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The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a Lake Superior storm on November 10, 1975, killing all 29 crew members.

The exact cause of the shipwreck remains unknown, and the wreck site is now a protected grave.

Gordon Lightfoot's popular folk ballad helped cement the tragedy in the public's memory.

A half century after the Great Lakes' most famous shipwreck came to rest on the floor of Lake Superior, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald’s grip on the public imagination has waned little.

It sank on the second day of its final voyage of the season, in the early evening of Nov. 10, 1975, about 17 miles northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan. All 29 crew members were lost. The storm that took it down packed near-hurricane-force winds, causing waves that reached 35 feet.

The Fitzgerald’s le

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