Great Lakes Ore Carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, 1975

While most people imagine the vast oceans to be the most dangerous waters to sail upon, some of the roughest waters in the world are actually experienced on the Great Lakes, which has more non-war related shipwrecks per square mile than any other body of water in the world. Without doubt, the most famous of these took place on November 10, 1975, when the gigantic ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, at one time the largest ship on the Great Lakes and holder of numerous tonnage records, was caught in a vicious November gale and, after hours of battling high winds and 30-foot waves, suddenly disappeared from radar without as much as a single distress call, taking all twenty-nine members of her crew down with her. The loss would likely have remained little known outside the Great Lakes maritime community had not singer/songwriter Gordon Lightfoot written a popular song about the sinking in 1976, immortalizing the ship’s demise and making her the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes. While the precise cause of the sinking has never been determined, later surveys done on the wreck revealed that the 800-foot long craft broke in two, suggesting it either “bottomed out” on the shallow lake bottom and broke in two, or it was wrenched in two by a rogue wave and plunged to the bottom of the lake in mere minutes. Whatever the cause, the ship remains off-limit to divers as a grave and continues to serve as a reminder that even the largest vessels are no match for the Great Lakes when—as the song says—the gales of November come early.