(WXYZ) — Legendary Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot died Monday at the age of 84, and we're looking back at one of his most popular hits, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."
The song was released in August 1976, less than a year after the freighter sank in Lake Superior in November 1975. It rose to the top of the Canadian charts and reached No. 2 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
In a 2010 interview with Connect Savannah, Lightfoot "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was the song he was most proud of.
According to that article, Lightfoot first read the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald in a Newsweek Magazine article, then pulled out his guitar and wrote the song.
Also in 2010, Lightfoot began changing the lyrics a bit for live performances after seeing new evidence about the Fitzgerald's sinking in a documentary series.
Originally, the lyrics said "When supper time came the old cook came on deck, Saying ‘Fellows it’s too rough to feed ya.' At 7 p.m. a main hatchway caved in, he said, ‘Fellas it's been good to know ya.'”
"I think I found out what actually happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald. Just in the last couple of months, I issued a license for a National Geographic show called Underwater Detectives. The guy brought it over to the office and he played it for me on his laptop, before we would issue him a license to use some strains of the music for the final credits," Lightfoot said in the 2010 interview with Connect Savannah. "
According to the Toronto Star, a spokesperson for Lightfoot said the lyrics were then changed to, "When supper time came the old cook came on deck, Saying ‘Fellows it’s too rough to feed ya.' At 7 p.m. it grew dark, it was then, he said, ‘Fellas it's been good to know ya.'”
In the 2010 interview, Lightfoot said he was even more proud of the song when he changed it about the hatch.
"I got to meet hundreds of people. We’ve been to all kinds of events. I’ve been three times down to the Mariners’ Church in Detroit – one Sunday I sang in front of 18 sea captains, all lined up in a row," he said in the interview.
What happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald?
November can be a very turbulent month for weather across Michigan and gales (very strong winds) are common on the Great Lakes.
Intense areas of low pressure can sweep across the Great Lakes region bringing arctic air masses. The relatively warm waters of the Great Lakes can help storms intensify and produce life-threatening conditions.
The wreck occurred just northwest of Whitefish Point in Lake Superior. All twenty-nine crew members were lost as the ship sank in 530 feet of water.
The Edmund Fitzgerald was first launched on June 7, 1958 and was the largest carrier on the Great Lakes until 1971. The ship weighed 13,632 tons and measured 729 feet long by 75 feet wide. The Fitzgerald was the first carrier to haul more than one million tons of iron ore pellets through the locks at Sault Ste. Marie, earning the nickname, “The Pride of the American Flag”.
On November 9, 1975, the Fitzgerald departed Superior, Wisconsin bound for Detroit’s Zug Island. Within 24 hours, the ship was battling hurricane force winds and waves up to 25 feet. The U.S. Coast Guard told ships out on the Great Lakes to seek safe harbor as the storm strengthened.
Captain Ernest McSorley’s last radio transmission stated he and his crew were “holding our own.” It was just a short time later the Fitzgerald vanished from radar only 17 miles from shore.
There has been speculation that the Edmund Fitzgerald broke in half on the surface as the bow and stern rode the crests of two large waves. However, the Coast Guard’s final report suggests the Fitzgerald instead nosedived into a large wave and was not able to recover and plunged to the bottom of Lake Superior in only seconds.
As the cargo of 26,116 tons of taconite pellets quickly shifted forward while the Fitzgerald was going down, the bow of the ship hit the bottom with such extreme force that the vessel snapped in two.
Every year, ceremonies are held for the family and friends of the lost crewmen of the Edmund Fitzgerald where a bell tolls 29 times for the 29 men, who ranged from age 21 to 63, who were tragically lost that night. Of the more than 1000 ships in the graves under the icy waters of the Great Lakes, the Edmund Fitzgerald is still the largest to ever go down.
