On this day in 1975, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, an American Great Lakes freighter, sank while en route to a steel mill near Detroit Michigan.
She departed from Superior Wisconsin on Lake Superior the previous day, at around 2:15 PM, and sank sometime around 7:10 PM due to high winds, and rough waters.
The tragedy lead to the creation of the classic song by Gordon Lightfoot entitled, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. Lightfoot wrote the song after he read a Newsweek article on the event. The song reached number two on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1976, and number one on several other charts.
Despite it’s success, the song does hold some factual inaccuracies, including a line where Lightfoot claims the Fitzgerald was “fully loaded for Cleveland”. In fact, as mentioned, the ship was headed to a steal mill located on the Zug Island near Detroit.
