“The Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral” in Detroit honored 29 men who died 45 years ago today in the shipwreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
The S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald sank Nov. 10, 1975, during a storm on Lake Superior. The vessel was carrying a load of iron ore pellets to a Detroit steel mill when it plunged to the bottom 17 miles from Whitefish Point in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. All 29 crewmen were lost.
Nearly 10,000 lives have been lost in over 6,000 shipwrecks on the “inland seas” of the Great Lakes.
The Arthur M. Andersen was ten miles behind the Fitzgerald that night, and Captain Bernie Cooper described the conditions that night, what he thought happened to the Fitzgerald, and how he made the decision to risk his own crew in the search for survivors.
Source info CBS
Additional information at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, a popular tourism destination on Lake Superior in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.