The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

We remember the Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the worst (and best-known) nautical disasters in American history.

On the afternoon of Sunday, November 9, 1975, a huge shipping vessel disembarked from Superior, Wisconsin, carrying 26,116 tons of taconite pellets bound for a steel mill on Zug Island, just off the coast of Detroit. At the time of its launch in 1958, the 729-foot boat was the largest freighter on the Great Lakes.

That ship was the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.

Memorialized in song, and the subject of countless books and television documentaries, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was one of the worst (and best-known) nautical disasters in American history, second only to the sinking of the Titanic in cultural impact. But unlike the Titanic disaster, none aboard the Fitzgerald survived.