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Fifty years after the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the shipwreck still fascinates.

How did the freighter – once the biggest and fastest on the Great Lakes – succumb to the gales of November and disappear under the waves of Lake Superior?

Some blame leaking hatches. Others believe the ship’s bottom scraped the shoals along the Canadian coast while taking what was thought to be a safer route in the storm.

The Mighty Fitz lost all 29 of her crew – seven from Northeast Ohio, from Bay Village to Ashtabula – and just as many from Toledo.

Fifty years to the day of the sinking, an outdoor public ceremony is planned at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish

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