Category: 1970s

I want to thank Dave at A Sound Day… he wanted us to pick one song we liked that’s about reality – either a real event or a real person, and tell us about it.

As a kid riding in my sister’s car going to one of her friends at the time…I heard this and I liked it right away. It was 1976, and I was 9 years old, so my sister went out and bought the single. I wore this one out and tried to look up the real story in our encyclopedias, but unfortunately, they were published in 1967. 

A song that was, unfortunately, a true story. It was written and performed by Gordon Lightfoot. The Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975.

This is a factual retelling of a shipwreck on Lake Superior in November 1975 that claimed the lives of 29 crew members. On November 10, 1975, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald broke in half and sank in Lake Superior. The storm she was caught in reported winds from 35 to 52 knots, and waves anywhere from 10 to 35 feet high.

The ship was loaded with 26,116 tons of taconite pellets at the Burlington Northern Railroad, Dock #1. Her destination was Zug Island on the Detroit River. 29 crew members perished in the sinking. The tragedy of Edmund Fitzgerald had a huge impact on maritime safety regulations. It led to changes in shipping practices on the Great Lakes, including more accurate weather forecasting, monitoring, and requirements for lifeboat drills and onboard survival equipment.

The cause of the ship’s sinking remains a subject of speculation and debate. Different theories suggest factors such as structural failure, sudden shoaling, topside damage from the storm, or water intake through damaged hatches. The U.S. Coast Guard and National Transportation Safety Board conducted investigations, but a definitive conclusion was never reached.

In 1976, a dive to the wreck site, located at a depth of about 530 feet, confirmed that the ship had broken in two. Later dives and sonar mapping further documented the wreck, but never gave a clear explanation for the rapid sinking.

The song released in 1976 peaked at #1 in Canada and #2 on the Billboard 100. It did peak at #1 on Cash Box. The song was on his album Summertime Dream. 

Gordon Lightfoot: “The Edmund Fitzgerald really seemed to go unnoticed at that time, anything I’d seen in the newspapers or magazines were very short, brief articles, and I felt I would like to expand upon the story of the sinking of the ship itself,”  “And it was quite an undertaking to do that, I went and bought all of the old newspapers, got everything in chronological order, and went ahead and did it because I already had a melody in my mind and it was from an old Irish dirge that I heard when I was about three and a half years old.”

“I think it was one of the first pieces of music that registered to me as being a piece of music,” he continued. “That’s where the melody comes from, from an old Irish folk song.”

Gordon Lightfoot: “When the story came on television, that the Edmund had foundered in Lake Superior three hours earlier, it was right on the CBC here in Canada, I came into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and saw the news and I said ‘That’s my story to go with the melody and the chords.”

For those interested…I have a bio of the event at the bottom.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they called Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore, twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
With a crew and good captain well seasoned
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship’s bell rang
Could it be the north wind they’d been feeling?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too
‘Twas the witch of November come stealing
The dawn came late, and the breakfast had to wait
When the gales of November came slashin’
When afternoon came, it was freezin’ rain
In the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough to feed ya”
At seven p.m., a main hatchway caved in, he said
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
If they’d put 15 more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit, they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early