Posted On: Monday - November 10th 2025 8:14PM MST
In Topics: Music History
It was 50 years ago today* when the ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank with her crew of 29 White American men into Lake Superior's Icewater Mansion. Peak Stupidity will dispense with our Sergeant Pepper parody this time. This tragedy should be remembered in sadness, not only about the 29 souls lost but also the death of the country America still was on November 10th of 1975.
As the song will tell you, the 729 ft long Edmund Fitzgerald was carrying 26,000 tons of iron ore (taconite) from resource-rich Minnesota on to steel foundries in Detroit.** In other words, this country was still a manufacturing powerhouse 50 years ago - yes, the big boat was built in America, in the late '50's though, by the Great Lakes Engineering Works of River Rouge, Michigan (in Detroit, basically).
I'm sitting here writing this while it's blowing snow here today, as "the gales of November come early...", thankfully not anywhere that far north, upper Great Lakes region. It was a violent gale there on Lake Superior that day, with the crew having planned the route out of Superior, Wisconsin the evening prior based on a slightly off and optimistic forecast. Other than the extreme weather - 50-58 knots sustained winds with gusts into the 70s and 25' and occasionally 35' rogue waves - the exact cause of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald has not necessarily been positively determined.
This wiki page does a nice job laying out 5 theories with the contributing factors. These all involve the heavy winds and big water, of course, but unsecured cargo hatch covers, a possible grounding at the "Superior Shoals" an underlake mountain, the "Three sisters" sequence of rogue wave hypothesis, plain old structural failure at the surface are brought up as possibilities. However, I checked out the NTSB report, which is more trustworthy than any wiki page. The NTSB doesn't just do aviation, even though that's where the glamour (?) is, and it is one of the few agencies of the US Government I think should have been getting paid as of late, shutdown or not. Good people. Their probable cause is the broken or missing hatch covers having let lots of water into the holds, causing the Fitzgerald to lose too much buoyancy.
I imagine our commenter SafeNow knows more about this story than we do, and his Coast Guard has a big role in the story of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald as well.
Anyway, as a youngster, living far from the Great Lakes, I'd heard Canadian pop singer Gordon Lightfoot's song quite a lot. It was an epic, you might say, especially for the AM pop radio of the day. The radio DJ I knew well told me that he'd put this single on the turntable when he had to use the restroom for the 2nd thing.
Yet, who listens to lyrics? (... as clear and good as they are in the song.) There I was, writing a creative story for English class - not my thing whatsoever, and it was to be about some mystery. In my mystery, written in pencil on the old loose-leaf paper, was about the ghost ship Edmund Fitzgerald appearing in the ocean (I didn't' know) after having sunk long, long ago, like a century. (Hey, I didn't know!) I truly didn't have any idea that the song was about a RECENT tragedy, and this English teacher. of all places, just happened to be from, as she called it, "Wizz-gaan'-sin". I got a B, probably for the spelling and grammar, but, man, if "WTF?" was around then, she should have put that in red ink! It was years until I knew of the story in the song.
This was a very nice job by a youtube creator*** from early in the youtube world. Mr. Lightfoot's great tribute was playing half a decade before musicians made creative videos for their songs, while the youtube video is from arguably 2 decades after musicians didn't care about making those creative music videos anymore.
Let's memorialize for a few minutes the hard-working White men who were lost a half century ago today. Also we should memorialize the country of a half century ago that may as well also be at the bottom in Lake Superior's Icewater Mansion... and please don't call the lake Gitche Gumee... this ain't wiki.
This is really nice: That old Mariners' Church of Detroit tolled its bells 30 times rather than 29 in '23, as old Gordie died 2 1/2 years ago. I miss him too.
PS: Years later, maybe around the time this fellow made the video, I was on a plane with a gentleman on the way from Traverse City ("Cherry Capital Airport") to Detroit. This guy turned out to be an owner of a shipping company with big boats plying the great lakes. There weren't that many of them out there. It sounded like he owned half the fleet. We had a talk about the pros and cons of actual shipping vs. shipping this bulk cargo via freight train.
* Thanks so much to Unz Review commenter Joe Stalin for noting this date - I didn't have it in my head.
** Gordon Lightfoot sang "Cleveland", but that was artistic license - it was headed for Detroit.
*** I'm just guessing that it's the "owner" of the channel, one Joseph Hulton. (Oops, now I also noticed his billing as director of the video.)
We have posted this very video made for Gordon Lightfoot's great song showing this history very respectfully, back when we'd just post videos for the music only. Amazingly, this very one was on youtube 16 years ago and is still there obviously. I must have seen it when it'd been up about a year or 2, as I recall.
Comments:
Moderator
Tuesday - November 11th 2025 2:24PM MST
PS: Yeah, I didn't get nearly far enough into the story, SafeNow. Let me ask you, does the Coast Guard work with the NTSB on these things, as with aviation? It sounds like they make their own independent recommendations and new rules ("written in blood") It sound like are in rough agreement anyway...
The Alarmist
Tuesday - November 11th 2025 3:37AM MST
PS
Your connection to the broader state of the US economy is apt. We didn’t just run aground in the ‘70s and beyond; we threw the better part of our engines overboard and then sailed into the storm with wide open hatches, taking on so much dead weight that our diminishing productive capacity can no longer keep afloat.
Or something like that.
If we threw all the H1Bs out of the country and let actual American family assume the low-rate FHA mortgages that were extended to those fer’nrs by the Biden Junta, a lot of the affordable “housing crisis” and “good job crisis” would be solved within a year.
BTW, I can’t be the only one who worries that the AI revolution that everyone is banking on is being programmed by dot-Indians. Houston, we have a problem.
Your connection to the broader state of the US economy is apt. We didn’t just run aground in the ‘70s and beyond; we threw the better part of our engines overboard and then sailed into the storm with wide open hatches, taking on so much dead weight that our diminishing productive capacity can no longer keep afloat.
Or something like that.
If we threw all the H1Bs out of the country and let actual American family assume the low-rate FHA mortgages that were extended to those fer’nrs by the Biden Junta, a lot of the affordable “housing crisis” and “good job crisis” would be solved within a year.
BTW, I can’t be the only one who worries that the AI revolution that everyone is banking on is being programmed by dot-Indians. Houston, we have a problem.
SafeNow
Monday - November 10th 2025 10:15PM MST
PS
Thank you for remembering the Fitzgerald and for the excellent summary. For anyone curious to learn more: A lengthy, detailed, interesting, and highly technical 50th anniversary video is posted here, describing what happened and the possible causes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygzA5Qj-vR0
The USCG investigation concluded that while the cause will never be known with certainty, the probable cause was ineffective (not sufficiently weather-safe) hatch closures leading to a flooding of the cargo hold. The USCG report led to implementation of numerous safety measures applicable to Great Lakes shipping.
Why does this civilian wreck occupy such a salient place in the minds of mariners and the public alike, second only to Titanic? One factor is its recency; family members alive today knew an ancestor crewman lost in the wreck. Another factor is said to be Mr. Lightfoot’s artistry.
Thank you for remembering the Fitzgerald and for the excellent summary. For anyone curious to learn more: A lengthy, detailed, interesting, and highly technical 50th anniversary video is posted here, describing what happened and the possible causes:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygzA5Qj-vR0
The USCG investigation concluded that while the cause will never be known with certainty, the probable cause was ineffective (not sufficiently weather-safe) hatch closures leading to a flooding of the cargo hold. The USCG report led to implementation of numerous safety measures applicable to Great Lakes shipping.
Why does this civilian wreck occupy such a salient place in the minds of mariners and the public alike, second only to Titanic? One factor is its recency; family members alive today knew an ancestor crewman lost in the wreck. Another factor is said to be Mr. Lightfoot’s artistry.
Yes, "something like that" is the way I should have written it, Alarmist. Thanks. I agree with your recommendations too.