Fifty years ago tonight: "We are holding our own."

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 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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"When the skies of November turn gloomy..."

Forty years ago tonight. Here's the post that I composed on this evening in 2005.  But YouTube wasn't as pervasive as it is today.

So here is Gordon Lightfoot's forever haunting ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".

The tradition will continue today.  The church bell at Mariner's Church will ring thirty times: one for each man on the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, and once more in memory of all who have perished on the Great Lakes.

As I wrote ten years ago tonight: Here's to a good ship and crew.

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37 years ago tonight came "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

It was on November 10th, 1975 that the Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest ship on the Great Lakes, sank into the depths of Superior. She carried twenty-nine men down with her.

The following year, Gordon Lightfoot recorded what is almost certainly his best-known song. It's also one of my personal favorites, and when I found this on YouTube I had to post it here too.

Accompanied by video and photos from her construction on through her tragic end and beyond, here is "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"...

You can read more about the Edmund Fitzgerald at its Wikipedia entry.

And some years ago, on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the disater, I wrote a retrospective about the ship and its good crew.

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