‘The gales of November come early’: Michigan remembers the Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 years later

Family members and naval officers stand at the front of the Mariners' Church of Detroit after ringing the church's bell in honor of the crew members of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Nov. 9, 2025. | Photo by Katherine Dailey/Michigan Advance.

Fifty years after the sinking of the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, the 729-foot freighter that sank on Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975 on its way from Wisconsin to Detroit, memorials around Michigan and the Great Lakes paid homage to the 29 lives lost on the ship.

So why is the ship’s wreck still a piece of Michigan’s identity, half a century later? There are a number of factors — the Edmund Fitzgerald was the last commercial shipwreck on the Great Lakes, and for most of its life, was the largest ship on the Great Lakes.

But Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad, “The Wreck