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10 November, 1975


dmiller
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30 years ago today, the Fitz went down.

Split Rock Lighthouse was *retired* a coupla decades ago, but today (as on every 10th of November), it's beacon will be lit up once more, in memory of the 29 that died that night, just short of Whitefish Bay, Michigan.

Split Rock is just a bit north of Two Harbors, Mn. from which the Fitz last set sail, that fateful night.

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Edited by dmiller
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The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

by Gordon Lightfoot

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

Of the big lake they call 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 - 26,000 tons more

Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty

That good 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 Wisconson

As the big freighters go it was bigger than most

With a crew and the 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 ships bell rang

Could it be the North Wind they'd been feeling.

The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound

And a wave broke over the railing

And every man knew, as the Captain did, too,

T'was the witch of November come stealing.

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait

When the gales of November came slashing

When afternoon came it was freezing rain

In the face of a hurricane West Wind

When supper time came the old cook came on deck

Saying fellows it's too rough to feed ya

At 7PM a main hatchway caved in

He said fellas it's been good to know ya.

The Captain wired in he had water coming in

And the good ship and crew was in peril

And later that night when his lights went out of sight

Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes

When the words turn the minutes to hours

The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay

If they'd 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 ruins 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 29 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 say, never gives up her dead

When the gales of November come early

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David,

Well, *I* appreciated your posting this even if nobody responded :unsure:. I was talking to Wasway this afternoon and primarily fussing at him for not posting as of late on the Nostalgia thread. Seems he's busy at work :blink:. Uh, huh.. but we got to talking (he's a temp history teacher) and the heck if he didn't have the Gordon Lightfoot song! So I edited it for those with dial-up (I can post or send the good MP3 version on request) and posting it. Good tune, huh? Click HERE! and go back to the '70's!

sudo
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Lightfoot song keeps crew memory alive

By MIKE HOUSEHOLDER -- Associated Press

DETROIT - It's an evocative song that defies description: Haunting yet comforting, wistful yet powerful, mythic yet real.

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald was among Gordon Lightfoot's greatest hits, an unlikely Top 40 smash about the deaths of 29 men aboard an ore carrier that plunged to the floor of Lake Superior during a nasty storm on Nov. 10, 1975.

"In large measure, his song is the reason we remember the Edmund Fitzgerald," said maritime historian Frederick Stonehouse. "That single ballad has made such a powerful contribution to the legend of the Great Lakes."

Three decades after the tragedy, the Fitzgerald remains the most famous of the 6,000 ships that disappeared on the Great Lakes.

Lightfoot's initial knowledge of the sinking came from an article in Newsweek. The singer/songwriter, after reading the piece, was inspired to write one of the signature songs of his lengthy career.

Clocking in at 6 1/2 minutes, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald appeared on the 1976 album Summertime Dream and eventually reached No. 2 on the pop charts. It spent 21 straight weeks on the charts, and still lingers like the memory of the doomed craft.

The song remains a part of Lightfoot's set list; he played it last summer at Detroit's Fox Theater, where the crowd included Ruth Hudson, the mother of a deckhand from the Fitzgerald.

Hudson, who met backstage with Lightfoot, has become friendly with the singer over the years. The North Ridgefield, Ohio, resident said the song is therapeutic to the families of the crew.

"It's kept the men and the memorial to the men alive," said Hudson. "I think it's been good for the families. They have felt comfort in it. I have talked to just about all of them, and I haven't talked to anyone who didn't like the song."

Lightfoot declined to be interviewed for this story. But he told The Associated Press in 2000 that Wreck was "a song you can't walk away from."

"You can't walk away from the people (victims), either," he said. "The song has a sound and total feel all of its own."

The structure of the song is simple: 14 verses, each four lines long. Its 450-plus words are carefully chosen, delivered over a haunting melody.

The song tells the story of the Fitzgerald's fatal voyage, which began Nov. 9 in Superior, Wis., where it was loaded with 26,116 tonnes of iron ore for a trip to Detroit.

A day later it was being pounded by 145 kilometre-per-hour wind gusts and nine-metre waves.

Ernest McSorley, the ship's captain, radioed a trailing freighter, the Arthur M. Anderson, and said that the Fitzgerald had sustained topside damage and was listing. At 7:10 p.m., he announced, "We are holding our own."

But the ship soon disappeared from radar without issuing an SOS. After a few days, a vessel with sonar was able to locate the Fitzgerald only 24 kilometres from the safe haven of Whitefish Bay.

Lightfoot's song does more than recite the facts. It transports the listener on board the Fitzgerald that fateful night:

"The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait/When the gales of November came slashing/When afternoon came it was freezing rain/In the face of a hurricane west wind."

And then the crescendo:

"The captain wired in he had water coming in/And the good ship and crew was in peril/And later that night when his lights went out of sight/Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

Several memorial events are planned to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the sinking, including a ceremony at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point and a service at the Mariners' Church of Detroit.

Undoubtedly, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald will be heard and discussed.

"Any bit of literature, prose or poetry that magnifies the loss of loved ones is so dramatic," said Bishop Richard W. Ingalls of the Mariners' Church. "Gordon Lightfoot's song definitely has given it a life that seems not to end."

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Psalmie -- if there were a few more of

flying-pig.gifflying-pig.gifflying-pig.gifflying-pig.gifflying-pig.gif

and

andove.gifandove.gifandove.gifandove.gifandove.gif

with *lifelines* attached from above, perhaps the Fitz might have stayed above water. ;)

Woops -- derailing my own thread.

One small correction. The Fitz left Superior Wisconsin -- and had a chance to stop in Two Harbors, but did not. I said that Two Harbors was where the Fitz last set sail from, and that was erroneous.

David

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  • 11 months later...

Here's a link to an interesting site that gives details about the Lightfoot song, line by line.

http://home.europa.com/~random7/fitz.htm#line

It also says there have been more than 6,000 Great Lakes shipwrecks, half of which have never been found. I'm not surprised. Having grown up on one of those lakes, I know that crossing them can be more perilous than an ocean voyage.

God bless the families left behind by such a tragedy.

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Thanks for this history lesson David... and for the song file Dr. Sudo...

As I was overseas on Nov 10, 1975, I had really never heard of this history... but obviously had subsequently heard the song, without realizing its significance. The Edmund Fitzgerald was the subject of some of the answers on Jeopardy... or else I'd have known even less than I did... I never realized until now that it was so contemporary.

Thanks

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Rocky said:

I never realized until now that it was so contemporary.

I can't tell you how much better that makes me feel.

It wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that Gordon Lightfoot's song wasn't about one of those shipwrecks that happened in the late 1800s. I'm not sure why I didn't hear about it on the news in 1975, except that I was pretty much at the height of having my twi head up my twi butt during most of the 70s.

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Well, that's interesting- - - to be reading a thread, remembering about what I was doing when we heard about the wreck and all, and all of a sudden come across a post supposedly made by me! :blink:

I did grow up in MI, did like the song-- didn't have nightmares, but it WAS a haunting song to me. Whoever you are, that has posted using my name, I've changed my password--have fun figuring it out.

Sorry for the derail, David

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I have been to the museum where the ship's bell is displayed. They played the song. It was interesting. I think people reaslized this really happened. They were really men who went down with the ship.

A haunting tale.

I think National Geographic did a story with a dive on it. I remember one young woman gave one of the divers a can of Budwiser and asked him to put it in the boat, for her dad was down there and always loved a can of beer when he came home from a voyage.

WG

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