Fifty years ago this month, the gales of November swallowed the SS Edmund Fitzgerald along with her crew of 29 men, one of the largest ships to go down on Lake Superior and the Great Lakes.

Remembered annually in Michigan and elsewhere, the shipwreck reminds people of the Great Lakes' power and the thousands of other ships and souls that met a similar fate.

Nearly every Michigan resident seems to know the story of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, in part because of Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot's song , "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

The 729-foot ship sank on Nov. 10, 1975, amid a strong November storm, just 17 miles away from Whitefish Point, located in the northeastern part of the Upper Peninsula, where the big lake's powerful storm waves would have been partially blocked.

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