No one was more surprised than Gordon Lightfoot when his ballad "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" became one of the biggest hits of 1976, less than a year after the disaster it commemorates. The Canadian musician had agonized over writing the song in the first place.

"He feared being inaccurate, corny or worse, appearing to exploit a tragedy for profit," writes John U. Bacon in his new bestseller, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald . "But more than that, as a fellow sailor and a child of the Great Lakes … this song — whatever it was — was deeply personal."

The success of Lightfoot's song elevated the Edmund Fitzgerald's place in popular history. But its tragedy was hardly unique.

"From 1875 to 1975, there were at least 6,000 commercial shipwrecks o

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