Friday marks 42nd anniversary of Edmund Fitzgerald sinking

Friday, November 10, 2017 marks the 42nd anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

All 29 people on board the freighter lost their lives when the ship went down on Lake Superior during a storm on this day in 1975. Winds gusted to near hurricane speeds over 50 miles per hour, and waves ranged from 18 to 25 feet.

It was on its way from Superior, Wis. with 26,116 long tons of taconite headed for a steel mill on Zug Island. No distress signals were made and the bodies were never recovered. 

The Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship ever to sink on the Great Lakes. Gordon Lightfoot immortalized the tragedy when he wrote the song a year later.

The annual Great Lakes Memorial service at Mariners' Church of Detroit is happening at 11 a.m. on Sunday, November 12. The Rev. Tony Feint will perform the service which will honor the memory of the more than 6,000 Great Lakes shipwrecks and the more than 10,000 sailors who have lost their lives in them.  

It was at this church in 1975 where Rev. Richard Ingalls solemnly rang the church “brotherhood bell” 29 times, an act immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”