Edmund Fitzgerald

Have you ever heard of the ship called The Edmund Fitzgerald? It was one of the biggest and most famous ships to ever sail on the Great Lakes. The sailors called her “The Mighty Fitz”. The ship was 729 feet long. That’s more than two football fields put end to end. The Fitzgerald was famous even before it was launched in 1958 and people came from everywhere to see it set sail for the first time. Like the Titanic, the Edmund Fitzgerald was supposed to be unsinkable. Now, the only thing left of the mighty ship is its bell, which rings every November, the month the ship went down in a storm. How did the ship sink, what happened that night, and how many people lost their lives?

The Mighty Fitz carried iron ore across the Great Lakes from mines in Minnesota to steel mills in places like Detroit and Cleveland. On November 10, 1975, a Lake Superior storm  with giant waves beat up the ship. It was  one of the worst storms the Great Lakes had ever seen. Waves as tall as a three-story building crashed around the Fitz, the wind roared and the boat rocked and twisted in the storm. Captain Ernest M. McSorley was talking to another ship that was out in the storm, on the radio. Captain McSorley said they were “Holding our own,” A little while after that the “Fitz” mysteriously disappeared from the other ship’s radar. The entire crew of 29 people died when the ship went down.

After the sinking, people all over the country and in Canada were sad. A song called “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was written by a Canadian singer named Gordon Lightfoot. To this day the song teaches about the ship, the storm and helps people remember the brave sailors who were lost that night. The ship is now one of the most famous ghost ships of the Great Lakes. Stories are told of strange sightings and sounds near the place where the ship went down. Some sailors say that on dark, stormy nights, they’ve seen a shadowy ship moving silently across the water. Voices, lights and a bell ringing has haunted the shores of the lake.

In 1995, Mike and Warren Fletcher dove into the dark and cold water of Lake Superior. They found the ship sitting 530 feet deep at the bottom of the lake like a child’s toy, broken and thrown out. Before the divers went to the wreck they were asked to find the ship's bell, and they did. It was still bolted onto the deck. Every year, on November 10th, people come from all over the world to remember the Edmund Fitzgerald and its crew. At the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, the bell is rung 30 times. One time for each of the 29 crew members who died when the Edmund Fitzgerald sank, and one extra time for anyone else killed sailing Lake Superior. Just like when the ship was launched, people come from all over the world to hear the bell toll.