The elder Fitzgerald rarely spoke of the shipwreck and died at the age of 90 in 1986. The son and namesake of the man whose name the ship bore said that the 1958 launch was among the happiest days of his father's life, and his father felt horrible about the tragedy and loss of lives. A replica bell engraved with the names of the 29 men replaced the original bell at the Edmund Fitzgerald as an underwater memorial. In 1995, Michigan State University recovered the Edmund Fitzgerald's 200-pound bronze bell, restored it, and placed it at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point at the request of the crew's families as a memorial. There were no distress calls, no apparent attempt to launch the ship's two 50-person lifeboats, and McSorely's last communication with Cooper showed no sense of impending danger. Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 ballad, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald", suggests the crew knew their fate, but evidence suggests the wreck happened too quickly for that. There are plenty of other theories, but no one came up with a definitive cause. The Coast Guard, occupied with searching for other vessels, asked Cooper to venture back out from Whitefish Point to look for the Fitzgerald.Ĭooper feared jeopardizing his crew, but reluctantly agreed to look for the Fitzgerald, finding a piece of the Fitzgerald's lifeboat and small debris but no other sign of the ship or crew.Ī Navy plane found the Edmund Fitzgerald, broken into two large pieces, 530 feet under water, and 17 miles from Whitefish Point on November 14.Ĭoast along northwestern Lake Superior on a calm summer dayĬoast Guard reports suggest damaged hatches led to flooding below decks, and the Fitzgerald dove into a massive wave, submarine style, to the bottom of Lake Superior. Cooper strained to see the Fitzgerald when visibility improved, but saw no trace of the ship and reported it missing to the Coast Guard. It was the last time anyone ever heard from the Edmund Fitzgerald.Ĭooper lost sight of the Fitzgerald in a snow squall around 7:15 p.m., and the ship disappeared from Cooper's radar by 7:25 p.m. when Cooper asked how the Fitz was faring. McSorely reported "we are holding our own" at 7:10 p.m. McSorely radioed Cooper to report loss of his ship's radar, asking Cooper to provide navigational information as both headed to the safety of Whitefish Point in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Anderson, spoke frequently with the Fitzgerald's Captain McSorely during the storm. Soon, 25-foot-tall waves and 90-mile-per hour winds accompanied heavy snow over the lake.Ĭaptain Cooper, sailing nearby with ore carrier Arthur M. departure, upgrading those to storm warnings by November 10. The Edmund Fitzgerald departed Superior, Wisconsin, on November 9, 1975, with 26,116 tons of taconite pellets bound for Zug Island on the Detroit River.įorecasters issued gale warnings for Lake Superior within 20 minutes of the Edmund Fitzgerald's 2:20 p.m.
Today the anchor is on the grounds of Detroit's Dossin Great Lakes Museum.
The ship made 748 safe round trips from western Lake Superior to Detroit and Cleveland although it lost its bow anchor in 1974 about one mile west of Belle Isle on the Detroit River. Northwestern's board named it for Fitzgerald, who attended the ship's launch into the Detroit River on June 8, 1958.
Great Lakes Engineering Works designed and built the ship, a 729-foot-long, 13,632-ton behemoth which took 1,000 men and $8.4 million to complete. He joined the board of Northwestern Mutual in 1933, becoming its chairman in 1958.įitzgerald convinced Northwestern Mutual to finance an ore carrier. Fitzgerald, an artillery captain during World War I and Yale graduate, worked at Milwaukee Malleable Iron Company. His family owned a shipyard, and his five great-uncles were Great Lakes mariners. The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior remains one of the Great Lakes' most haunting mysteries, and the story is as compelling to me now as when it happened 35 years ago.Įdmund Fitzgerald was a civic leader, community benefactor, and business man from Milwaukee.