Nice tribute is here.
*Does any one know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searches all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put fifteen more miles behind her.
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
May have broke deep and took water.
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters. *
I’d never seen underwater footage before that video. Fascinating, and yet so sad.
Just this past week I was reading wiki entries on several shipwrecks, mostly modern ones. The Estonia and the capsized Normandie (both linked to off these boards, now that I think of it). So tragic.
I’ll be ringing my bell 29 times on the shore of Lake Michigan today.
On November 18th, it’ll toll 33 times for the Carl D. Bradley, which went down in Lake Michigan in 1958. Miraculously, 2 survived that disaster. I was living on the lakeshore about 150 miles from them when they went down.
The Great Lakes can be wicked cruel this time of year. Swells of 24 feet in height have been observed.
QtM, of the sixth generation of Lake Michigan boatmen.
One thing I never understood about the song - Why did the church bell chime 841 times? I’d think once each would be more fitting.
“Fella’s, it’s been good to know ya”
Ahhhhh …
…the church bell chimed 'til it rang 29 times …
29 times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
In an episode of the History Channel program “Deep Sea Detectives” they dove the site of the Edmund Fitzgerald and, as I recall, found support for the theory that it broke in half before sinking.
The episode “Death of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is available on DVD.
My father knew Edmund Fitzgerald.
I have an online friend who was a fledgling reporter living in Sault Ste. Marie when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. She tells a first-hand account of the incident here. I know she doesn’t mind people sharing it with others, and I thought people on the Dope might find it interesting.
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.
Okay. I can see how you might read that wrong.
Unless you take into account maritime tradition of tolling the bell once for each crew member lost.
And the fact that this is a song lyric which is confined to such things as rhyme, meter, and other such poetic and song construction things - not exactly optiimal for proper sentence construction, therefore this just wouldn’t fit as neatly:
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times,
once for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Me thinks you’re just being a tad (deliberately?) obstinate … 
I dunno … maybe it’s jus’ me … anybody else hear it that way???
Lucy
Your link has a link that leads to this site.
Lots of really well done stuff in there … I found this page very informative, particularly near the bottom where the final hours of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald are detailed, including some radio transmission transcripts.
Lucy
Me? Noooo…
I really didn’t mean to minimize the event, and the phrasing didn’t bother me until I read the plans for the WTC memorial thingy a few years ago where they said, in print and without being constrained by rhythm, rhyme, meter, etc., that they were going to have 3000 lights for each person killed on Sept 11.
I still get goosebumps when I hear the song.
It’s also is the only reason I can name 4 or sometimes all 5 of the Lakes.
When the song came out, I was in Jr High school & we were reading Coleridge’s RIME OF THE ANCIENT MARINER. Except for being haunting works about boats & sailors, they have nothing to do with each other, but they’ll always be woven together in my memory because of that.
Just a few years ago, I read that the wreck happened a year before the song. Somehow, I had the idea it was about an event from the 1950s, and I opened a thread on the SDMB wondering what reaction was at the time to it. I was just reading about the wreck & the song yesterday also and am glad to know that Gordon Lightfoot has given a great deal of control over the commercial use of the song to the families.
Btw, the video linked in the OP… whew! That was a masterwork.
A small personal story. My brother and I own a small boat on Lake Erie. A few years ago we were off Gull Point on Presque Isle State Park when we spied smoke on the horizon north of us. Wishing to investigate we headed north until we could see it was a large ore freighter going east. When we finally caught up with the ship we could see she was the Arthur M Anderson the ship that was following the Fitz that fateful night. We made a few turns around the ship and returned to home waters happy the Anderson was still in service and encountering a piece of nautical history.
Boatnerd.com, a wonderful site with much Edmund Fitzgerald and other lore of the Great Lakes, including tracking current vessels sailing.
It shows that the Arthur M. Anderson is currently in southern Lake Huron.
Thanks for sharing this, it was very touching…