Fifty years after Edmund Fitzgerald claimed 29 lives, Gordon Lightfoot's musical memorial endures

Monday marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a tragedy on Lake Superior that claimed the lives of 29 men. In the days following the calamity, songwriter Gordon Lightfoot work astir it successful Newsweek and immediately enactment his God-given gifts to their highest and best use.

"The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," as the maritime catastrophe volition everlastingly beryllium known, was Lightfoot’s Homeric ode to the courage of the American freighter’s unit on their final, fateful voyage. The song was released successful August 1976, little than a twelvemonth after the shipwreck.

Lightfoot was connected top of the music crippled when the Fitz, arsenic "the pride of the American side" was affectionately called, was loaded with 26,000 tons of iron ore. "Sundown" had reached No. 1 on the Billboard 200 albums illustration successful June 1974, featuring commercialized hits like the title song and "Carefree Highway." Gord, successful different words, was gold.

Gordon Lightfoot sings and plays acoustic guitar for the tv performance bid "Midnight Special" successful the1970s. (Getty Images)

Yet successful composing this song, the Canadian troubadour did not acceptable retired to constitute different hit. Had that been his intention, helium surely would not person written a dirge, fto unsocial 1 that is implicit six minutes long and lacks a chorus. Moved by empathy, Lightfoot wanted to honor the valorous dormant successful a befitting way.   

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He’d found the Newsweek nonfiction from which helium learned about the wreck to beryllium insufficiently panegyrical, and so helium did what existent artists do: He created the beauty that helium longed to hear. Over 6,000 ships person gone down in the Great Lakes. We sing of this 1 adjacent contiguous due to the fact that Lightfoot truthful sublimely immortalized it.

The Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, successful 1959. It disappeared Nov. 10, 1975, successful a tempest connected Lake Superior. (AP)

Of course, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" did go a deed aft all, reaching No. 1 successful Canada and No. 2 in the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. It is besides possibly Lightfoot’s best-known song and was a beingness achievement of singular value to him. I judge this is nary accident. 

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In "Mere Christianity," C.S. Lewis wrote "Aim astatine Heaven and you volition get world ‘thrown in’: purpose astatine earth and you volition get neither." Seek the higher and you get the lower: Lightfoot did precisely this. He acrophobic himself not with creating a deed but with creating beauty. Hit presumption simply was thrown in.

Once the Edmund Fitzgerald’s sinking was confirmed, the rector astatine Mariners’ Church successful Detroit rang its doorbell 29 times to honor the life of each member of her crew. Of this mournful and lonely labor, Lightfoot elegiacally sang "the church doorbell chimed ‘till it rang 29 times" successful his ballad.

Gordon Lightfoot performs astatine the Ottawa Folkfest astatine Hogs Back Park connected Sept. 8, 2013, successful Canada. (Mark Horton/WireImage)

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This lyrical salute was not forgotten by the stalwart Anglican congregation. Every anniversary, Mariners’ Church rings its doorbell 29 arsenic a memorial to the crew. After Lightfoot’s decease successful May 2023, the bell was rung a 30th time, the last peal to honor the songwriter who utilized his gifts to ensure their fathers, sons, brothers and husbands would ne'er beryllium forgotten.

It was a beauteous gesture. That’s different crushed to create beauty in the world with the purity that Gordon Lightfoot did. It’s contagious.

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