Portal:United States Merchant Marine/Selected article/3
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SS Edmund Fitzgerald (nicknamed "Mighty Fitz", "The Fitz" or "The Big Fitz") was a lake freighter that sank suddenly during a gale storm on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. The ship went down without a distress signal in 530 feet (162 m) of water at , in Canadian waters about 17 miles (15 nmi; 27 km) from the entrance to Whitefish Bay. All 29 members of the crew perished. Gordon Lightfoot's hit song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", helped make the incident the most famous disaster in the history of Great Lakes shipping.
Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin on the afternoon of Sunday, November 9, 1975 under Captain Ernest M. McSorley. She was en route to the steel mill on Zug Island, near Detroit, Michigan, with a full cargo of taconite. Crossing Lake Superior at about 13 knots (15 mph/24 km/h), the boat encountered a massive winter storm, reporting winds in excess of 50 knots (58 mph/93 km/h) and waves as high as 35 feet (10 m).
The last communication from the doomed ship came at approximately 19:10 (7:10 PM), when the nearby SS Anderson notified Fitzgerald by radio about a rogue waves large enough to be caught on radar. Captain McSorley on the Fitzgerald reported, "We are holding our own." A few minutes later, she apparently sank. No distress signal was received.
