On November 10, 1975, a massive storm picked up on Lake Superior, battering the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a freighter loaded with tens of thousands of tons of ore.
The ship became badly damaged, sank to the bottom of the lake, and with that, all 29 lives on board were lost.
The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald has fascinated many across the nation for the past 5 decades. One of the reasons why is certainly the song by Gordon Lightfoot, which rose to the top of the charts in 1976.
But another is because the ship was the pride of the Great Lakes shipping industry. It was one of the biggest and fastest freighters on the lakes when it launched in 1958. But in the years since its first journey, the ship has fallen into disrepair, and was no longer seaworthy.
At least that's the conclusion in "Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy."
Thomas Nelson's new book "Wrecked" links the story of America’s most infamous shipwreck to a much bigger story, the de-industrialization of the Great Lakes region in the 1970s.
The book argues that the disaster was a human tragedy as well as an indictment of the American industrial policies that eventually cost the nation thousands of jobs and marooned hundreds of communities.
Nelson makes the case that profit-driven policies led to the Fitzgerald continuing to operate on the water when it should not have been.
Nelson spoke to the "Sound of Ideas" program on November 10, 2025, 50 years exactly since the ship went down.
Guest:
- Thomas Nelson, Author, "Wrecked: The Edmund Fitzgerald and the Sinking of the American Economy"
