On a beautiful, clear July day, the SS Wilfred Sykes sailed north on Lake Michigan, nearing the untouched shores of Wisconsin’s Door County peninsula. With a deep horn blast, it gracefully navigated a narrow canal, then drifted calmly past Sturgeon Bay’s raised bridges and bustling marinas.
Suddenly, a familiar tune drifted from a passing pleasure boat. A soulful guitar, a steady rhythm, and a rich baritone voice recounting the legendary tale: a mighty iron ore ship, a seasoned captain, the fierce November gales, and 29 souls lost to Lake Superior’s icy depths.
While New England claims “Moby-Dick” and the Mississippi has Mark Twain, the Great Lakes hold their own iconic narrative: “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 folk-rock hit became an unexpected sensation, living on not just through radio play but also through everyday items like bumper stickers, beer labels, Lego kits, and countless internet memes.
Many who hear this song, with its opening lines referencing Chippewa legends, might assume it speaks of a 19th-century or even fictional shipwreck. Yet, this was a very real tragedy, surprisingly recent. It occurred on the evening of November 10, 1975, when the Fitzgerald, then one of the largest and most modern freighters on the lakes, lost contact during a sudden, violent storm and disappeared beneath the waves.
Today, the “Fitz” (as it’s affectionately known) is a symbol of regional identity and a major draw for tourism across the Great Lakes, where the 50th anniversary of the wreck will be commemorated in multiple locations next month. It stands as a kind of Midwest Titanic — the biggest of over 6,000 ships claimed by these vast lakes over centuries.
It’s also a perplexing disaster, leaving no survivors and no clear cause like an iceberg, sparking numerous books, articles, documentaries, and endless online debates about precisely why and how the famous steamer sank.
I joined John U. Bacon, author of the latest book on the subject, “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” aboard the Sykes. Bacon’s book, based on extensive interviews and archival research, delves into various theories but intentionally avoids a “whodunit” approach.
“Yes, I wanted to find out what happened, but more importantly, I wanted to understand the 29 individuals on board,” he explained. “Who were they? What were their lives like? My aim was to restore their full humanity, rather than reducing them to mere victims.”
For Bacon, a seasoned journalist from Ann Arbor, Michigan, the “untold story” also encompasses the immense beauty, inherent dangers, and sheer scale of the lakes themselves.
“Why was I surprised to discover that the five Great Lakes combined are larger than all of New England plus New York State?” he mused. “I grew up here, and I had no idea.”
During the Fitz’s era, over 300 Great Lakes freighters plied these waters. Today, that number has dwindled to fewer than half, including the Sykes, which I spent a week on, traveling nearly 1,000 miles across three lakes. My goal was to witness firsthand how the realities of Great Lakes shipping intertwine with the enduring mythology of its most infamous wreck.
The Sykes, which celebrated its 75th birthday last year, is one of only about six remaining steam-powered lake freighters. For dedicated Fitz enthusiasts, it’s what Bacon calls a “V.I.B.” — a Very Important Boat.
The Sykes had loaded cargo alongside the Fitz at an iron ore dock near Duluth, Minnesota, on the unusually warm and sunny afternoon of November 9, 1975. It was caught in the same sudden, violent storm, with winds that gusted up to 100 miles per hour. After the Fitz vanished from radar, the Sykes even joined the search effort.
Today, the 678-foot Sykes offers one of the closest experiences to sailing on the Fitz, and surprisingly, provides a comfortable ride for passengers. It’s a nostalgic trip, not just in its engine room, but also in its guest quarters—a mid-century modern time capsule from the peak of the American steel industry, when shipping companies frequently entertained executives and their spouses.
The bulky stereo cabinet in the lounge still houses 8-track tapes of Guy Lombardo and Mantovani. There’s even a sadly non-functional buzzer for calling for another martini. These days, the ship is “dry,” and occasional guests share meals with the crew in the galley, where the food is excellent.
The current titans of the Great Lakes are the newer 1,000-footers, introduced in the 1970s and ’80s. But the Sykes, with its elegant lines and distinctive forward pilot house, is cherished by both “boat nerds” and the mariners who keep it running smoothly.
“It’s a privilege to sail on a boat like this,” said Billy Geoffroy, the boatswain, or head of the deck crew. “You can ride on the newer, bigger ships all day. But there’s nothing quite like an old steamer.”
In Fitz Country
From spring through early January, the Sykes transports pelletized iron ore from mines around Lake Superior. Summer is dedicated to limestone, with routes between massive quarries in northern Michigan and steel mills located on the lower lakes.
Bacon and I boarded early on a Monday morning in Burns Harbor, Indiana, near Chicago. The plan was to sail up Lake Michigan, pass through the Straits of Mackinac, load cargo at two quarries, then head down Lake Huron (retracing part of the Fitz’s ill-fated route) and across Lake Erie to Cleveland.
Great Lakes freighters are uniquely long and narrow, designed to maximize cargo capacity while still navigating rivers and locks. As we prepared to depart, Bacon stood at one end of the deck, illustrating how 30-foot waves would have crashed over it during the storm that sank the Fitz.
Such a scenario felt incredibly distant as we steamed up Lake Michigan, bathed in sunshine and surrounded by calm, deep blue water. However, an unexpected stopover in Sturgeon Bay provided an opportunity for an overnight road trip five hours north to the western edge of Lake Superior, the very starting point of the Fitz’s final voyage.
Duluth, Minnesota, and its sister city, Superior, Wisconsin, form one of the world’s largest inland ports. At 2,300 miles from the Atlantic via the St. Lawrence Seaway, it’s the farthest point accessible to oceangoing vessels. This is also “Fitz country,” where memorials can be found in parks, restaurants, bars, and even the local Best Western, which boasts a 10-foot scale model of the ship near its swimming pool.
At Split Rock Lighthouse, approximately 50 miles from Duluth on Superior’s northern shore, site manager Hayes Scriven led us to the edge of the 130-foot cliffs. Next month, nearly 2,000 people are expected to gather there for the annual commemorative lighting of the beacon.
Scriven estimates that 75 percent of the lighthouse’s yearly visitors are already familiar with the Fitz. “About once a week, I’ll find someone up here playing the song on their phone,” he mentioned. Among locals, however, opinions about the song are mixed.
“Many people around here will tell you they’re tired of it,” Tom Byrnes, a retired bartender, told us during a stop at the town bar in nearby Silver Bay, a frequent haunt for Fitz crew members. “It was cool for a while, but it’s just gloomy and repetitive.”
Byrnes was just out of high school and working at the bar on November 10, 1975, when someone rushed in from the driving rain to report that the Fitz was in distress. He likened the feeling to his school principal announcing President Kennedy’s assassination. “It was just one of those days you never forget,” Byrnes said.
Bacon, whose 13 previous books include one about a 1917 maritime explosion that claimed nearly 2,000 lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia, dedicated almost four years to researching and writing “The Gales of November.” He tracked down and interviewed over 100 individuals, including family members and others connected to the crew who had never before shared their stories with a writer.
The book features a dramatic reconstruction of the storm, partly based on recent high-tech research. One computer model, utilizing historical weather data, illustrates how frigid air from Canada collided with a storm system from the southwest, creating hurricane-force conditions that transformed the water “from calm to ferocious in just minutes,” as Bacon describes, with waves potentially spiking over 50 feet.
The wreck triggered multiple investigations and lawsuits. However, it was Lightfoot’s song, which soared to No. 2 on the Billboard charts, that cemented the disaster deeply within cultural memory.
Bacon interviewed the journalist whose concise Newsweek article inspired Lightfoot, providing him with some of the song’s iconic phrases and rhythms—from the opening invocation of Chippewa and “the big lake they called Gitche Gumee” to the “slashing” winds and the church bell that tolled 29 times at Mariners Church in Detroit.
Bacon also spoke with two musicians who performed on the song. It was recorded in a single take—which also marked the first time Lightfoot (who passed away in 2023) had ever played it with a full band.
Bacon was pleased to learn that Lightfoot was a man of integrity, forming strong bonds with the victims’ families. When Jimmy Fallon sought to use the song for a comedy sketch, Lightfoot declined. Furthermore, during live performances, Lightfoot altered some lyrics, such as a line about the main hatch “caving in”—a theory (later debunked) that suggested the crew failed to secure it properly.
“Gord truly wanted the families to find peace,” Rick Haynes, the bassist, shared with Bacon.
The shipping company, Oglebay Norton, was a different story. Initially, Bacon writes, they offered the victims’ families only their final paycheck, plus a mere $750 for personal belongings. When Bacon later searched for the company’s archives (Oglebay Norton went bankrupt in 2004), he discovered that the boxes related to the Fitz had mysteriously vanished. “How is that not suspicious?” he remarked.
For his part, Bacon refrains from offering definitive conclusions about the wreck. He quotes the mother of Bruce Hudson, a 20-year-old deckhand from Cleveland, who, like the rest of the crew, still lies 530 feet beneath the lake’s surface: “Thirty know, 29 men and God. And nobody’s talking.”
A Floating Antique
After our return to Sturgeon Bay, the Sykes resumed its voyage, heading towards the northern expanses of Lake Michigan. We passed by forested islands fringed with beaches, with no signs of human habitation beyond an occasional lighthouse. There were no frigid winds from Canada, only wildfire smoke that transformed the sun into a reddish orb.
At dusk, we sailed beneath the Mackinac Bridge, a structure connecting Michigan’s upper and lower peninsulas and one of the longest suspension bridges in the Western Hemisphere. On the stern’s upper deck, a deckhand strummed a well-worn boat guitar. In the pilot house, the satellite radio played the Butthole Surfers.
Around 2 a.m., we reached Drummond Island, near the Canadian border, where we were scheduled to pick up half a load of dolomite limestone the following morning. Geoffroy and Sean Erhardt, the second mate, prepared to drop anchor. “Get ready for seven seconds of controlled violence,” Geoffroy announced, handing out earplugs.
In the late 1960s, the Fitz was famous for its “DJ Captain,” Peter Pulcer, who entertained passengers with baseball scores, Mozart, and stories over the ship’s loudspeaker while navigating rivers and locks. Those days are long past, but in populated areas, vessels like the Sykes can still draw a crowd.
“This is one of the only jobs where people actually enjoy watching you work,” Erhardt commented. “You certainly don’t get that at McDonald’s.”
Tom Wiater, president of Central Marine Logistics, which operates the Sykes, grew up in Detroit. Fascinated by maritime legends, he wasn’t keen on a life working at the family liquor store. After graduating from the Great Lakes Maritime Academy in Traverse City, Michigan, he began his career on the Sykes as a deckhand.
“Today, when I step aboard, the faces may be different,” Wiater said. “But the personalities, the sounds, and the overall atmosphere remain unchanged.”
Wiater is a fervent advocate for the old steamers and the history they embody. In the pilot house, he demonstrated the blend of old and new navigation tools: traditional paper charts and the original brass Chadburn (the telegraph system used to relay speed instructions to the engine room), coexisting with modern GPS and electronic charting systems.
The Sykes “is a floating, operational antique,” he stated. “And it would not be running without the sheer dedication of everyone involved.”
The Fitz disaster, which led to significant safety reforms, marked the last major shipwreck on the Great Lakes. For contemporary sailors, it serves as a powerful reminder of the inherent dangers of their profession.
Erhardt recalled how, at his maritime academy graduation, the cadets all sang “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” during karaoke. However, on our trip, a passenger who jokingly started singing a line one afternoon was promptly shushed.
Conversation soon shifted, not for the first time, to “the blackout”: an incident last January, during one of the final runs of the season, when the Sykes lost power on Lake Superior, eerily close to where the Fitz went down.
The emergency lights flickered on, but the vessel was left with limited controls and no heat. A cellphone video captures it pitching in large swells, the deck covered in snow, as a crew member let out a string of sailor-worthy expletives.
Another ship eventually arrived, lashing itself alongside the Sykes and towing it into a safe cove. Now, it’s simply another captivating story.
“A good sea story is one where everyone survives, even if it was terrifying while it was happening,” said Mike Helmer, a mate’s assistant from Mackinac City, Michigan.
Lake Huron Rolls
Today, both shipping and shipwreck tourism are thriving businesses on the Great Lakes. After loading at Drummond and proceeding to another quarry, Wiater pointed out the rusted remnants of wrecks jutting from the shallows in the DeTour Passage—one of over a dozen diving preserves in Michigan waters, covering approximately 2,300 square miles and encompassing 200 wrecks.
We collected more stone at Calcite, a massive open-pit quarry spanning over 8,000 acres near Rogers City, Michigan—so vast it’s visible from space. Then, as the song goes, we were “fully loaded for Cleveland.” (The Fitz was actually bound for Detroit, a less rhyming destination.)
As we journeyed down Lake Huron, Saturday night saw steaks as large as dinner plates sizzling on deck. Below, in the engine room, where temperatures exceeded 100 degrees Fahrenheit, Al Oswald, a Navy veteran with a distinctive New Jersey accent, indicated a faint breeze from a corner.
“You have to live like a cat,” he explained. “You find the warm spots in winter and the cool spots in summer.”
After sunset, we entered the St. Clair River. Around 3 a.m., just south of Detroit, we passed the now-closed steel mill at Zug Island, where the Fitz would have unloaded its cargo. Crew members back then might have frequented some of the memorable sailor bars described in Bacon’s book. (“The Honey Bee was for country alcoholics,” one retired sailor recalled, “and the Hinky-Dink was for psychotic alcoholics.”)
On Sunday morning, a week after departing Burns Harbor, we entered Lake Erie and steered towards the mouth of the Cuyahoga River, where the crew would navigate 13 challenging turns through downtown Cleveland.
Captain Mike Grzesiek, who began his career on the Sykes 30 years ago washing dishes, plans to retire next year. Throughout the trip, he had been a man of few words.
However, after breakfast on our final full day, he spoke about the merits of various boats he’d worked on, the highs and lows of the industry, and his calm, practical approach to enduring storms that had left more excitable mariners “curled up in a ball.”
“You just deal with it, and get through it,” Grzesiek said, chuckling. “But looking back, nothing’s ever really been that bad.”