The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald
By John U. Bacon
Liveright, an imprint of W. W. Norton & Company.
432 pages, $35
In the summer of 1976, this reviewer was a 15-year-old avid radio listener when “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a ballad by Canadian singer-songwriter by Gordon Lightfoot, hit the airwaves. With a melody described by the composer as “an old Irish folk song” and a sound utterly unlike anything I’d heard. I bought a copy of Gord’s Summertime Dream LP, and “The Wreck” has haunted me since.
With the fiftieth anniversary of this maritime disaster coming this fall, bestselling author John U. Bacon has penned the definitive story about the loss of the “Mighty Fitz,” drawing on more than 100 interviews with the families, friends, and former shipmates of those lost.
No region was more vital to America’s economic strength in the boom years following World War II than the Great Lakes. In an era when fortunes were being made in mining, smelting and shipping, the nation’s inland seas were the beating heart of the global economy. At the time of her launch, the S. S. Edmund Fitzgerald was the largest ship on the lakes at 729 feet and she continually broke her own records for the largest loads, the fastest runs, and the biggest season hauls. Lightfoot sang, “As the big freighters go it was bigger than most, with a crew and good captain well-seasoned.”
On November 10, 1975, the Fitzgerald and her crew of twenty-nine men were bound from Wisconsin to Cleveland when the “storm of the century” hit Lake Superior. With 100-mile-per-hour winds fetching up 50-foot waves on “the big lake they called Gitche Gumee,” the Fitzgerald and her crew were doomed. She sank with all hands, and the tragedy has been shrouded in mystery for a half century. Focused on the folks directly affected by the sinking, The Gales of November is both an emotional tribute to those lost and a gripping narrative of America’s most-mourned shipwreck. ■
John U. Bacon has authored fourteen books on sports, business and history, the last seven of which are critically acclaimed national bestsellers, including five New York Times bestsellers, notably The Great Halifax Explosion: A World War I story of Treachery, Tragedy, and Extraordinary Heroism. He lives in Ann Arbor and Northern Michigan with his wife and son.
