TOLEDO, Ohio — When visitors clamber aboard the 617-foot-long Col. James M. Schoonmaker next month, they will not be exploring a decommissioned Great Lakes freighter. Instead, they will be walking the decks — OK, pretending to walk the decks — of one of the most fabled ships in American maritime history, one that was about 100 feet longer but of similar design and vintage. That vessel’s sinking in a storm on Nov. 10, 1975, killing all its crew, has become the stuff of legend: the Edmund Fitzgerald.

“It’s a touchstone of American history,” said Chris Gillcrist, director emeritus of the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, where the Schoonmaker is permanently docked. The Titanic, he said, was a British-registered liner and in international waters when it sank.

“When you’re talki

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