39 Years Later, Remembering The Edmund Fitzgerald

Does anyone know where the love of God goes

When the waves turn the minutes to hours…

–Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”

It was circa July 1973, and my husband and I—young, free-wheeling and in love, with more dreams than experience—embarked on a driving trip through upper Michigan. We’d never been much farther north than Lansing at that point. We pitched a tent along the way, getting to know Grayling and Mio, the Au Sable River and the Traverse City wine country, finally turning back when we reached Lake of the Clouds in Michigan’s Porcupine Mountains.

Along the way, we stopped at Sault Ste. Marie, on the St. Mary’s River. Originally called “Sault du Gastogne” by early French fur traders, Sault Ste. Marie was renamed by Jesuit missionary Pere Jacques Marquette in 1633, to honor the Virgin Mary.

The St. Mary’s River is the only water connection between Lake Superior and the Great Lakes; but there is a section of the river known as the St. Mary’s Rapids, where the water falls about 21 feet from the level of Lake Superior to the level of the lower lakes. With ingenuity and persistence, the settlers built a series of locks, called the “Soo Locks,” to bypass the dangerous waters of the river—and in 1855, the steamer Illinois passed through the locks in less than an hour. The four locks in use today permit shipping through the Great Lakes into the waters of Lake Michigan, connecting the American Midwest to the Atlantic Ocean.

Standing there at the Locks in 1973, Jerry and I watched as a freighter passed through the locks, the ship’s crew “manning the rails,” a tradition which showed that they had no evil intent. We snapped 35 mm photos which were later developed into slides.

Only years later did we review the 35mm slides we took and realize that the ship we’d seen that day was the mighty and legendary Edmund Fitzgerald, destined for immortality as a “ghost ship.”

On November 10, 1975, just two years after we captured the ship and its crew on film, the Edmund Fitzgerald—en route from Wisconsin to Detroit’s Zug Island—sank in the waters of Lake Superior during a storm. The ship broke in two, its crew of 29 were lost, and Gordon Lightfoot wrote his ode to the ship and its brave crew. Today, 39 years after the loss, Old Mariner’s Church in Detroit still sounds its bells 29 times each day in honor of the sailors who lost their lives in this most famous of Michigan’s many shipwrecks.

Looking at the photographs today, I remember that these men—most in their 40s or 50s, and some as young as 21—were not planning to die that day. They left loving wives, children, parents, and friends, drawn to the depths of the sea and the arms of their Creator.

Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord.

THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD

by Gordon Lightfoot

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee”
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
when the skies of November turn gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,
that big ship and true was a bone to be chewed
when the Gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most
with a crew and good captain well seasoned,
concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
when they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the ship’s bell rang,
could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound
and a wave broke over the railing
And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did too
’twas the witch of November come stealin’
The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait
when the Gales of November came slashin’
When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain
in the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin’
“Fellas, it’s too rough t’feed ya”
At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,
“Fellas, it’s bin good t’know ya!”
The captain wired in he had water comin’ in
and the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when ‘is lights went outta sight
came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes
when the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay
if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er
They might have split up or they might have capsized;
they may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
in the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams;
the islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below Lake Ontario
takes in what Lake Erie can send her,
And the iron boats go as the mariners all know
with the Gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,
in the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times
for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they call “Gitche Gumee”
“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead
when the gales of November come early.”

39 Years Later, Remembering the Edmund Fitzgerald