It was 50 years ago today that the good ship Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a gale on Lake Superior.
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 true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early
That’s how Gordon Lightfoot begins the ballad of a shipwreck that remains something of a mystery to this day. It has to be one of the most haunting elegies of modern folk music. See an article which describes the event and the impact of the story-telling ballad, a long-time favorite of mine.
