On November 10, 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was lost with all hands on Lake Superior. May the Fitz and crew of 29 never be forgotten.
Great song. Haunting lyrics. 35 years ago, 29 men lost their lives…but thanks to Gordon Lightfoot, their story lives forever.
Merged duplicate threads.
I gotta remember to ring the bell on the beach tonight.
35 years ago the Edmund Fitzgerald went down with all hands.
Edmund Fitzgerald on Wikipedia
Wiki about the song.
The Great lakes are known for violent, extremely dangerous autumn storms.
Does the US Coast Guard have some kind of algorithm to determine is ships should leave port, when such storms are forecast?
Otherwise, it would seem that these men died in vain-sailing on a leaky ore carrier, into a storm that would sink a larger, safer vessel.
I just saw Duckster started a thread yesterday.
Mods, please close or merge.
Merged.
Gawd, I hate that mawkish song.
Why exactly should we remember the Edmund Fitzgerald as compared to any other fatality-causing disaster?
Interesting and wonderfully unique viewpoint. Adds a lot to this remembrance thread too.
ralph, the Edmund Fitzgerald was as large as she could be and still fit through the St. Lawrence seaway. From the day she was launched until a few years before sinking (1971, according to Wikipedia), she was the largest or one of the largest vessels on the Great Lakes, period.
.
acsenray, this is threadshitting – coming into a thread for the sole purpose of expressing your contempt for the topic.
Don’t do it.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
They weren’t expecting a severe storm. Weather forecasting was not nearly as good as it now (and it still ain’t great) back in that day.
They weren’t expecting they’d sink in any such storm anyway. The boat (yes, they call them boats on the Great Lakes) was considered large, safe, and seaworthy. They were doing their jobs.
QtM, whose forebears sailed and died on Lake Michigan.
I remember the song fairly well but didn’t pay attention to the news very much in those days. I didn’t realize it was recent event until years later.
acsenray and I have discussed this via PM. Though I would have preferred that he had left out his comment about the song, he certainly has the right to raise questions about the significance of the disaster, and he is welcome to do so in this thread.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Twickster has offered me the opportunity to restate my question, without commentary on the quality of the Lightfoot song:
So, trying to put it delicately – If this event had not been commemorated in a widely known pop song, to what extent would it have become part of cultural knowledge, and, indeed, would remembrance have been offered on this board? Was this event acutely destructive or tragic, when set against the many destructive or tragic events experienced in any particular context (transportation accidents resulting in significant deaths? destruction of a rural community or trade?)
It probably wouldn’t have been remembered without the song. I mean, in 1958, the Carl D. Bradley sank in Lake Michigan, with the loss of 33, and in 1966, the Daniel J. Morrell sank in lake Huron, killing 28. So those were some disasters of similar magnitude that generally aren’t remembered. On the other hand, it was, as been mentioned, a really big ship…the biggest on the Lakes when it was built, and it stayed the biggest until 1971. But still, this sinking, while bad, was hardly unique, and didn’t have any great significance except for the Great Lake sailors.
I think the song is obviously the prime reason most people remember the Fitz. I lived on Lake Huron at the time (well, not ON the lake itself!) and it was pretty big news for people who were members of the Great Lake family.
I doubt very much we’d still be talking about it without Gordon Lightfoot’s song, but then again we all, who are old enough, still remember where we were for Challenger and Columbia, so who knows?
My great-grandfather was a commercial fisherman out of Sutton’s Bay. I grew up near Lake Huron, and remember when the Fitz went down. As a child, I had a morbid fear of searchlights (and clowns and marching bands, but that’s another story) because I associated the lights in the sky with searchers out looking for lost craft and people in the water.
StG
The demise of Fitz also sparked an interest in rogue waves, which at the time were pretty much believed to be sailors’ tall tales, but have recently been discovered to be real and much more frequent than previously suspected, so it’s been slightly more influential than other random sinkings from a safety nautical perspective, although that probably doesn’t explain the SDMB reaction.