SH!T WENT DOWN: The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

AKA Ship Went Down

Gordon Lightfoot rode the final carefree highway yesterday, and brief bios of the Canadian folk rock legend will abound the internet. Instead, I shall relay the story behind one of his more famous songs, about the sinking of an American ship, titled “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

SS Edmund Fitzgerald launched in 1958 as a Great Lakes freighter, and it was the greatest of lakes that took her down with all her twenty-nine sailors, on November 10, 1975. The following year, Lightfoot wrote his song.

When first launched she was the new badass ship on the block, the largest in the great lakes, hauling ore from mines in Minnesota to iron works in Michigan. And she was speedy, often setting record times. But how could a mere lake take her down?

First, Superior is no mere lake. Second, the great lakes are a bunch of goddamn serial killers, as furious to sailors as the ocean, and sometimes worse. Conditions can change quickly, creating waves as high as thirty-five fucking feet high. I don’t get seasick but goddamn yikes. Not only that, the waves come closer together than on the ocean, making them a rapid-fire punishing onslaught instead of something you can potentially ride. In the last 400 years the estimates are about 6,000 ships lost, with a watery grave toll of five times that. That’s some serious corpse water. Many of the ships have never been found. Might be treasure down there. I know Dirk Pitt found some.

Edmund Fitzgerald left the small city of Superior, Wisconsin midafternoon of November 9, Ernest McSorley commanding. She was transporting thirty thousand short tons of iron to a steel mill near Detroit, which I expect was for making bitchin’ Camaros and probably some other cars too.

The weather forecast fucked them.

The National Weather Service said don’t worry about that storm, it’s gonna pass south of the lake. Another ship’s captain, Dudley Paquette, said nope fuck that NWS is wrong that shit’s hitting the lake. Paquette, commanding Wilfred Sykes, chose to go the long way, skirting the north of the lake to keep to the edge of the storm. At 7:00 p.m. the NWS said oops our bad the storm is gonna hit the lake. Two ships had chosen to believe the earlier report and opted for the shorter, regular route. They were Arthur M. Anderson, and Edmund Fitzgerald. They received the updated forecast and were all godfuckingdammit we gotta nope outta here RFN. They put whatever the nautical term for “pedal” is to the metal and headed north toward the protection of the Canadian shoreline.

Not long after midnight, they encountered the storm. Winds over fifty knots, waves over ten feet high.

It raged for hours, and the Arthur M. Anderson and Edmund Fitzgerald lost sight of each other. It was late afternoon of November 10th when Captain McSorley radioed, “I have lost both radars, and am taking heavy seas over the deck in one of the worst seas I have ever been in.”

Arthur M. Anderson was able to get close enough to the blinded Edmund Fitzgerald to use the former’s radar to guide the latter to safety. In so doing, they battled wind gusts over 70 knots and rogue waves over thirty feet high. What a tale their thoughts could tell.

The last anyone heard from the Edmund Fitzgerald was at 7:10 P.M. with Captain McSorley saying, “We are holding our own.” Ten minutes later Arthur M. Anderson lost the ship on radar.

So that sucked.

Four days later an aircraft detected the wreck as a “magnetic anomaly.” An unmanned submersible found the wreck the following May in two large pieces. It was later surmised that the ship had broken in two on the surface then quickly sunk.

Lightfoot was inspired to write the song because some asshole at Newsweek wrote an article about the sinking and spelled the name of the ship as Edmond. This is how the song begins:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy

Gordon Lightfoot had a lot of great songs. He died on May 1, 2023. He was 84 years old.

Get my sweary history book ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY SH!T WENT DOWN.