Monday's Poetry: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"

 

by Pa Rock

Poetry Appreciator

Canadian folksinger and songwriter Gordon Lightfoot passed away on May 1st at the age of eighty-three.   He scored his first big hit as a songwriter in 1965 when Marty Robbins took Lightfoot's "Ribbon of Darkness" to number one on the country charts, and by the 1970's the singer from Canada was taking his own songs to number one.  Some of those early hits included "If You Could Read My Mind," "Sundown," and "Early Morning Rain."

In 1976 Gordon Lightfoot wrote a song about an ore-carrying ship that had sunk the previous November in Lake Superior during one of the most severe storms to ever hit the Great Lakes - a storm with hurricane-force winds and 35-foot waves.   The Edmund Fitzgerald, which remains to this day the largest ship to have ever sunk in the Great Lakes, was carrying 26,116 long tons of taconite (processed iron ore pellets) from a port in Wisconsin to a port in Michigan when it sank near Sault Ste. Marie and took with it all twenty-nine crew members.    Lightfoot read a story about the tragedy in Newsweek two weeks later, and he became so enthralled and obsessed with the event that he sat down and wrote his best known song, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" about the sinking of the ship.

Gordon Lightfoot regarded "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" as his finest work.  Here it is, one more time:

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

by Gordon Lightfoot

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down Of the big lake they call 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 good 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 the 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 tattletale sound And a wave broke over the railing And every man knew, as the captain did too, T'was 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 freezein' rain In the face of a hurricane west wind

When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck Sayin' "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya" At seven PM, a main hatchway caved in He said, "Fellas, it's been good to know ya"

The captain wired in he had water comin' in And the good ship and crew was in peril Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Does anyone 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 her

They may have broke deep and took water 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 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