This Day in History- The SS Edmund Fitzgerald is Lost With All Hands

	Gordon Lightfoot - Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald .mp3
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Today marks the 35th anniversary of the sinking of the ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior during a November gale. All 29 officers and crew members were lost that day.

Up until a few years prior to her demise, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship to ply the Great Lakes and earned the nickname 'The Mighty Fitz'. Built in 1957 by the Great Lakes Engineering Works of River Rogue, MI, the Mighty Fitz was 729 feet long and tipped the scales at a hefty 26,600 deadweight tonnes.

The ship's final load turned out to be taconite from the Duluth-Superior area en route to a Detroit-area steel mill, when the November gale hit. Following not far behind was the freighter SS Arthur M. Anderson. Captain McSorely of the Mighty Fitz was in radio contact with Captain Cooper of the SS Arthur M Anderson until approximately 7:10 local time. Although there was no distress signal, Captain Cooper reported to the Coast Guard that the Fitzgerald had disappeared from his ship's radar and he had lost radio contact with them.

In the midst of a punishing gale, the Arthur M Anderson, the Coast Guard and two additional freighters began a search of the missing vessel, but their efforts only yielded debris and lifeboats. Five days later, the wreck site was located by a US Navy aircraft with a magnetic anomaly detector flying over Lake Superior.

The cause of the wreck was through to have been the cargo hatches topside giving way and the ship taking on water with each successive wave.

Some three decades later and a well known Gordon Lightfoot tune later, family members and friends of the 29 sailors on board the Edmund Fitzgerald find themselves in the unusual position of having to remind people that the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald wasn't a work of fiction as some have thought.