Jeremy Messersmith’s idea to rerecord Gordon Lightfoot’s epic 1976 song for the shipwreck's 50th anniversary became “all-consuming.”

Less than a year after the American cargo carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in the Great Lakes in November 1975, the late Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot released a folk-rock ballad titled

The Door County Maritime Museum's curator and exhibits manager looks back on the story of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, 50 years after it sunk in Lake Superior

Twenty-nine sailors drowned when the Edmund Fitzgerald went down in the Great Lakes' icy waters on Nov. 10, 1975. The ship was immortalized in a surprise hit 1976 folk ballad by Gordon Lightfoot.

The ship, commanded by renowned Great Lakes Captain Ernest McSorley, left from Superior, Wisconsin on November 9 carrying a load of iron ore to the steel mill on Zug Island, Michigan. But the next day, gale-force winds moved into the Great Lakes, and snow reduced the ship’s visibility even further.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the largest and most famous of the estimated 6,500 ships that have gone down in the Great Lakes.

LAKE SUPERIOR, MI - It was 50 years ago today that the Edmund Fitzgerald was being loaded with 26,000 tons of iron ore, prepped for what would become her tragic final voyage.

Pam Johnson said her father was filling in for the Fitzgerald's regular cook on what was scheduled to be the final voyage of the season.

Fifty years after its sinking on Lake Superior, the iron-ore ship remains a fascination among men. There's good reason for that: shipwrecks enthrall men.

Is sharing deep feelings about a Great Lakes freighter lost with all hands in Lake Superior the cure for the male loneliness epidemic?