The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Nov. 10, 1975, stunned the Great Lakes communities that build and man the massive ships that sail the lakes.
“It’s a sad day for the Great Lakes,” Erie Times-News publisher Ed Mead, writing as Ed Mathews, wrote of the Fitzgerald’s sinking. “There are so many local people who have relatives on the Lakes that it sends shivers up the spine to think that these things can and do happen. Somehow a ship the size of the Fitzgerald seems so large and safe, but in the face of twenty-five foot waves anything can happen and did.”
More than 730 feet long, the “Fitz” had been the largest ore carrier on the lakes before the 1,000-foot Stewart J. Cort — built at Erie’s Litton Industries marine division, now Donjon Shipbuilding — launched in 1972…