Doomed ship: The SS Edmund Fitzgerald in quieter times.
Courtesy WikipediaThirty-three years ago today, the Great Lakes freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a Lake Superior storm taking with it all 29 hands. 
Storm on Lake Superior: The top of the lighthouse sets about 50 feet above the lake surface at the end of the north breakwater of Duluth's canal (click on thumbnail image for a cleaner version).
Courtesy Lake Superior Marine Museum AssociationUnsecured hatches and rogue waves whipped up by the winter gale are thought to have caused the sinking.The wave sequence to the right gives a good illustration of how nasty Lake Superior can get during one of its storms.Wreckage of the Fitz was later discovered in 530 feet of water about 17 miles west of the entrance to Whitefish Bay. The disaster was immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot's song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and every year the Mariners' Church in Detroit, Michigan memorializes the sinking by ringing its bell 29 times, once for each life lost in the disaster.
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Its been a long time ago that it happened but we still remember it.
Not a day has gone by this fall that I haven't remembered the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Granted, I was negative 8-years-old at the time, but my cubicle is located directly under the Science Museum's omnitheater, which is currently playing "Mysteries of the Great Lakes." Every hour or so, I'm treated to the concrete-distorted, electro-folk wail of that particular ballad.
The legend lives on from the Chippewa down indeed.
since i grew up outside minnesota i was largely unfamiliar with the story of the edmund fitzgerald. like many, i am mainly familiar with it due to the song dedicated to it.
this in many ways is typical though, so many examples of how something is remembered because it finds a way into pop culture. the band led zeppelin from the 1970s put a picture of the exploding hindenburg airship on its first album cover, and then there was a ducktales episode about a disaster movie called the 'hindentanic', combining the hindenburg with another disaster, the titanic.
I'm pretty sure that's the first Ducktales reference on Science Buzz. I can't believe you beat me to it, but I salute you.
thank you for the salute on the ducktales reference, i guess watching a lot of t.v. when i grew up is finally paying off.
my guess as to why the fitz isn't as remembered as well as the titanic as people are more fascinated with the lives of the rich and famous, and the titanic was a luxury liner.
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