Memorialized in song by the late Gordon Lightfoot, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald in 1975 is considered one of the worst maritime disasters in history and the worst that the Great Lakes has ever seen. A grizzled sea captain, a boat that boasted to be one of the largest of its kind, and a crew of some 28 sailors set out on Lake Superior on a grey, windy November day. They departed Wisconsin on a voyage that would find them sailing into the history books, folk legend, and lore.

But what happened really happened that day and could it have been avoided? Do we know any more today than we did almost 48 years ago and how does the story of a doomed freighter fit into the story of our nation and the history book of The Missing Chapter Podcast?

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.

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