“We are holding our own.”

This was the last transmission sent by the Edmund Fitzgerald. Fifteen minutes later, it disappeared from radar. No distress call was sent.

Today is the 40th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I remember seeing news stories showing the bells ringing for the lost sailors at the Mariners Church of Detroit, but I can’t know for sure if this was when the ship actually sunk, or if it was at a later anniversary. I remember the bells, not the actual event – I learned about the Edmund Fitzgerald the same way that most people in my generation did, from Gordon Lightfoot’s song.

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank on November 10, 1975, 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan in Canadian waters. All 29 of the crew died. The wreck is 535 feet down in water that is too cold to swim in during the height of summer. Seeing footage taken by a crew member of the ship during a different November storm is chilling as waves of blue water roll across the deck. Listening to the radio transmission between the Coast Guard and the Anderson is even more so. When fully loaded, the ship’s freeboard was at 12 feet above the water. The crew faced 35-foot waves during the storm. The ship’s captain Ernest McSorley had over 40 years of experience on the Great Lakes, and reportedly said that night was the worst he had seen. There must have been a lot of blue water on that deck.

Even so, the ship was built to withstand this kind of weather. The captain of the Arthur Anderson, the freighter traveling in tandem with the Fitzgerald reported two, possibly three, enormous waves engulfing his ship, forcing it down into the water. The Anderson recovered. Perhaps these waves, the Three Sisters of Great Lakes lore, wrecked the Edmund Fitzgerald. Captain Cooper estimated that they would have hit about the time the Fitzgerald disappeared from their radar. The Fitzgerald was already taking on water and listing, so maybe these rogue waves were more than the ship could stand. There are many theories, but why the ship sank remains a mystery.

We went to Whitefish Point and toured the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum this summer. The museum covers the history of shipwrecks on the Great Lakes and gives a respectful tribute to the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald. It is small and dark. Haunting music and the Gordon Lightfoot song repeat on an endless loop. Two things dominate the museum, a giant Fresnel lens and the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald. The bell of the Fitzgerald was retrieved at the request of the crew’s families, and now resides at the museum. While the museum is tasteful (we purposely did not visit the gift shop), I preferred this small plaque as a tribute – outside overlooking the lake where the ship was lost.