LAKE SUPERIOR, MI - It was 50 years ago today that the Edmund Fitzgerald was being loaded with 26,000 tons of iron ore, prepped for what would become her tragic final voyage.

Once the largest ship on the Great Lakes, the 728-foot Fitzgerald left Superior, Wisconsin at 2:15 p.m. on Nov. 9, 1975. Her crew planned to cross Lake Superior to deliver the load at Detroit’s Zug Island.

But a day later, the ship was gone, broken in two and laying on the lake’s bottom in 530 feet of water. All 29 souls aboard were lost.

In the last half century, Gordon Lightfoot’s poignant song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” has become a cultural phenomenon. It helps keep alive the memory of what’s become the Great Lakes’ most famous shipwreck. In some circles, it’s considered the Titanic of the Great La

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