Those were the last words radioed out by the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.
It was fifty years ago tonight, November 10th, 1975, that the Edmund Fitzgerald - at one time the largest vessel plying the Great Lakes - vanished off of the radar of the other ships in the area. She went down in the storm, taking twenty-nine men with her to the bottom of Lake Superior.
I've written about "The Fitz" on a few other occasions, like for the thirtieth anniversary (has it really been twenty years ago tonight that I posted that?). There's really not much more that I could write this afternoon that hasn't been said already.
I can share this though, as I have a few other times before. The year after the tragedy, Canadian musician Gordon Lightfoot recorded and released his moving and haunting ballad about the ship and her crew. "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald" has the distinction of being the very first song that I can clearly remember listening to. Dad bought Lightfoot's album on 8-track and he must have played that a hundred times, it got ingrained into me so much. And November has become a rather melancholy month of the calendar for me. It wasn't until I was reviewing over the manuscript of my book that I realized so much bad has happened to me during November of various years. This song dovetails with that sense of loss and mortality. And maybe now that's I'm writing that, have gotten it out in the open, maybe it won't haunt me as much as it has before.
There are a few videos on YouTube featuring this song, but this is my favorite. Here is "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald".
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