Edmund Fitzgerald 5 decades later: Loss of legendary ship hit Toledo hard

“All that remains is the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters.”

“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” — Gordon Lightfoot

Twenty nine men. The oldest 63. The youngest just 21. Twenty-nine families — forever linked by a tragedy so mysterious that its specific cause remains undetermined and out of reach. Monday marks 50 years since the Big Fitz was lost to the gales of November.

The broken wreckage of the Edmund Fitzgerald rests in pieces at the bottom of Lake Superior, scattered across a grotesque, haunting debris field reminding us that nature is great and we are small. Just 17 miles from safe harbor at Whitefish Bay.

The ship’s forward section — including the pilothouse, officers’ quarters, and the passenger staterooms — sits upright and remarkably intact. Nea