The Sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald

On the 35th Anniversary of that sad day when 29 sailors lost their lives, new developments shed light on the sinking of the "Mighty Fitz."

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The ill-fated S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald

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The legend lives on from Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.
    On November 10, 2010, crowds of people will gather at the Mariner’s Memorial Lighthouse, on the banks of the Detroit River in River Rouge, Michigan, as well as at the Mariner’s Church in Detroit. The somber crowds will be gathering to mark the 35th anniversary of the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in a terrible storm in 1975, killing all 29 men on board.
    These days, with the thousands murdered in the attacks of 9/11, and thousands more lost in the Hurricane Katrina catastrophe, the loss of life resulting from the Edmund Fitzgerald sinking, while tragic, seems relatively small.
    However, there is one important reason why so many Americans still remember those noble seamen who lost their lives that sad day on Lake Superior. Just months after the “Mighty Fitz” sank, Canadian-born singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot penned the epic ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which became a massive hit on U.S. radio and across North America. The song – which tells of “that good ship and true” as a “bone to be chewed / when the Gales of November came early” – ended up spending over 20 weeks on the U.S. charts.
    The song proved so evocative that Irish singer-songwriter Christy Moore used Lightfoot’s melody when he recorded the song “Back Home in Derry” – with lyrics by Bobby Sands – just three years after the international outcry over the hunger strikes that made Sands an international icon.

The Irish and the “Mighty Fitz”
    The 35th anniversary of the Fitzgerald’s sinking is a good time to reflect on the broader Irish links to the tragic sinking.
The ship itself, after all, was named after a member of a prominent Irish-American shipping family. Among the crew members who perished were men with names such as Rafferty, O’Brien and McCarthy. The ship’s captain was a Toledo, Ohio native named Ernest McSorley.
    Finally, though the ship sank over three decades ago, new developments continue to alter our understanding of how the ship sunk – and even how Gordon Lightfoot performs the ballad to this day. Earlier this year, as a matter of fact, the troubadour decided to change a key lyrical passage to reflect new information about the ship’s fatal voyage.
    Why does the story and song of the Edmund Fitzgerald still resonate? Perhaps the best question to start with is this: Who, exactly, was Edmund Fitzgerald?

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