edmund fitzgerald

edmund fitzgerald lives on in gordon lightfoot's song

The legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains the most mysterious and controversial of all shipwreck tales heard around the Great Lakes. 35 years on, someone gives it an impressive memorial.
The Split Rock Lighthouse in Two Harbors, Minn., shines its beacon Nov. 5 to mark the great Minnesota November storms. Usually the light is only illuminated on Nov. 10 to remember the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

It's a music day today. This song honors the 35th anniversary of the tragedy of Edmund Fitzgerald. The wild weather early this month in the Great Lakes has dredged up the memories of the sinking of the huge ship Fitzgerald. In 1975, the ship lost a battle against the stormy weather on Lake Superior and went down with all hands on board. The cause was never determined.

Gordon Lightfoot turned the tale into a haunting song whose refrain warns, "The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead/When the skies of November turn gloomy."

On the YouTube page, listeners recall where they were when the crashed happened. "I was out on whitefish bay that day on my Lake Erie fish boat; barely made it back to Mamainse Harbour. It was the most scared I ever been. We found washed up wreckage the next day," writes MisterBCBudman.