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Edmund Fitzgerald 50 Years On: Great Lakes Hold Memorials and Livestream Tributes

Authorities still lack a definitive cause, with hatch‑cover flooding remaining the leading official hypothesis.

When the SS Edmund Fitzgerald left port on November 10, 1975, there was no way for the crew to know what they were sailing into.
FILE - The Fitzgerald in a 1959 file photo, with a crew of 28 to 30 men, was carrying a load of 26,216 tons of taconite pellets. (AP Photo, file)
FILE - Two U.S. Coast Guardsmen move a life raft from the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald across the dock in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. Nov. 11, 1975, after the raft was plucked from Whitefish Bay by the freighter Roger Blough, a ship assisting in the search for the missing Edmund Fitzgerald, which sunk on Nov. 10, 1975, in Lake Superior. (AP photo/JCH, file)
From left to right: Divers Mike Zlatopolsky and Terrence Tysall in the summer of 1995. They had just surfaced after diving to the bottom of Lake Superior to view the wreckage of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank on Nov. 10, 1975.

Overview

  • Mariners’ Church of Detroit is holding a Sunday 11 a.m. memorial and a Monday 12:10 p.m. bell‑ringing Eucharist, both available via livestream.
  • The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point will host a public remembrance Monday at 2 p.m. and a private 7 p.m. ceremony for families that will be livestreamed.
  • Minnesota’s Split Rock Lighthouse will light its beacon Monday for a sold‑out vigil, with a livestream planned for remote viewers.
  • U.S. Coast Guard and NTSB investigations concluded the precise cause cannot be determined, citing sudden cargo‑hold flooding through failed hatch covers as the probable cause.
  • The wreck lies in Canadian waters as a protected gravesite with a 500‑meter exclusion zone, and the original bell recovered in 1995 now tolls during annual remembrance rites.