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last mo.

Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 Years On: Great Lakes Memorials and Fresh Reporting Revisit the Wreck

As communities honor the 1975 loss, investigators’ hatch-cover findings frame new books, talks and meteorological analyses that sift fact from folklore.

The Edmund Fitzgerald, shown in a 1959 photo, lies at the bottom of Lake Superior after it sank in 1975.
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Courtesy of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society
The largest and longest vessel ever built on the Great Lakes, the 729-foot ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald, slides into the launching basin on June 7, 1958, in Detroit. (AP)

Overview

  • Regionwide tributes are set for Nov. 10, including Split Rock Lighthouse’s sold-out beacon lighting streamed online and a public remembrance at Whitefish Point, with additional services at Detroit’s Mariners’ Church on Sunday and Monday and pop-up events at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum.
  • New journalism and programs — from John U. Bacon’s book The Gales of November to TV specials and lectures — re-examine the voyage and correct popular misconceptions from Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad without changing core facts.
  • Federal inquiries by the U.S. Coast Guard and NTSB remain the baseline explanation, citing probable sudden flooding from failed or collapsing hatch covers during a severe November storm.
  • Technical retrospectives detail the 729-foot ore carrier’s final trip from Superior, Wisconsin, with about 26,000 tons of taconite bound for Detroit’s Zug Island before all 29 aboard were lost on Nov. 10, 1975.
  • Contemporary accounts highlight the last radio exchange with the trailing Arthur M. Anderson — “We’re holding our own” — while meteorologists revisit hurricane-force winds and towering waves that battered ships across Lake Superior.