Don Day, meteorologist for Cowboy State Daily, was on the path to becoming a weather buff from an early age. He recalls the way his adolescent ears perked up as the storm bulletins crackled through the kitchen radio of his home in Farmington, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit.
And though he was only 8 years old, he uniquely remembers what came through the radio on Nov. 10, 1975, when a meteorological phenomenon known as "The Witch of November” sank the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, killing all 29 crew members. Not a single body was recovered.
“I remember it vividly. Anybody who was around the Great Lakes region in the mid 70s will remember when it happened.”
On the eve of the 50-year anniversary, with no survivors or witnesses, the tragedy remains fogged in mystery. Yet it’s a mystery that continues to grip the imaginations of Western culture, all thanks to the Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot.
Lightfoot memorialized the tragedy in “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a poignant and visceral ballad whose unorthodox structure belies its chart-topping success.
The Toronto-based folk singer felt a personal connection to the deceased sailors, and he worked diligently to reconstruct every possible detail.
The result is a ballad that’s both historically accurate and emotionally heartfelt, with visceral imagery that puts listeners right beside the embattled sailors on deck.
“The wind in the wires made a tattletale sound/and the wave broke over the railing. And every man knew as the captain did, too/ ‘Twas The Witch of November come stealing,” Lightfoot sings.
It's stanzas like these that make the song not just moving but relatable, even to Wyomingites.
“When he sings that the winds in the wires made a tattletale sound, that’s my favorite line,” said Day. “I think anybody that’s spent time outside in a Wyoming windstorm knows exactly what that is. Just like wind going through barbed wire, telephone wires, highline wires, Wyoming people can relate.”
Day finds the song doubly relatable as a former resident of the Great Lakes area. Lightfoot’s ballad captures the cultural history and nuance of the region and its shipping industry, Day said.
“You can tell how much research he did. He refers to what the Chippewa [Native American tribe] called Lake Gitche Gumee, and he uses the Great Lakes’ phrase ‘Witch of November.’ He was able to describe the incident and the wreck and blend in the local culture. I think he wove it all in perfectly,” said Day.
Were it not for that song, Fitzgerald's legacy, like the thousands of other ships sunk by the gales of Great Lakes past, would have become a forgotten footnote in the historical record, according to John U. Bacon., author of a recent book on the Fitzgerald mystery, “The Gales of November.”
“Between 1875 and 1975 the Great Lakes claimed a staggering 6,000 shipwrecks — that’s an average of one per week, for a century — yet most people can only name one,” Bacon told Rolling Stone magazine in an interview last month. “[And] it’s because of the bone-deep sincerity he brought to the task. He meant every word, and listeners can tell — including the victims’ families.”
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior 50 years ago, and no bodies were ever recovered. Wyoming meteorologist Don Day grew up in Michigan and remembers the famous wreck — and the weather phenomenon that sunk her, "The Witch of November." The wreckage is still on the bottom of the lake, seen in this haunting underwater photo. (Great Lakes Shipwreck Society via YouTube) 
The prow of the lifeboat from the sunken ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald on display on the SS Valley Camp, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. | Location: SS Valley Camp, Marquette County Historical Society Museum, Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan. 
The powerful winds and storms that hits the Great Lakes in the fall are known as The Witch of November, the weather phenomenon that sunk the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975. (Lake Superior via YouTube) 
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior 50 years ago, and no bodies were ever recovered. Wyoming meteorologist Don Day grew up in Michigan and remembers the famous wreck — and the weather phenomenon that sunk her, "The Witch of November." The wreckage is still on the bottom of the lake, seen in this haunting underwater photo. (Great Lakes Shipwreck Society via YouTube) 
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior 50 years ago, and no bodies were ever recovered. Wyoming meteorologist Don Day grew up in Michigan and remembers the famous wreck — and the weather phenomenon that sunk her, "The Witch of November." The wreckage is still on the bottom of the lake, seen in this haunting underwater photo. (Great Lakes Shipwreck Society via YouTube) 
Left, Rear Admiral Winford Barrow, left, a member of the Coast Guard Board of Inquiry, and Capt. Roger Jacobsen, marine superintendent for Oglebay Norton, inspect debris from the Edmund Fitzgerald. The Edmund Fitzgerald went down during a 11/10 storm on Lake Superior with 29 men aboard. Right, Bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald, which wrecked on Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, now serves as a memorial to the lost crew in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Michigan. (Getty Images) 
View of the 729-foot ore boat SS Edmund Fitzgerald, Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan, 1972. The ship sank, losing all hands, over the night of November 10, 1975. (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images) 
Remote and beautiful Whitefish Point State Harbor is located on the Great Lakes infamous Graveyard Coast. An area of Lake Superior notorious for ship crushing storms including the ill fated Edmund Fitzgerald. (Getty Images) 
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior 50 years ago, and no bodies were ever recovered. Wyoming meteorologist Don Day grew up in Michigan and remembers the famous wreck — and the weather phenomenon that sunk her, "The Witch of November." (CSD File) 
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior 50 years ago, and no bodies were ever recovered. Wyoming meteorologist Don Day grew up in Michigan and remembers the famous wreck — and the weather phenomenon that sunk her, "The Witch of November." (Photo by Bettmann via Getty Images) 
The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank on Lake Superior 50 years ago, and no bodies were ever recovered. Wyoming meteorologist Don Day grew up in Michigan and remembers the famous wreck — and the weather phenomenon that sunk her, "The Witch of November." The wreckage is still on the bottom of the lake, seen in this haunting underwater photo. (Great Lakes Shipwreck Society via YouTube)
How Did It Sink?
The SS Fitzgerald was owned by an insurance magnate of the same name. It was the biggest ship on the Great Lakes at that time, at 729 feet, and though it was leased for the purpose of freighting ore from Canada to America, it was also one of the most luxurious ships, with so-called first-in-class cabins meant to attract the best possible crews.
Peculiar details surrounding the wreck ignited the popular imagination.
Captain McSorley, who had a reputation for pushing through storms, did not send a distress signal. Rather, his last known words, at 7:10 p.m. on Nov. 10, 1975, were, “We are holding our own.”
The vessel was thought to be indestructible, yet it was found bifurcated on the bottom of the lake. And to this day, not a single body has been recovered.
“The lake it is said, never gives up her dead/When the skies of November turn gloomy,” Lightfoot sings.
These and other details fueled speculation, not least from the National Enquirer, which promoted the notion of extraterrestrial involvement.
Weather expert Don Day, however, views the outcome as a convergence of wicked weather and human hubris.
Wrong Place, Wrong Time
"The Witch of November” refers to the seasonal storms of late fall in the Great Lakes region. They arise when cold air fronts come down from Canada and interact with the comparatively warm water atmosphere hovering over the lakes. That temperature differential drives storm activity.
On that specific day, however, there was an additional factor as a low-pressure system simultaneously brought moist air up from the Southern Plains.
“When you have cold Canadian air mixing with warm, moist air from the southern plains, a lot of things can happen, with a rapid intensification of storms,” Day said.
Another factor is Lake Superior’s tendency for higher frequency waves than other bodies of water, meaning the ship that day was brutalized by unremitting wave impacts with little time to recover in between.
“Does anyone know where the love of God goes/When the waves turn the minutes to hours?” Lightfoot sings.
Day reiterates Lightfoot's sentiment this way.
“The Edmund Fitzgerald encountered this storm at the peak of its life cycle. In terms of its maximum ferocity, the most rapid intensification happened right along the ship's path,” Day said. “They were in the exact wrong place, at the exact wrong time because it's when this storm decided to reach its peak intensity.”
Could It Happen Today?
In 1975, weather reports were designed using a limited number of inputs, like wind and temperature barometers stationed at airports and military bases, along with low resolution satellite photos. These data points were combined to construct predictive weather maps.
A big risk for ships like the Edmund Fitzgerald was the lag in weather reporting.
“Back then, the weather service would put out a written statement, but from the time they wrote something on paper and delivered it or sent it or communicated on phone, weather can change rapidly. By the time you got the weather briefing, it might be 12 or 24 hours old,” said Day.
“It's not that the weather forecast in that day and age was bad. They knew a storm was coming. They knew it could be a bad storm, but there were no tools then that could anticipate the specific ferocity or the potential for rapid intensification,” Day said.
“In the last 50 years, the changes in technology have just been huge. Even if they’d only just had our communication technology, there is a high likelihood that they would have never left port.”
Three years after the wreck, the U.S. Coast Guard published its investigation, concluding that damaged hatches allowed water to enter the cargo hold, leading to a slow loss of buoyancy. Some local shipping groups contested this theory and instead argued the ship was punctured by hull damage in shallow water near Caribou Island several hours before sinking.
The Song Goes On
Fifty years later, the wreck feels nearly as mysterious as it always has. And it’s a mystery that will remain on the minds of Westerners, so long as Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” continues to be heard.
“They might have split up, or they might have capsized/They may have broke deep and took water. And all that remains is the faces and the names/Of the wives and the sons and the daughters,” Lightfoot sings.
Contacrt Zakary Sonntag at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com
Zakary Sonntag can be reached at zakary@cowboystatedaily.com.
