This year marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter that submerged, taking the lives of all 29 crew members in Lake Superior during a storm on Nov.
11/05/25
A 1959 file photo shows the "Edmund Fitzgerald," with a crew of 28 to 30 men, as it was carrying a load of 26,216 tons of taconite pellets. (Credit: AP Photo, File)
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter that submerged, taking the lives of all 29 crew members in Lake Superior during a storm on Nov. 10, 1975.
PBS Wisconsin and Wisconsin Public Radio remember the Edmund Fitzgerald with the following stories.
Steve Ackerman, professor in the department of atmospheric and oceanic studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, analyzes the weather, the storm movement and decisions made by the captains piloting ships on Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, the day the Edmund Fitzgerald sank.
[Fifty] years ago this week, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a storm on Lake Superior. Its legend lives on, not least because of the famous song and the many lingering mysteries surrounding its demise, but also on the walls of Superior’s Anchor Bar. [This story was originally published in 2015.]
In 2005, Mike Simonson of Wisconsin Public Radio gathered some of the voices of people involved with that night and the crew.
A guest weather expert on Wisconsin Public Radio’s Larry Meiller Show talks about the November gale responsible for one of history’s most well-known shipwrecks.
We Are Holding Our Own tells the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, the ore carrier that sunk in Lake Superior in 1975. Named for the last five words heard from the ship minutes before its disappearance, the documentary features exclusive audio recordings of ship-to-shore radio transmissions, expeditions to the site of the wreck, and the last interview ever given by the captain of the last ship in contact with the Fitzgerald.
This Wisconsin Public Radio documentary about the Edmund Fitzgerald was produced by Mike Simonson and broadcast in 2014. It holds a respected place in the National Public Media Broadcasting Archives and won first-place awards from the Wisconsin Associated Press, the Northwest Broadcast News Association and the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.
PBS Wisconsin is a service of the Wisconsin Educational Communications Board and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. © 2025 All Rights Reserved.
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Tara Lovdahl