This posting is dedicated to the the 29 men who lost their lives on the Edmund Fitzgerald lake freighter 38 years ago. May they rest in peace.

In a heated tent set up beside the park’s lighthouse, Abair and other museum volunteers displayed mural-size photos and a model of the famed ore carrier that sank in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, in a gale. Source: The Detroit Free Press

“It’s appropriate to have this here because the ship was built 1,000 yards south, and it unloaded all the time 1,000 yards north,” said Tom Abair, 62, codirector of the River Rouge Historical Museum.

As the winds of November whipped through a park beside the Detroit River, 29 lanterns flickered at the water’s edge and bagpipes wailed as about 60 people gathered Sunday evening to remember the 29 men who lost their lives on the Edmund Fitzgerald lake freighter 38 years ago.

Lyrics:

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee”

The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead

when the skies of November turn gloomy

With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more

than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty,

that big ship and true was a bone to be chewed

when the Gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side

coming back from some mill in Wisconsin

As the big freighters go, it was bigger than most

with a crew and good captain well seasoned,

concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms

when they left fully loaded for Cleveland

And later that night when the ship’s bell rang,

could it be the north wind they’d been feelin’?

The wind in the wires made a tattle-tale sound

and a wave broke over the railing

And ev’ry man knew, as the captain did too

’twas the witch of November come stealin’

The dawn came late and the breakfast had to wait

when the Gales of November came slashin’

When afternoon came it was freezin’ rain

in the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came the old cook came on deck sayin’

“Fellas, it’s too rough t’feed ya”

At seven P.M. a main hatchway caved in; he said,

“Fellas, it’s bin good t’know ya!”

The captain wired in he had water comin’ in

and the good ship and crew was in peril

And later that night when ‘is lights went outta sight

came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does any one know where the love of God goes

when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay

if they’d put fifteen more miles behind ‘er

They might have split up or they might have capsized;

they may have broke deep and took water

And all that remains is the faces and the names

of the wives and the sons and the daughters

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings

in the rooms of her ice-water mansion

Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams;

the islands and bays are for sportsmen

And farther below Lake Ontario

takes in what Lake Erie can send her,

And the iron boats go as the mariners all know

with the Gales of November remembered

In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed,

in the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral

The church bell chimed ’til it rang twenty-nine times

for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

of the big lake they call “Gitche Gumee”

“Superior,” they said, “never gives up her dead

when the gales of November come early”