Gordon Lightfoot: The Voice Behind "The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald"

In a seafaring tragedy that killed 29 crewmen, legendary Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot found the inspiration for his most iconic song. Lightfoot, who died on Monday at age 84, had top-10 hits in the United States with songs like “If You Could Read My Mind,” “Sundown,” and “Carefree Highway.” But his career-defining tune was “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a seven-verse epic released in August 1976 about the sinking of a freighter in Lake Superior. Lightfoot felt compelled to write the song after reading about the November 10, 1975, disaster in a Newsweek magazine article. Over the years, he also developed personal relationships with the families of the deceased sailors. The success of the Grammy-nominated track, which did take creative liberties with some of the accident’s details, has helped keep memories of the ship and crew alive.

Here’s what you need to know about the real S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald.

Construction and Early Incidents

The shipbuilding company Great Lakes Engineering Works built the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald in 1957 and early 1958, after which the ship was christened on June 7, 1958, at River Rouge, Michigan. According to the Detroit Historical Society, the Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship on the Great Lakes until 1971; it was 729 feet long and weighed 13,632 tons when empty. The name referred to owner Edmund Fitzgerald, the president and chairman of the board of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

On November 9, 1975, the ship’s captain, Ernest McSorley, and crew took off from Superior, Wisconsin, and headed for Detroit with a cargo of taconite pellets (that is, low-grade iron ore). However, a blinding snowstorm hit that caused wind gusts of nearly 100 miles per hour and waves as high as 35 feet. The ship began taking on water and sank 530 feet to the bottom of the lake sometime after 7 p.m. the following night. None of the 29 people aboard survived.

Gordon Lightfoot Memorializes the Fitz

Lightfoot, a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame and recipient of the Companion of the Order of Canada civilian honor in 2003, changed and added some details about the accident to create his song. The lyrics indicate the ship’s cook talked to crew members about the bad weather, but there’s no way of knowing if it actually happened. Additionally, the ship in the song was on its way to Cleveland, instead of Detroit.

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