The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Gordon Lightfoot, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”, Warner Chappell Music, 1976
Of the big lake they called Gitche Gumee
Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early
On November 10, communities across the Great Lakes commemorate the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, an iron ore freighter that sank during a heavy gale in 1975. From Minnesota to Michigan, maritime communities ring church bells, light candles, invoke the dead in religious services, and turn to the dangerous and revered inland seas that dominate the landscape and memorial culture.
The commemorations and memory are shaped by the liminality of loss on the Great Lakes. For those who grew up on their shores, mortality was ever present from the hypothermia of the glacial waters to the intense and unpredictable storms shaped by their broad surface area. The inherent and embodied risk of labor on an unpredictable sea are seen in the negotiations of grief and memory communities engage. While loss on the Great Lakes is not uncommon, the Edmund Fitzgerald carries a unique hold on the region, in part due to immortalization in Canadian artist Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” and a region grappling with the realities of deindustrialization and shipping labor in an increasingly connected age. In the case of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the loss is physically commemorated in memorials and artifacts, authentic substitutes for the remains lost to Lake Superior.
Today, the original bell from the freight is an emotional and symbolic form of closure to the loss of the storm. While the Edmund Fitzgerald was long determined to remain undisturbed on the lake seabed north of Michigan, families sought physical closure in the 1990s to aid in the grief that was incomplete with the lack of a proper burial1. To complete the in situ context of the wreck itself, a replica of the bell inscribed with the names of the 29 dead was positioned as a physical substitution to complete the wreck while also commemorating the lakebed as a gravesite.
With family members present, the broke water for the first time since its final departure out of Duluth, Minnesota in 1975. This moment itself served as a memorial moment, with flowers placed on the water above the wreck and the family able to express their loss physically close to their loved ones. Reflecting the transnational Great Lakes encounter, the bell toured Ontario and other provinces before settling in the state of Michigan to be preserved and displayed respectfully.
Today the bell is an icon of pilgrimage for visitors and Great Lakes residents alike, occupying a place of reverence amidst the busy gallery walls of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Michigan. The families of the 29 dead authorized its display and commemorative treatment as a memorial to the men who lost their lives in the storm. In its dedication, the bell was rung a final 30 times, once for each lost sailor and once for the individuals across time who had lost their lives on the Great Lakes, before being positioned on the wreck.
The bell is a conscious reminder of the ship’s physical absence, not solely through its contextualization within the wreck, but in its stark isolation. Its shape and history not only harken to the maritime tradition of the region, but its voice and silence create a dual embodiment of loss on the water. Its authenticity encourages targeted commemoration and its greater symbolism provokes reflection on the nature of death and the Great Lakes. As such, its position in maritime memory is one of evolving forms of closure and preservation. Though silent, it invites testimonies and earnest reflection, a physical reminder of the great freighter and the souls lost to the historic storm.
1 “The Bell Recovery”, Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, https://www.shipwreckmuseum.com/edmund-fitzgerald/the-bell-recovery/
For the names of the dead: http://www.boatnerd.com/fitz/
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