The Witch of November

One of my favorite songs of all time is The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by my personal poet laureate, Gordon Lightfoot.  (He's a great story himself, you know, check this out).    Jack Black and Todd Louiso in the Stephen Frears piece, High Fidelity discuss its incredible nature as one of the greatest songs of all time about death.  Believe it or not, the released version was done on the first take.

    

Tonight in 1975, The Witch of November came early and resulted in difficult seafaring on Lake Superior and the Great Lakes in general.  It resulted in the sinking of the ore freighter, The Edmund Fitzgerald.  

I seem to have memories of the news of the disaster from early childhood and Lightfoot's melody hangs heavy in my heart to this day.  When I see footage of deep ocean waves on television, my stomach drops into a hidden trough in my abdomen.  When The Witch came through, the Great Lakes can take on those qualities, complete with rogue waves, and the ability to sink a ship in seconds. 

Memories of these newscasts still linger in my mind like a ghost in a haunted house.  

Old ghosts, but ones with power nonetheless. 

I wish peace to all who have lost loved ones to the beast of the deep so suddenly and with such dark circumstances. 

Here's a link to a list of memorial services for those sailors for November of 2022.  One is even virtual.

Well over 10 years ago, a young man named Timothy McCall of Indiana set up a great site dedicated to the ship and the wreck. Informative and empathic, it grows and expands with the times, please take some time to check it out here.

 Here are the names of the lost 29 men of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

And in-depth discussion of that night and the events from PBS Wisconsin.