Fifty years later, the legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald lives on

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Few ships in Great Lakes history are as legendary as the Edmund Fitzgerald, especially across Northern Ohio, which was home to nearly half the 29 seamen who went down with the lake freighter in a fierce storm on Nov. 10, 1975.

There’s the USS Niagara, featured in the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812, but it was a warship, built to dispatch the enemy.

The “Mighty Fitz” was a vessel of commerce. A 729-foot ore boat that hauled taconite pellets from the Iron Range up north to the steel mills of the lower Great Lakes.

It was the biggest and fastest freighter on the lake when it was christened in 1958, and yet 17 years later it would be no match for the waves and the wind that pummeled its long, narrow hull into submission.

It rests to this day at the bottom of L