Launched in June 1958, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the pride of the Great Lakes – at 729 feet the longest freighter sailing the lakes at the time. For seventeen seasons she carried taconite iron ore pellets from the mines of Minnesota to the steel mills of the lower lakes, set several cargo records and became a favourite of ship-watchers at the Soo Locks.
On 10 November 1975 she was caught by a ferocious autumn storm on Lake Superior. Battered by hurricane-force winds and towering waves, she disappeared from radar near Whitefish Bay without ever sending a distress call. All 29 men on board were lost. Days later a Navy aircraft located the wreck, broken in two, about 530 feet below the surface. Her loss is still the best-known shipwreck of the Great Lakes, kept alive by Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 ballad.
