Without the song, ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ may have been largely forgotten

NASHOTAH, Wis. (AP) — Without Gordon Lightfoot’s song, the Edmund Fitzgerald could have faded from memory along with the names of the roughly 6,500 other ships that went down in the Great Lakes before it.

Lightfoot was inspired to write his ode to the Fitzgerald and the 29 men who died on board after reading the first Associated Press story about the wreck and a Nov. 24, 1975, article in Newsweek magazine. The song was released in August 1976, less than a year later.

Lightfoot’s mournful storytelling propelled the tragedy into infamy. Affection for the song and interest in the wreck has sustained for half a century, though it wasn’t even the deadliest recorded on the Great Lakes. The deadliest wreck on open waters was the Lady Elgin in 1860, which historians estimate killed nearly 400 pe