50 Years Ago: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald Sinks and Inspires a Gordon Lightfoot Hit

UltimateClassicRock ^ | Nov. 14, 2025 | Allison Rapp

[cyclotic]

I grew up a mile or two from one of the great lakes and saw the big freighters frequently. I was 11 when the Fitz went down and have vague memories of the news that day. That said, we have a painting in my living room of the Fitz a minute or so before she sank and I don’t even live in Michigan anymore. We’re now a mile from the Chesapeake Bay.

That said, I have great respect for the Troubadour, Gordon Lightfoot and his homage to the brave men who sail the Great Lakes.

[Southside_Chicago_Republican]

I have always liked the song, but I started to take particular interest in the story and other Great Lakes lore after I moved to where I live now — two blocks off Lake Michigan. Some of my neighbors are retired merchant sailors. One had spent some time on the Fitzgerald. It was great for Lightfoot to have recognized these men, and for him to be recognized in return.

[Dr. Franklin]

The almost always reliable NTSB reported that improperly fastened and maladjusted hatch cover clamps were the immediate cause of the sinking. More recent dives on the wreck and high definition scans and photos have further supported the hatch cover explanation above all other factors and possibilities.

Perhaps, but even so, the engineering needs to account for such things. It was a long ship with three separated cargo holds. If it had four, it might have retained enough buoyancy to at least stay afloat long enough to have given the crew a chance at survival, or never have sunk. One of the explanations for the Titanic sinking is that the crew member at the wheel turned the wheel the wrong way due to a lack of training and panic after the crew spotted the iceberg, and the ship actually steered in to the iceberg, not away from it. Human error is always present but the engineering must account for it in the design. With the Edmund Fitzgerald, it didn't. They were actually planning to lengthen the ship before it sank.

[Rockingham]

True enough. The dirty secret of engineering is that it is about economizing materials and cost -- sometimes in ways that go wrong. And when they do go wrong, there is usually a cascade of failures and poor choices with several what if scenarios that might have made for a different outcome.

The concept of proximate cause though is useful for sorting through such possibilities. When all the facts are taken into account, who was the last responsible person in time whose decisions were in error when the harm was foreseeable and avoidable based on the knowledge available at the time?

In my reckoning, the person proximately at fault was the captain in failing to properly secure the hatch covers before he headed into notoriously fickle waters in storm season. As my father taught me when I was boy sailing on the small lake I grew up on: avoid unnecessary risks because the water wants to kill you.