Did you know that Lake Superior is also known as “Gitche-Gumee”? Or that she (yes, she!) never gives up her dead, when the gales of November turn gloomy? Then you’ve clearly listened to Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”—probably more than once.

The huge iron tanker went down 50 years ago this week, on Nov. 10, 1975, and Canadian singer-songwriter Lightfoot’s tune was released less than a year later in August 1976, becoming an instant hit.

Fifty years is certainly a long time, but even to many folks familiar with the ballad—which reached number two on the Billboard 100, it comes as a shock that the legendary disaster actually took place in the 1970s.

Maybe that’s because familiar nautical ballads like Stan Rogers’ classics “Northwest Passage” and “Barrett’s Privateers” or folk tunes like “The Irish Rover” and “The Golden Vanity” do in fact deal with events (fictional or real) from centuries past. When we think shipwreck, we think Ye Olden Days; when we think shipwreck ballad sung by a deep voiced man strumming on a guitar it’s pretty hard not to conjure images of wooden ships and ragged sails.

But the Edmund Fitzgerald is a 20th century story through and through. Iron-hulled tankers and freighters were rulers of the Great Lakes, six times as efficient as trucks for transporting valuable raw materials to power America’s still-thriving industrial heartlands. They regularly braved the massive and dangerous Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world by area, a watery beast with mountainous waves unconstrained by the salinity that keeps ocean rollers smooth.

Today the lake still is as unpredictable as it was back in 1975, when a hurricane-strength November storm overcame the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, named after the president of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, the ship’s owner, and sunk her.

The Whitefish Point Lighthouse on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is close to the place where the <em>Edmund Fitzgerald</em> went down.
The Whitefish Point Lighthouse on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan is close to the place where the Edmund Fitzgerald went down. Bruce Montagne / Dembinsky Photo Associates

When built, she was the biggest ship on the Great Lakes and had the nickname “Queen of the Lakes,” though the title didn’t last long. She was soon surpassed by bigger freighters as shipping companies competed to send larger loads of raw material from mines and mills in Minnesota and Wisconsin to processing facilities in the more industrial areas of Michigan, Illinois, and lakeside Canada. Most of her crew was from Toledo, Ohio, and she spent 17 years on a regular route between an iron mine in Superior, Wis. (near Duluth, Minn.) and iron works in Detroit, where her cargo was turned (after several intervening steps) into cars.

The exact cause of the Fitzgerald’s sinking is still debated by historians and scholars of the Great Lakes. As Lightfoot sings: “They might have split up or they might have capsized / They may have broke deep and took water.”

But regardless of the actual causes—perhaps rogue waves or ineffective cargo hatch covers—the ship became known as the “Titanic of the Great Lakes,” representing hubris, preventable tragedy, and the dangerous unpredictability of the sea.

For the Great Lakes are indeed seas, massive inland seas carved out by implacable glaciers, millennia ago. After the wreck, extensive new safety requirements for freighters were instituted by the NTSB. So, the Lakes aren’t as dangerous for commercial ships as they were back then. The Edmund Fitzgerald actually was the most recent freighter to sink in the Great Lakes at all.

Would we remember the disaster as well today if it wasn’t for Lightfoot’s song? He wrote it after reading an article in Newsweek magazine shortly after it happened. The story was still fresh in people’s minds, helping the song resonate both with current events and with the long tradition of maritime ballads at the same time.

That gave it staying power, but it also helps, of course, that the song is a masterpiece—stirring and catchy and goosebump-inducing. There isn’t really a chorus to speak of, only the melodic wailing of the electric guitar after every few poetic verses, the steady chug of the rhythm evoking the strain of the ship’s engine against the storm.

Gordon Lightfoot immortalized the shipwreck in song shortly after it occurred.
Gordon Lightfoot immortalized the shipwreck in song shortly after it occurred. Republic Country Club

The song does the hard work to keep the memory of the disaster present. Every year in November the search volume for “Edmund Fitzgerald” regularly rises as people seek out the song, but since 2021, those November searches for “Edmund Fitzgerald” have been steadily increasing in volume, showing an uptick in interest in both the song and the historical event. What’s to blame for this increase?

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” of all songs, has taken on a kind of meme-like quality: popular bumper stickers for sale on Etsy feature slogans like “Stop Honking! I’m crying to ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ by Gordon Lightfoot”, and TikToks of the tune have hundreds of thousands of views—including at least one fantastic Halloween costume. Various brands are getting in on the fun too.

“After decades of corporations trying to push Christmas earlier each year, Gen Z stopped them with a collective obsession with this 1975 shipwreck,” posted one TikTok user, with others chiming in in agreement. Users are even comparing the famous wreck to their own highway mishaps—showing that the song has taken on a kind of universal relatability, despite its extremely specific subject matter.

TikTok users have decided that November is the month for memes about the <em>Edmund Fitzgerald</em>.
TikTok users have decided that November is the month for memes about the Edmund Fitzgerald. @lakegal.al / @kylaragibson / @fatherwhimsy

Shipwrecks and maritime disasters in general are catnip for online audiences—for proof, see the thriving /r/titanic subreddit. For Gen Z, finding out about the Edmund Fitzgerald through a TikTok meme might be a gateway into genuine interest and appreciation for the fascinating history of the Great Lakes.

Maybe just in time to attend one of the various commemorations of the 50th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald’s sinking, such as the Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo’s full Fitzgerald weekend, and the Gales of November program at the Lake Superior Marine Museum Association in Duluth, Minn.

Many events are happening in Michigan and Detroit, where the Fitzgerald was built and where her destination was on the night of the disaster. The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society is hosting planned commemorations at Whitefish Point in Paradise, Mich., closest point to where the ship went down. The Detroit Historical society is putting on a series of events, as is the renowned Maritime Sailor’s Cathedral, which features prominently in Lightfoot’s lyrics—first as a “musty old hall,” and then, after he’d visited, changed to a “rustic old hall” for live performances. It was the place where the bell rang 29 times to remember those lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald, the day after the wreck; and where the bell continued to ring every year in memoriam.