Yesterday was the anniversary of the sinking of the big ore carrier ship SS Edmund Fitzgerald. The event is memorialized in Gordon Lightfoot's classic folk ballad The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
To honor her 29 officers and crew, all of whom died 51 years ago tonight in a fierce Lake Superior gale, I called up the music on YouTube and listened as I read the lyrics. Here's their conclusion.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake, they call Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early.
