The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald occurred on November 10, 1975, during a severe storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew members on board.

Key date and details

  • The SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a Great Lakes freighter, sank on the evening of November 10, 1975.
  • The ship went down in Lake Superior about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay in waters over 500 feet deep.

Why it is well remembered

  • The tragedy became widely known through Gordon Lightfoot’s song titled “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” , released in 1976.
  • The mysterious nature of the sinking, with no distress call and the ship breaking in two on the lake bottom, has kept public interest strong for decades.

Brief timeline

  • The freighter departed Superior, Wisconsin, on November 9, 1975, loaded with taconite pellets and bound for a steel mill near Detroit.
  • The vessel encountered a powerful storm on November 10 and disappeared from radar shortly after 7 p.m. local time that day.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.