Without the song, ‘The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald’ may have been largely forgotten

NASHOTAH, Wis. (AP) — Without Gordon Lightfoot’s song, the Edmund Fitzgerald could have faded from memory along with the names of the roughly 6,500 other ships that went down in the Great Lakes before it.

Lightfoot was inspired to write his ode to the Fitzgerald and the 29 men who died on board after reading the first Associated Press story about the wreck and a Nov. 24, 1975, article in Newsweek magazine. The song was released in August 1976, less than a year later.

Lightfoot’s mournful storytelling propelled the tragedy into infamy. Affection for the song and interest in the wreck has sustained for half a century, though it wasn’t even the deadliest recorded on the Great Lakes. The deadliest wreck on open waters was the Lady Elgin in 1860, which historians estimate killed nearly 400 people.

“The song has made this by far the most famous Great Lakes shipwreck,” said John U. Bacon, author of “The Gales of November,” a recently published book coinciding with the 50th anniversary of the wreck. He said the Edmund Fitzgerald trails only the Titanic and possibly the Lusitania as the most famous shipwreck in the world.

Rick Haynes, 80, played bass on the single and in Lightfoot’s band for 55 years. He said the first recorded take of the song was what they released on the album “Summertime Dream.”

“When you listen to the record Edmund Fitzgerald, it’s like he’s putting you right there, like he was right there,” Haynes said in a telephone interview from his home in Canada. “And that’s pretty hard to do with a tragedy like that, you know?”

Debbie Gomez-Felder was 17 when her father, Oliver “Buck” Champeau, died on the Fitzgerald. She couldn’t bear to listen to the song at first.

“I put it on the record player and I thought, ‘Oh no, this music is eerie,’” she said. “I turned it off.”

But she came to love it.

“The part that says ‘All that remains are the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters,’ I thought there wasn’t a word he missed,” Gomez-Felder said. “There wasn’t anything he didn’t recognize.”

Lightfoot died in 2023. His widow, Kim Lightfoot, said in a statement to The Associated Press that “the Edmund Fitzgerald was always present in Gordon’s mind.”

“Just as he eulogized the tragedy in song for the world, he also kept the memory alive in our home; Paintings, models and tributes adorned the walls and followed us from room to room as we went about our daily lives,” Kim Lightfoot said. “If Gordon were with us today, he would have been intent on helping keep the candle of memory lit.”

Lightfoot met regularly with family members and famously changed one of the lyrics at their request, removing a reference to a disproven theory that unsecured hatch covers caused the wreck. The exact cause remains a mystery.

That mystery and the song continue to draw people to the wreck, including a new generation encountering the story through TikTok and social media. Bruce Lynn, executive director of the Great Lake Shipwreck Museum, said children visit the museum wearing costumes of the Fitzgerald.

“There’s something about the Fitzgerald that really draws that attention,” he said.

Haynes estimated that he has played “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” more than two thousand times without tiring of it. Lightfoot’s band still tours and plays it at every concert.

Haynes remembers flying with Lightfoot to Whitefish Point, Michigan, to mark an anniversary of the wreck. They met with victims’ families then Haynes took a walk along the shores of Lake Superior, looking out toward where the Fitz sank, about 17 miles away.

“I just sat there for about 15 or 20 minutes reflecting on all this stuff that had passed in connection with the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Haynes said. “And it was very emotional for me. It always has been.”

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Associated Press writer Isabella Volmert contributed to this report from Lansing, Michigan.