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

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.

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

The Great Lakes’ most famous shipwreck – and inspiration for Gordon Lightfoot’s chilling ballad – still resonates: a tale of courage, loss and the haunting pull of the inland seas

Historian Fred Stonehouse discusses the history of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and Darren Muljo shares his family's connection to the ship and their work to preserve its legacy. Later in the show, the next poet laureate of the Upper Peninsula is revealed.

Fifty years after the freighter disappeared into the depths of Lake Superior, the mystery of its demise—and the mournful ballad it inspired—still haunt the popular imagination

NOVEMBER 10, 1975THE ORE CARRIER, THE EDMUND FITZGERALD, SINKS DURING A STORM ON LAKE SUPERIOR. NONE OF THE 29 CREW MEMBERS SURVIVED. GORDON LIGHTFOOT’S SONG THE WRECK OF THE EDMUND

The Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot and the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald are inextricably linked in a way few episodes are.