When the ore freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, it was among the worst maritime disasters in the history of the Great Lakes, but it’s a safe bet that few outside the shipping community would remember it today were it not for Gordon Lightfoot’s ballad commemorating the event. Rather incredibly, it became one of Lightfoot’s biggest hits, reaching No. 1 in Cashbox and No. 2 in Billboard despite sounding like an old English folk song. That wouldn’t have raised eyebrows in the early ’60s, but this was 1976, the dawn of the disco era; the song that kept it from reaching No. 1 with Billboard was Rod Stewart’s “Tonight’s the Night.”
Its ear-catching departure from most popular music of the day made it a ripe platform for parodies. Comedian Richard Jeni once joked that it’s the perfect song to play when you want your party guests to leave. But Lightfoot, inspired by a Newsweek article, wrote the song with somber intent — all royalties from it went, and still go, to a scholarship fund for the families of the sailors who died in the wreck. Lightfoot considers it his finest work.
The wreck was discovered the next year, lying in two pieces in over 500 feet of water just 15 miles from port. Experts still aren’t sure what caused the ship’s demise. An annual commemoration is held every year at Whitefish Bay, and though Lightfoot took some poetic license on a few details, the bell-ringing ceremony — using the ship’s bell retrieved from the wreck before the Canadian government made the site off-limits to divers — is just as the lyrics describe. The bell is rung 29 times, once each by a survivor of one who perished. It is then rung a 30th time for the other 30,000 mariners known to have died on the Great Lakes.