We’ve all heard our share of Gordon Lightfoot. My question is who was Edmund Fitzgerald, and how did he get a ship named after him?
There’s no great story. The ship was owned by Northwestern Mutual and he was the president.
He was the President of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, which owned the ship that was named after him.
Wikipedia “disambiguation” is your friend:
Though in the process I learned about this guy, who I’ve never heard of (but totally unrelated to ship/song):
As presidents go, he was bigger than most.
mmm
I laughed.
Don’t let him give you a lift to Cleveland. He gets loaded before he goes.
When his retirement party came, the old cook came in, sayin’ “Fella, it’s been good to know ya.”
So, did the sailors have policies with NWMLIC? Hmm…
And more importantly … if they did have policies, did they pay out?
The company claimed the sinking was negligent. They argued the ship could have made Whitefish Bay if they’d put 15 more miles behind them.
In their defense, the gales of November came early.
He was a nervous wreck.
But not as big as Billy Taft.
His legend lives on…
Why did a life insurance company own an ore boat?
I mean, I get it that insurance companies have to invest the premiums somewhere, unless they’re committing fraud, but . . . an ore boat?
It’s definitely a portfolio diversification!
More details. https://shipwreckmuseum.com/edmund-fitzgerald/
Strange things happened at its launching in 1958 (the video doesn’t mention that it also crashed into an adjoining pier):
It probably looked like a good idea at the time… “Our name is out there, we make money carrying cargo, and think of all the premiums we’ll collect every year for insuring it! We’ll make the company even richer!”
They were a life insurance company, not a marine vessel insurance company…