Whitefish Point

Gordon Lightfoot's ballad, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, brought attention to the ship in 1976.

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in 1975 with 29 crew members on board near Whitefish Point, Michigan.

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum has conducted three expeditions to the wreckage site.

the Edmund Fitzgerald left Wisconsin with iron ore pellets on November 9, 1975.

Aware of an approaching November storm from the Great Plains to the Great Lakes, Captain McSorley and Captain Cooper decided to take a northerly course across Lake Superior.

This route would protect them from the highlands on the Canadian shore and take them between Isle Royale and the Keweenaw Peninsula.

They later turned southeast to reach the safety of Whitefish Point.

Weather conditions continued to deteriorate.

And then we did, um, down the West coast of Michigan, if you will, all the lighthouses that go superior in Michigan, uh, all of those things.

So we, Whitefish Point, you know, where, where, um, it's all of those places.

And,

um,

In contrast, others believed the bell could become a powerful memorial that future generations could see and understand.

There was also debate over where it should go if it were recovered, with Mariners Church in Detroit and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point both carrying enormous symbolic importance.

After many difficult conversations, the families reached an agreement.

The original bell would be recovered and displayed at Whitefish Point, just 17 miles from the Fitzgerald's resting place, while a replica bell engraved with the names of all 29 men would be placed on the wreck.

The original would become the memorial above the water, while the replica would remain below with the men.

Getting permission for the recovery required yet another campaign.

The recovered bell was rung thirty times: twenty-nine times for the men of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and once more for the thousands of other sailors who had lost their lives on the Great Lakes.

The bell that had once sounded aboard a working freighter had become a memorial.

Mm-hmm.

We got all the way to, uh, Whitefish Point.

You can literally just about see Canada from there.

It's pretty high up.