"Does anyone know where the love of God goes…." Gordon Lightfoot "The wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald…
Forty years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975, the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald sank during a ferocious storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 men aboard.
The shipwreck was soon to be made famous in the haunting song by Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which was released the year after the sinking.
In the song, the disaster was blamed in part on the "Witch of November," which is the source of memorable and fierce storms on the Great Lakes.
Incredibly, in the past 300 years, about 30,000 people have died in 10,000 shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, the Rev. William Fleming told the Detroit News.
Fleming is the pastor of the Mariners’ Church of Detroit, which was mentioned in the Lightfoot song. A service was held there Sunday to remember victims from all disasters and tragedies on the Great Lakes, including the loss of the Fitzgerald. The Edmund Fitzgerald was loaded with about 26,000 tons of taconite pellets on Nov. 9, 1975, at Superior, Wis., and was bound for Detroit, according to the Associated Press. The pellets are an intermediate product in iron mining.