In the Wake of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The mighty ship, immortalized by Gordon Lightfoot, sank 50 years ago on Lake Superior. Our reporter spent a week on a freighter that survived the storm.

***It happened on the evening of Nov. 10, 1975, when the Fitzgerald, one of the biggest and most modern freighters on the lakes, lost contact during a sudden ferocious storm and then vanished beneath the waves.

Today, the Fitz, as many call it, is a touchstone of regional identity and tourism around the Great Lakes, where the 50th anniversary of the wreck will be commemorated in multiple locations next month. It’s a kind of Midwest Titanic — the largest of the more than 6,000 ships swallowed by the lakes over the centuries.

But it’s also a disaster with no survivors and no obvious iceberg, which has inspired a long string of books, articles, documentaries and online debates about exactly why and how the celebrated steamer sank.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/arts/edmund-fitzgerald-gordon-lightfoot.html