DETROIT – The Edmond Fitzgerald sank during what was supposed to be the last run of the season.
Caught in a November snowstorm, visibility was low and waves washed over the deck. The waters eventually ripped the ship apart and all seven crew members lost their lives in the cold waters of Lake Erie.
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I swear this isn’t some Mad-Libs with some details just swapped out. The legendary S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald that sank in Lake Superior 50 years ago was not the first Fitzgerald the Great Lakes had claimed.
The Edmond Fitzgerald (not to be confused with the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald) was a wind-powered wooden ship that was carrying wheat when it sank on Nov. 14, 1883.
It was roughly 135 feet long and 25 feet wide, a fraction of its younger and much larger descendant.
The two-masted schooner was built in 1870 in Port Huron by Edmond Fitzgerald, a shipbuilder and lumber businessman who would later become the city’s mayor.
The Edmond Fitzgerald left Detroit on a trip to Buffalo when the Gales of November hit. The wooden ship was crossing Lake Erie when a snowstorm caught it miles from Long Point, Ontario.
The ship ran aground on a sandbar, and the waves broke the vessel into pieces.
Crew members managed to get into lifeboats that quickly capsized, throwing them into the icy waters.
They were within sight of the Long Point lighthouse when it happened.
Without the key, crews from the lighthouse had to break down the doors to their boathouse to get to their boats. By the time they got onto the water, the Edmond Fitzgerald’s crew had already drowned.
The S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was launched 75 years later. It was named after Edmond Fitzgerald’s great-nephew, Edmund Fitzgerald.
In 1975, it too sank during a November storm on the Great Lakes, almost 92 years to the day of its precursor’s wreck.
---> Watch: The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 years later (full extended cut documentary)