Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald 34th Anniversary

Gather.com ^ | November 10 2009 | Mike R

[Pelham]

Cue Gordon Lightfoot:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0DqPSF2fyo&feature=player_embedded

[Mikey_1962]

If memory serves the owner died of a heart attack at the launching of the ship.

Cursed from the start.

[Kartographer]

I like this one better

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5l3x_VoF3wo

[LRoggy]

Northwestern Mutual owned the ship. Edmund Fitzgerald was a former CEO of the company, hence the name.

[LukeL]

The ship also listed when it was launched, crashed into a dock, the blocks holding it on shore were stuck, and it took three whacks to break the champagne bottle.

[ArrogantBustard]

[Ingtar]

My favorite dirge.

[oh8eleven]

"The Captain wired in he had water coming in, and the good ship and crew was in peril;
And later that night when his lights went out of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

Prayers up ...

[KarlInOhio]

And still Google has the Muppets on their page instead of things like the Berlin Wall or the Edmund Fitzgerald.

[ Make the song go away. It's echoing in my head!]

[raccoonradio]

A Boston radio station was playing it last night...I remember it from way back plus have it on a best of Lightfoot album. When it first came out I wondered if it was about an incident from long ago, perhaps because it talks about “the legend lives on”, talking about Lake Superior. It makes you think the sinking of this ship was long ago too; only recently did I find out that it was not long before the song came out.

[raccoonradio]

...And now that I think of it, the station playing it was actually WBOQ based on the North Shore of Boston, and they followed it with their jingle: “We play your good time
favorites/North Shore 104.9”! And I thought, yeah, a “good time” song about 29 dying on a ship?

[MplsSteve]

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[ReformedBeckite]

I was raised in lower Michigan, I remember the day very well. I was in the boy scouts and we had plan a camping trip that weekend, It turned bad weather as soon as we set up camp, it rained and rained and the wind picked up and blew like crazy and the temperatures dropped, basically cold and damp windy night. It ended up being a crappy first night, and in the morning we called it quits and hiked out of the camp.

[raccoonradio]

17 miles from the entry of Whitefish Bay:
“The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay if they put 15 more miles behind her.”

[theDentist]

"Bigfritz Glug-glug."

[Cyber Liberty]

I was a very youthful Disk Jockey at a Michigan radio station at the time of the wreck. I was in Chicago the day before and the weather was out of this world. Lake Michigan was blowing up over Lakeshore Drive, and that is a very large swell.

It was a HUGE local story for us. UPI wire was ringing every few minutes with bulletin updates.

[FredZarguna]

The legend in the song is not the legend of the ship; it’s the legend of Lake Superior.

[Carl LaFong]

“The brothers and mothers and sisters and daughters,
Their lungs all filled up with water”

Er..maybe my memory of the lyrics is a little off.

[BarbM]

My uncle Bob, Captain Robert O'Brien was the pilot of the last ship to communicate with the Edmund. He was piloting a ship that night. Bob decided to take the longer route, along the shore line, the pilot of the Edmund took the quicker route across the lake.

true story. check the newspapers for Uncle Bob's quote.