Monday marked the 50th anniversary of the loss of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald to the storms of Lake Superior, a tragedy that reflects harshly on the impotence of humans and their machines before the power of nature’s wind and waves.

The loss of the Fitzgerald is a true-life mystery that has achieved an almost mythical level of cultural interest over the years. Much of that is due, to course, to Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting tribute: “Superior, they said, never gives up her dead, when the gales of November come early.” But it’s also notable for the uncommon bravery of a doomed crew that perished within an hour’s sail of safety. “The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay If they’d put 15 more miles behind her.”

The ship’s memory also reminds us about the Great Lakes as a criti

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