His band had never heard the song. They recorded it in one take with leftover studio time. Radio demanded it be cut to three minutes. He refused—and created the only maritime disaster ballad to ever reach #2.
November 10, 1975. A brutal storm tears across Lake Superior. Waves climb past 30 feet. Winds scream at hurricane force. The SS Edmund Fitzgerald—the largest freighter on the Great Lakes—radios another ship: “We are holding our own.” But twenty minutes later, it disappears from radar. All 29 men aboard are lost.
Two weeks later, Newsweek runs a short article called “The Cruelest Month.” The nation barely pauses. By Thanksgiving, the story is gone—another industrial tragedy filed away and forgotten.
But in Toronto, a 36-year-old songwriter named Gordon Lightfoot can’t let it go. He knows the Great Lakes. He’s sailed them. He understands November storms—how quickly calm water turns lethal, how seasoned crews don’t say “holding our own” unless they’re already in trouble. He realizes something painful: Twenty-nine working men have died, and the world is already moving on.
So Lightfoot decides to remember them. He researches obsessively—Coast Guard reports, weather logs, ship movements, radio transcripts. He reconstructs the final hours: the rising seas, the pounding deck, the final transmission, the moment the ship simply ceases to exist.
Then he writes. The melody comes from an old Irish dirge—unforgiving, steady, mournful. The lyrics unfold like a report: verse after verse, no chorus, no hook, no relief.
“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee…”
By December 1975, Lightfoot is recording Summertime Dream. The planned tracks wrap early. Studio time remains. The engineer asks, “Got anything else?” Lightfoot mentions a shipwreck song. The band hasn’t heard it. He barely considers it finished. But time is paid for.
“Let’s try it.”
He hands out rough chord changes. No rehearsal. No discussion. No second guessing.
They roll tape. Barry Keane’s drums crash like waves. Rick Haynes’s bass moves like rolling water. Pee Wee Charles’s steel guitar cries like wind through rigging. Lightfoot sings plainly, almost casually—describing men doing their jobs while knowing they’re about to die. Six and a half minutes later, it’s done. One take. No one suggests another.
“It was filler,” the band later said. “Just using up studio time.” Then the label hears it.
They love it—and panic. Six minutes, thirty seconds. No radio station will play that.
They ask Lightfoot to cut it down. Three minutes. Maybe four. He refuses. “You can’t tell this story in three minutes,” he says. “It needs all of it.” The label releases it anyway.
Radio programmers groan—until they listen. Then something strange happens.
People don’t turn it off. They lean in. They stay in their cars. They call stations asking to hear it again. DJs play the entire song because cutting it feels wrong. By spring 1976, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” is climbing the charts. A six-minute folk ballad about a shipwreck reaches #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. Only one song keeps it from #1.
It becomes the only Great Lakes disaster song to ever become a pop hit—the only time 29 industrial sailors are mourned by an entire nation. Lightfoot never changes it for commercial reasons. Even when later research reveals small factual errors, he resists rewriting it. “The song already did its job,” he says. “It made people remember.” And they do.
Families of the crew thank him for giving their loved ones a memorial. Maritime schools ring bells each November—29 times for the men, once more for the song that kept their names alive.
That refusal—to shorten, simplify, or soften—defined Gordon Lightfoot’s career.
He wrote about geography, weather, work, jealousy, love, and loss with the patience of someone who trusted truth over trends. Dylan said his songs made him wish time would stop.
He nearly lost everything to alcoholism. Nearly died in 2002 from a ruptured aneurysm. Returned anyway. Sang with a thinner voice. Played smaller rooms. Told the stories exactly as they were.
Gordon Lightfoot died May 1, 2023, at 84.
But every November, when bells ring on the Great Lakes, when a six-minute song plays uninterrupted on the radio, when listeners refuse to leave their cars until the last line fades—
The legend still lives on. Because one artist refused to cut the truth short.
And because he didn’t, twenty-nine men were never forgotten.
The legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald remains the most mysterious and controversial of all shipwreck tales heard around the Great Lakes. Her story is surpassed in books, film and media only by that of the Titanic. Canadian folksinger Gordon Lightfoot inspired popular interest in this vessel with his 1976 ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”
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 good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
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 good ship and crew 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'?
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 every man knew, as the captain did too,
T'was 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
And a wave broke over the railing
And every man knew, as the captain did too,
T'was 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 to feed ya
At seven pm a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been 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 his lights went outta sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya
At seven pm a main hatchway caved in, he said
Fellas, it's been 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 his 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 searches all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
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
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searches all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
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 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 till 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
In the maritime sailors' cathedral
The church bell chimed till 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
Songwriters: Gordon Lightfoot
The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc
The Fateful Journey
SS Edmund Fitzgerald
On Nov. 10, 1975 the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in the big lake Gitche Gumee
Rare radio chatter between the Arthur M. Anderson and the Coast Guard November 10th, 1975. The last time anyone ever heard from the Edmund Fitzgerald...
This is the last interview of Capt. Bernie Cooper of the Arthur M. Anderson conducted by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society before he passed in 1993. The Anderson was 10 miles behind the Fitzgerald in the teeth of Lake Superior during that fateful night of November 10th, 1975 when all 29 men went down. Hear a first hand account of what it was like that night and Capt. Coopers theories on what may have happened to the Fitz.
Watch videographer and historian Ric Mixter give his lecture on, "The Edmund Fitzgerald Exploration." This event took place on October 6, 2017 at the Grace A. Dow Memorial Library Auditorium as part of the Library's "Modern Explorers" lecture series.
Below is a documentary from 1989. Not to be confused with the 1983 film. Commercials are included. I don't own the content that are shown in this video. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.
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