Above, see a 2000 file report on the 25th anniversary of the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.
(WOOD) — Nov. 10, 2020, is the 45th anniversary of one of the most famous Great Lakes shipwrecks: the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald.
In 1958, it cost $8 million to build the freighter, which was the largest vessel on the Great Lakes until 1971. It was carrying 26,116 tons of taconite pellets when it went down Nov. 10, 1975, in Lake Superior, 17 miles from Whitefish Point. All 29 crewmen aboard were lost.
A file image of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. (AP) 
The largest and longest vessel ever built on the Great Lakes, the 729-foot ore carrier SS Edmund Fitzgerald, slides into the launching basin, on June 7, 1958, in Detroit, Michigan. (AP Photo) 
This underwater photo of the sunken SS Edmund Fitzgerald was taken by an unmanned submersible robot, as a research team investigates the wreck site 17 miles northwest of Whitefish Point, Mich., on August 24, 1989. (AP Photo) 
This 1976 underwater photo shows a close up of the pilot house of the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald after it sank at the bottom of Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975. (AP Photo) 
In a Nov. 24, 1975 photo, Coast Guard officers on a Board of Inquiry inspected life rings that were recovered from the ore carrier Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank in stormy weather in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975. (AP Photo/GE) 
In a Nov. 11, 1975 photo, two U.S. Coast Guardsmen move a life raft from the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald across the dock in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., after the raft was plucked from Whitefish Bay by the freighter Roger Blough, a ship assisting in… 
Tom Fischer of Evansville, Ind. looks over the Edmund Fitzgerald bell on display at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Mich., June 29, 2005. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)
You might remember the song “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” by Gordon Lightfoot.
Every year on this grim anniversary, the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point holds a service to honor the lives lost on the Edmund Fitzgerald. A bell tolls 29 times for each life lost during the disaster.
Approximately 240 ships have sunk in the Whitefish Point area since the first recorded sinking in 1816.
