Do you know that Lake Superior is also referred to as “Gitche-Gumee”? Or that she (sure, she!) by no means provides up her lifeless, when the gales of November flip gloomy? Then you definitely've clearly listened to Gordon Lightfoot's “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”—most likely greater than as soon as.
The massive iron tanker went down 50 years in the past this week, on Nov. 10, 1975, and Canadian singer-songwriter Lightfoot's tune was launched lower than a 12 months later in August 1976, changing into an immediate hit.
Fifty years is definitely a very long time, however even to many of us aware of the ballad—which reached quantity two on the Billboard 100, it comes as a shock that the legendary catastrophe really came about within the Seventies.
Possibly that's as a result of acquainted nautical ballads like Stan Rogers' classics “Northwest Passage” and “Barrett's Privateers” or folks tunes like “The Irish Rover” and “The Golden Self-importance” do in truth cope with occasions (fictional or actual) from centuries previous. After we assume shipwreck, we predict Ye Olden Days; once we assume shipwreck ballad sung by a deep voiced man strumming on a guitar it's fairly exhausting not to conjure photographs of picket ships and ragged sails.
I JUST LEARNED THE EDMUND FITZGERALD SANK IN 1975???? WHY DID I THINK IT WAS THE 1800s
— Ruby Love Cat Witch Vtuber (@WitchRubyLove) February 8, 2024
I legitimately thought that Gordon Lightfoot's “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was written about at ship from 1700/1800s after I was little. Nope, 1975, that's how nicely he may write a track.
— Eric Tegethoff (@Teggums) May 2, 2023
However the Edmund Fitzgerald is a twentieth century story by way of and thru. Iron-hulled tankers and freighters had been rulers of the Nice Lakes, six instances as environment friendly as vehicles for transporting useful uncooked supplies to energy America's still-thriving industrial heartlands. They often braved the large and harmful Lake Superior, the biggest freshwater lake on the earth by space, a watery beast with mountainous waves unconstrained by the salinity that retains ocean rollers easy.
At the moment the lake nonetheless is as unpredictable because it was again in 1975, when a hurricane-strength November storm overcame the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, named after the president of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance coverage Firm, the ship's proprietor, and sunk her.
When constructed, she was the largest ship on the Nice Lakes and had the nickname “Queen of the Lakes,” although the title didn't final lengthy. She was quickly surpassed by greater freighters as delivery corporations competed to ship bigger a great deal of uncooked materials from mines and mills in Minnesota and Wisconsin to processing amenities within the extra industrial areas of Michigan, Illinois, and lakeside Canada. Most of her crew was from Toledo, Ohio, and he or she spent 17 years on an everyday route between an iron mine in Superior, Wis. (close to Duluth, Minn.) and iron works in Detroit, the place her cargo was turned (after a number of intervening steps) into automobiles.
The precise reason for the Fitzgerald's sinking remains to be debated by historians and students of the Nice Lakes. As Lightfoot sings: “They may have cut up up or they could have capsized / They could have broke deep and took water.”
However whatever the precise causes—maybe rogue waves or ineffective cargo hatch covers—the ship turned often called the “Titanic of the Nice Lakes,” representing hubris, preventable tragedy, and the damaging unpredictability of the ocean.
For the Nice Lakes are certainly seas, large inland seas carved out by implacable glaciers, millennia in the past. After the wreck, intensive new security necessities for freighters had been instituted by the NTSB. So, the Lakes aren't as harmful for business ships as they had been again then. The Edmund Fitzgerald really was the most up-to-date freighter to sink within the Nice Lakes in any respect.
Would we keep in mind the catastrophe as nicely right now if it wasn't for Lightfoot's track? He wrote it after studying an article in Newsweek journal shortly after it occurred. The story was nonetheless recent in individuals's minds, serving to the track resonate each with present occasions and with the lengthy custom of maritime ballads on the identical time.
That gave it endurance, nevertheless it additionally helps, after all, that the track is a masterpiece—stirring and catchy and goosebump-inducing. There isn't actually a refrain to talk of, solely the melodic wailing of the electrical guitar after each few poetic verses, the regular chug of the rhythm evoking the pressure of the ship's engine towards the storm.
The track does the exhausting work to maintain the reminiscence of the catastrophe current. Yearly in November the search quantity for “Edmund Fitzgerald” often rises as individuals hunt down the track, however since 2021, these November searches for “Edmund Fitzgerald” have been steadily increasing in volume, displaying an uptick in curiosity in each the track and the historic occasion. What's responsible for this improve?
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” of all songs, has taken on a sort of meme-like high quality: standard bumper stickers on the market on Etsy function slogans like “Stop Honking! I'm crying to ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald' by Gordon Lightfoot”, and TikToks of the tune have hundreds of thousands of views—together with not less than one fantastic Halloween costume. Numerous manufacturers are getting in on the fun too.
“After a long time of companies attempting to push Christmas earlier every year, Gen Z stopped them with a collective obsession with this 1975 shipwreck,” posted one TikTok user, with others chiming in in agreement. Customers are even evaluating the well-known wreck to their own highway mishaps—displaying that the track has taken on a sort of common relatability, regardless of its extraordinarily particular subject material.
Shipwrecks and maritime disasters basically are catnip for on-line audiences—for proof, see the thriving /r/titanic subreddit. For Gen Z, discovering out concerning the Edmund Fitzgerald by way of a TikTok meme is likely to be a gateway into real curiosity and appreciation for the fascinating historical past of the Nice Lakes.
Possibly simply in time to attend one of many varied commemorations of the fiftieth anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking, reminiscent of the Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo's full Fitzgerald weekend, and the Gales of November program on the Lake Superior Marine Museum Affiliation in Duluth, Minn.
Many occasions are occurring in Michigan and Detroit, the place the Fitzgerald was constructed and the place her vacation spot was on the evening of the catastrophe. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society is hosting planned commemorations at Whitefish Level in Paradise, Mich., closest level to the place the ship went down. The Detroit Historic society is putting on a series of events, as is the famend Maritime Sailor's Cathedral, which options prominently in Lightfoot's lyrics—first as a “musty previous corridor,” after which, after he'd visited, modified to a “rustic previous corridor” for reside performances. It was the place the place the bell rang 29 instances to recollect these misplaced on the Edmund Fitzgerald, the day after the wreck; and the place the bell continued to ring yearly in memoriam.
