SS Edmund Fitzgerald

S Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in a Lake Superior storm on November 10 1975 with the loss of the entire crew of 29. When launched on June 7 1958 she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes and she remains the largest to have sunk there. Fitzgerald left Superior Wisconsin at 215 p.m. on the afternoon of November 9 1975 under the command of Captain Ernest M. McSorley. She was en route to the steel mill on Zug Island near Detroit Michigan with a cargo of 26116 long tons (29250 short tons 26535 t) of taconite ore pellets and soon reached her full speed of 16.3 miles per hour (14.2 kn 26.2 kmh). Around 5 p.m. Fitzgerald joined a second freighter under the command of Captain Jesse B. "Bernie" Cooper Arthur M. Anderson destined for Gary Indiana out of Two Harbors Minnesota. The weather forecast was not unusual for November and the National Weather Service (NWS) predicted that a storm would pass just south of Lake Superior by 7 a.m. on November 10. The last communication from the ship came at approximately 710 p.m. when Anderson notified Fitzgerald of an upbound ship and asked how she was doing. McSorley reported "We are holding our own." She sank minutes later. No distress signal was received and ten minutes later Anderson lost the ability either to raise Fitzgerald by radio or to detect her on radar.