As a “transplanted” citizen to Michigan I was…like most people that view these colossal lakes for the first time…literally speechless. Huge, gigantic, and all other adjectives that people strive to come up with to express their amazement are so inadequate. After I was here a few years and had visited and traveled all 5 of these “monster” waterways…the 4 within the borders of the U.S. and the one within Canadian waters…I took a real interest in the freighters that hauled their loads up and down these waterways…especially those that were unfortunate enough to rest on the BOTTOMS of these lakes with their cargo and sadly most or all of their crews. Shipwreck Museums are almost as popular with me as libraries. The Edmund Fitzgerald has always been one of my favorites and the author… that for more than half a century now… has told their stories was my source of accurate information. It seems unbelievable that this 729-foot…13,000 ton legend could have gone down in mere seconds taking all 29 members of her crew to 530 ft of frigid Canadian waters of the unpredictable, Lake Superior... but that is indeed what happened. The captain was in contact with another freighter…The Anderson…that had left Wisconsin loading docks at the same time as him, on November 10, 1975. The Coast Guard report indicated that their belief was that it either took on water in the long row of hatches where it’s load of iron ore pellets were stored or it hit a shoal and punctured it’s hull. 45 foot waves had been breaking her deck…a part of this November storm that has gone down as one of the worse in Lake Superior history. Whatever had happened to the Edmund Fitzgerald…and what happened to her crew… has never been really known only sumised based on what little facts they had. Mr. Stonehouse says that singer and song writer Gordon Lightfoot’s song The Ballad of The Edmund Fitzgerald is very close to what probably did happened. One of my biggest thrills was seeing the bell that has been since recovered and is housed at The Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Bay, Michigan. ( )