Edmund Fitzgerald

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank 35 years ago today. Twenty-nine men died in the wreck, now made famous by Gordon Lightfoot’s song. While we still do not know precisely why ”The Big Fitz” sank, we do know why many other Great Lakes shipwrecks occurred. Human captains and pilots went too fast for the weather conditions, and so appeared rapidly out of the fog; or they would simply not back down, and ram other vessels in a catastrophic game of “chicken,” according to the exhibits at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. Maybe that is why we are so intrigued by the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald–for a change, it was nature, not our own human foibles, that caused it.

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