50th Anniversary of the loss of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald

[Lord Caedus]

Fifty years ago today, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a severe storm not far from Whitefish Point, Michigan after (what is believed to have been) catastrophic flooding as a result of the failure of several watertight seals. She took her entire crew of twenty-nine with her, and the event was later immortalized in the Gordon Lightfoot song "The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald." The day after the wreck, Mariners' Church in Detroit, Michigan rang its bell 29 times, once for each life lost. Earlier this year, a team of sixty-eight swimmers collaborated to complete the final four hundred and eleven miles of the Edmund Fitzgerald's journey, carrying a small bag of taconite (a type of iron ore which the ship was carrying) with them. She was the largest ship to have ever sunk on the Great Lakes, and no lake freighter has sunk since she did.

The Arthur M Anderson was the last ship to have visual contact with the Edmund Fitzgerald and regularly still makes the same trip both ships were attempting on November 10th, 1975. On the forty-fifth anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald's sinking, the Arthur M Anderson was making port in Duluth, Minnesota and paid her respects to the lost ship by signaling a "Master Salute" which consists of three long blasts of her horn, followed by two short blasts. This salute is historically done when encountering the largest ship on the Great Lakes, known as the "Queen of the Lakes", an honor the Edmund Fitzgerald held when she was launched in 1958.

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