Edmund Fitzgerald, in full Steamship (SS) Edmund Fitzgerald, American freighter that sank during a storm on November 10, 1975, in Lake Superior, killing all 29 aboard. Its mysterious demise inspired Gordon Lightfoot’s hit song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976), which helped make it the most famous shipwreck in the Great Lakes.
In 1957 the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company commissioned the construction of a freighter that was to be the then largest ship on the Great Lakes, measuring 729 feet (222 metres) long and weighing more than 13,600 tons. On June 8, 1958, the vessel was christened the
Edmund Fitzgerald, in full Steamship (SS) Edmund Fitzgerald, American freighter that sank during a storm on November 10, 1975, in Lake Superior, killing all 29 aboard. Its mysterious demise inspired Gordon Lightfoot’s hit song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” (1976), which helped make it the most famous shipwreck in the Great Lakes.
In 1957 the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company commissioned the construction of a freighter that was to be the then largest ship on the Great Lakes, measuring 729 feet (222 metres) long and weighing more than 13,600 tons. On June 8, 1958, the vessel was christened the