Porch Notes
The Shipwreck That Became a Song — and a Bell That Still Rings
History and culture
Did you know the most famous shipwreck in Great Lakes history sank just 17 miles from safety — and that its bell still rings every November for the men who never came home?
On the afternoon of November 9, 1975, the giant freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, loaded with 26,116 long tons of taconite (iron ore pellets), bound for Detroit. The next day a ferocious November storm caught her on Lake Superior, with hurricane-force winds and waves up to 35 feet. Her captain, Ernest McSorley, radioed a nearby ship that his vessel was damaged and leaning to one side, but added the now-haunting words: “We are holding our own.” Minutes later, sometime after 7:10 p.m., the Fitzgerald vanished from radar. All 29 men aboard were lost. No distress call was ever sent.
When she launched in 1958, the 729-foot “Fitz” was the largest ship on the Great Lakes, and she remains the largest ever to sink there. Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot turned the tragedy into his 1976 ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” which is why a working freighter is remembered the world over.
In 1995, divers recovered the ship’s 200-pound bronze bell. It now sits in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum as a memorial, and every November 10 it is rung 30 times — once for each of the 29 men lost, and a 30th time for all the other sailors the Great Lakes have claimed.
Where to see it
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, near Paradise, Michigan — about 17 miles from where the Fitzgerald went down. The recovered bell is the centerpiece. (Open seasonally; check shipwreckmuseum.com.)