The S S Edmund Fitzgerald
“Superior, they said, never gives up her dead
When the gales of November come early” – Gordon Lightfoot, Canadian Balladeer,
from The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald
A song by Gordon Lightfoot I would hear
in 1976, my newborn daughter’s year.
S S Edmund Fitgerald was the ship,
and Lightfoot’s song described its final trip.
I thought that Lightfoot had made up the tale,
like Melville did about a great white whale!
Not having heard the news of it before,
I’d taken the song’s lyrics as semi-ancient lore!
Since having learned the truth, to my surprise,
one year before was that poor ship’s demise!
The ship was wrecked in 1975,
and not one man on board was able to survive.
The night it wrecked came gale-force wind and snow.
The ship in half did break and deep down she did go.
Twenty-nine doomed men – death they could not cheat.
Into the lake they sank five-hundred feet.
In Lake Superior, tenth of November
occurred this wreck the song makes us remember.
Next to the Titanic, this shipwreck I
am most familiar with . . . and why?
Because of Gordon Lightfoot’s famous song!
“The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” shall live long.
I cannot match that brilliant balladeer,
so the ship’s tale (as he sings it) you really have to hear!!
Nov. 7, 2021
For Robert James Liguori's A Noteworthy Ship Poetry Contest
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