfoot graced us with this exquisite folk ballad that year.
The song is recognizable from the very first chord, and immediately evokes what the 29 doomed men on the Edmund Fitzgerald must have seen and felt on November 10, 1975.
When I hear "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald," my mind immediately goes to a storm-wracked shoreline, all colors of the landscape reduced to a monochromatic dark gray amid the gales. I picture enormous waves crashing onto the rocks, screaming winds battering storm-weary evergreens on land, sheets of rain blasting sideways.
There were about 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes between 1875 and 1975. Lightfoot turned the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy into a story for the ages.
According to Rolling Stone, one night in his home in Toronto, Lightfoot was playing around with the melody of an old Irish dirge that was stuck in his head. Around 10 p.m. he decided to take a break. He noticed how stormy it was outside.
"The wind was howling even in Toronto," he said, "and I went back up to the attic thinking, 'I wonder what it's like up on Lake Superior. It must've been awful."
That windy night when Lightfoot was playing with the dirge melody was November 10, 1975, the night the Edmund Fitzgerald sank. He unknowingly started writing the song at just about the same time the ship disappears beneath Lake Superior's punishing waves.
Shortly after Lightfoot learned about the shipwreck, the lyrics came quickly.
According to Complex.com, Lightfoot wrote the following on an Ask Me Anything (AMA) on Reddit back in 2014:
"The Edmund Fitzgerald really seems to go unnoticed at the time, anything I'd seen in the newspapers or magazines were very short, brief articles, and I felt I would like to expand upon the story of the sinking of the ship itself."
"And it was quite an undertaking to do that. I went and bought all of the old newspapers, got everything in chronological order and went ahead and dit it because I already had a melody in my mind ."
Lightfoot was obsessive as he crafted the song
"'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 Edmond Fitzgerald. 'But more than that, as a fellow sailor and a child of the Great Lake...this song - whatever it was - was deeply personal.'"
Lightfoot only took a few liberties with the lyrics. The Edmund Fitzgerald was headed for Detroit, not Cleveland.
The lyric "When suppertime the old cook came on deck/sayin it's too rough to feed ya/At 7 pm., a main hatchway caved in/He said, Fellas, it's been good to know ya."
Of course it's impossible to know who said what during the last hours and minutes before the ship sank, but the lyric is a gut punch nonetheless.
After Lightfoot wrote and released the song, an investigation revealed that crew members were blameless in the sinking. So in live concerts, he changed the words regarding the hatchway to "At 7 p.m. it grew dark...."
Toward the end of the song, Lightfoot sings: "In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed/In the maritime sailors' cathedral."
The "musty old hall" was really the Mariner's Church of Detroit. A parishioner once insisted to Lightfoot the church is not "musty." So, in live concerts, he sang about the "rustic old hall."
Loved ones of the men who died on the Edmund Fitzgerald, and other people associated with Great Lakes shipping obviously embraced the song.
As the Great Lakes Museum tells us:
"After Lightfoot's death in 2023, the Mariner's Church rang its bell 29 times for the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald and an additional 30th time for Lightfoot himself."
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Click on this link or if you see the image below, click on that for Gordon Lightfoot's "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald"
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