SS Edmund Fitzgerald

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew. When launched on June 8, 1958, she was the largest boat on the Great Lakes and remains the largest boat to have sunk there. The ship suffered a series of mishaps during her launch. It took three attempts to break the champagne bottle used to christen her and she collided with a pier when she entered the water.For seventeen years the Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo, and other ports. With Captain Ernest M. McSorley in command and carrying a full cargo of taconite ore pellets, the ship embarked on her final voyage from Superior, Wisconsin, on the afternoon of November 9, 1975. En route to a steel mill near Detroit, Michigan, she joined a second freighter, the SS Arthur M. Anderson. By the next day the two ships were caught in the midst of a massive winter storm with near hurricane-force winds and waves up to 35 feet high. Shortly after 7:10 p.m. the Edmund Fitzgerald suddenly sank in Canadian waters approximately 17 miles from the entrance to Whitefish Bay. Although the ship had reported being in difficulty earlier, no distress signals were sent before she sank. Her crew of 29 perished and no bodies were ever recovered. Many theories, books, studies, and expeditions have examined the cause of the sinking. The Edmund Fitzgerald may have fallen victim to the high waves of the storm, suffered structural failure, been swamped with water entering through her cargo hatches or deck, experienced topside damage, or shoaled in a shallow part of Lake Superior. Investigations into the sinking led to changes in Great Lakes shipping regulations and practices that included mandatory survival suits, depth finders, positioning systems, increased freeboard, and more frequent inspection of vessels. At the request of family members surviving her crew, Edmund Fitzgerald's 200 pound bronze bell was recovered by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society on July 4, 1995. The bell is now on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Light Point, Michigan, as a memorial to the lost crew.