51 Years Ago Today: The Edmund Fitzgerald wrecks in Lake Superior

THE TAKEAWAY

• The Edmund Fitzgerald sank successful Lake Superior during a fierce November tempest 51 years ago, sidesplitting each 29 unit members.
• The freighter’s skipper reported important harm earlier the vessel went down, but the nonstop origin of the sinking remains debated.
• Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 ballad immortalized the tragedy, preserving the representation of the vessel and its crew.

51 years agone today, the skies of November turned gloomy, and the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sunk successful Lake Superior, claiming the lives of each 29 of its unit members.

The fabled ship, immortalized by Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, that erstwhile championed The Great Lakes met a mysterious extremity that remains contented 5 decades aft its ill-fated sinking.

HURRICANE SWELLS REVEAL FORGOTTEN HISTORY BENEATH ICONIC CALIFORNIA BEACH

The fateful travel began connected Nov. 9, erstwhile the 729-foot freighter departed Burlington Northern Railroad Dock successful Superior, Wisconsin, bound for Zug Island adjacent Detroit, Michigan, hauling 26,000 tons of taconite pellets made of robust ore.

The notorious "gales of November" battered Lake Superior with unsafe upwind gusts and waves astir 25 feet precocious arsenic the Edmund Fitzgerald sank connected Nov. 10, 1975.

(FOX Weather / FOX Weather)

On the unsmooth seas of the largest of The Great Lakes, the Fitzgerald was accompanied by the Arthur M. Anderson, a chap Great Lakes freighter that departed Two Harbors, Minnesota the aforesaid afternoon. 

The November entity turned gloomy and upwind conditions deteriorated connected the greeting of Nov. 10, erstwhile a gale informing was upgraded into a tempest warning, packing 50 knot upwind gusts and seas of 12 to 16 feet, according to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum.

Throughout the day and into the evening, the Fitzgerald was successful interaction with the Anderson arsenic some freighters traversed done the monstrous storm, with Captain Ernest M. McSorley reporting that the vas had sustained important damage.

"That bully vessel and existent was a bony to beryllium chewed erstwhile the gales of November came early," Lightfoot sings successful his people anthem, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

View of the 729-foot ore vessel SS Edmund Fitzgerald, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, 1972. The vessel sank, losing each hands, implicit the nighttime of November 10, 1975. (Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images)

((Photo by Bettmann/Getty Images) / Getty Images)

Amid waves towering much than 20 feet and winds exceeding 55 mph, the vessel sank, claiming the lives of each 29 unit members aboard. 

HOW WEATHER TURNED THE GREAT LAKES INTO A SHIPWRECK GRAVEYARD

Exactly however the vessel succumbed to Lake Superior is chartless to this day, though a study from the U.S. Coast Guard said, "the astir probable origin of the sinking was the nonaccomplishment of buoyancy resulting from massive flooding of the cargo hold."

The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was located by an underwater naval instrumentality 17 miles from Whitefish Point, implicit 500 feet beneath the aboveground of Lake Superior.

Gordon Lightfoot’s "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" climbed to No. 2 connected the Billboard Hot 100 successful 1976, astir a twelvemonth aft the disaster.

(Doug Griffin/Toronto Star via Getty Images / Getty Images)

Last year, successful grant of the shipwreck's 50th anniversary, connected Nov. 10, a fig of organizations held memorials to retrieve and grant those mislaid connected the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

One twelvemonth aft the tragic sinking of the vessel that was erstwhile the largest freighter connected The Great Lakes, Lightfoot immortalized the communicative of the Edmund Fitzgerald successful the 1976 opus that artistically communicates the communicative of the doomed ship.