November 10, 1975

I was a little more than two years old then but, having grown up in Northern Michigan in a lakeside town, the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald is not something we will ever forget.

She was built in River Rouge over by Detroit.  She had hauled taconite pellets from near Duluth, MN back to Detroit for 17 years setting numerous records.  On this night, she was doing just the same when she was caught in the storm - the worst storm in 3 decades, they say.  She was mighty and we were so proud.  In her time, at 729 feet she was the longest freighter on the Great Lakes.  The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald is one of the best-known disasters in the history of Great Lakes shipping.

It's fitting now, that I'm sitting here thinking about the "Mighty Fitz" as it's snowing here to beat all heck!  It was snowing so hard on my way home from work that I could barely see.  Could you imagine being out in icy Lake Superior on such a snowy night - with the wind and the waves and no hope of safely making it to land?  Or even the shelter of Whitefish Bay?

Yet 29 men, 29 souls braved that November storm to do their jobs.  And 29 men lost their lives when "The Pride of the American Flag" slipped into the icy blue water.  36 years in their watery graves.  Their bodies were never recovered.  Though the legend is full of theories, no one truly knows what happened to bring her down.

I had the chance to visit Whitefish Point to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum a few years ago.  They have a lifeboat from the Fitz and that boat - it's dented and beat.  It's difficult to comprehend that the water caused such damage to that metal boat.  I remember standing on the deck there looking out over the water and thinking of that beautiful ship, and the night she and her 29 men came to lay in their icy grave.

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the "Maritime Sailors' Cathedral."
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine 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 said, "never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early!" ~  Gordon Lightfoot