The Edmund Fitzgerald was constructed by Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin as an investment into the iron and minerals industries (the first of it's kind from a Life insurance Company). Northwestern named the ship after its president and chairman of the board, Edmund Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald's own grandfather had himself been a lake captain.
The Ship Launched on June 7th, 1958 as the Largest ship of North America's Great Lakes, but an Ominous christening and launch ceremony seemed to foreshadow the fate of this once "Queen of the Lakes". Some 15,000 people attended the launch, but were delayed as it took Elizabeth Fitzgerald (Wife of Edmund Fitzgerald) three attempts to christen the ship by breaking a champagne bottle over the bow, followed by the shipyard crew having trouble releasing the Keel blocks. After a 36 minute delay, as if the ship itself was trying to deny it's own destiny, the vessel finally took to the sideways launch that led it to crash so violently into a pier that it's said a nearby spectator had a heart attack and died.
The Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin, at 2:15 p.m. on the afternoon of November 9, 1975, under the command of Captain Ernest M. Mcsorley. The ship was en route to the steel mill on Zug Island, near Detroit, Michigan, with a cargo of 26,116 long tons of taconite ore pellets and soon reached her full speed of 16.3 miles per hour. The weather forecast was not unusual for November and the National Weather Service predicted that a storm would pass just south of Lake Superior by 7 a.m. on November 10. However, by late in the afternoon of November 10, sustained winds of over 50 knots (58 mph) were recorded by ships and observation points across eastern Lake Superior. There were sustained winds as high as 58 knots (67 mph) at 4:52 p.m., while waves increased to as high as 25 feet by 6:00 p.m. The Fitzgerald was also struck by 70-to-75-knot (81 to 86 mph) gusts and waves as high as 35 feet as logged by the ship Arthur M. Anderson which the Fitzgerald had been following that day.
The last communication from the ship came at approximately 7:10 p.m., when Anderson notified Fitzgerald of an unbound ship and asked how she was doing. McSorley reported, "We are holding our own.", which were the Edmund Fitzgerald's last words as she sank minutes later. No distress signal was received, and ten minutes later, Anderson lost the ability either to raise Fitzgerald by radio or to detect her on radar.
There are many theories as to why the Fitzgerald sank, some say she bottomed out and took water , while others suggest that the Top hatches were damaged by Rogue waves which allowed access for water to the already fully loaded freighter. One thing is certain, there's no escape from the "Witch of November" when she comes stealing as portrayed in the immortalizing song by Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald".
On July 4th, 1995, The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society led an expedition to dive to the wreck site and retrieve the Fitzgerald's Bell.
