The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior 50 years ago, on Nov. 10, 1975. The following is an excerpt from John U. Bacon’s book The Gales of November ($35), published last month by W.W. Norton’s Liveright imprint. 

For three decades following World War II, the Great Lakes hummed with all the power and prestige Silicon Valley enjoys today. The car was king, and the city that made those cars was the capital of that kingdom, the peak of the pyramid, and by some measures the wealthiest city in the world. If Detroit was the beating heart of the world’s most robust economy, Great Lakes shipping served as the circulatory system.

When it comes to hauling goods, trains are roughly twice as efficient as trucks, but ships are almost three times more efficient than trains and six times more efficient than trucks. Shipping entails far less friction and traffic, and accommodates much more volume. A flatbed truck can haul two large steel coils; a train car can carry up to five; but a typical barge can hold 200, and an average-sized freighter, say 450 feet, can take 600. These benefits don’t take into account the billions of tax dollars Americans pour every year into building, maintaining and rebuilding the roads. Nobody ever had to pave the Great Lakes. 

For all these reasons, shipping has been the most efficient form of transportation the world has seen since humans built their first boats – and it’s never been close.

For those who wanted to make a splash in the Great Lakes’ booming postwar economy, the challenge was simple: build a better boat. But the best boat would be inspired by an unlikely source: the CEO of Northwestern Mutual Insurance. 

IN 1857, FOUR YEARS BEFORE the Civil War began, a few local businessmen in tiny Janesville started the Mutual Life Insurance Co., then moved it two years later to Milwaukee.

That same year, a train that derailed between Fond du Lac and Chicago cost 14 lives, including two insured by the nascent company. The victims’ policies were worth twice the firm’s assets, which would have put the company into bankruptcy. When the president and treasurer paid the families out of their own pockets, they saved the company.

The business rebounded and grew – fast. Just six years later, in 1865, it expanded nationwide and changed its name to Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance (NMI). Last year, that company generated $38 billion of revenue.

RELATED: Q&A WITH GALES OF NOVEMBER AUTHOR JOHN U. BACON

That a company like Northwestern Mutual commissioned a great freighter in 1957 might seem strange. NMI had never owned a ship in its centurylong history, and why should it? Insurance and shipping are not the same industries.

But the relationship between NMI and Great Lakes shipping was actually organic, perhaps even inevitable. In the 1900s, NMI started investing in minerals along the Iron Range surrounding the western end of Lake Superior. It insured the ships that carried those goods, too, many of which were based in Milwaukee.

Edmund Fitzgerald, who had been named NMI’s president in 1947, had shipping in his blood. Fitzgerald’s grandfather and five great-uncles had all served as captains on the Great Lakes, and his father was a shipbuilder who had risen to president of Milwaukee Shipyard Co., the city’s largest. So when Edmund Fitzgerald suggested to the NMI board in 1957 that building a freighter would be a good investment, it hardly seemed far-fetched, and the board agreed.

The only point of contention between the board and Fitzgerald, who was widely admired as an unassuming, kind leader, was the ship’s name. Fitzgerald insisted that the company not name it after him, and repeatedly refused when the proposal came up in meetings. The board members ultimately conspired to create an excuse to get Fitzgerald out of the meeting room long enough for them to vote on the name behind his back, and unanimously decided to name the ship the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Fitzgerald’s reluctance might be explained by his innate humility, but perhaps also because he knew, as someone who had been raised in one of Milwaukee’s foremost shipping families and who had insured those ships for decades, that ships not only could sink, but often did. Having to pay out the huge claims when the worst happened was one thing; having your name forever attached to a shipwreck was quite another.

But Fitzgerald also knew that everything in life carried risk, and calculating those risks was his specialty. The surest way to reduce that risk and expand its rewards would be to build the best possible ship. And so President Fitzgerald insisted on one clear if daunting specification: that the Edmund Fitzgerald be the best ship on the Great Lakes.

To make Fitzgerald’s dream a reality, Northwestern Mutual paid $8.4 million to Great Lakes Engineering Works (GLEW) of River Rouge, Michigan, to build the ideal Great Lakes freighter.

The Edmund Fitzgerald would be the largest ship the Great Lakes had ever seen, at 729 feet. And with her 7,500-horsepower Westinghouse steam turbine engine, she would be able to sail at 16 mph, making her one of the faster freighters on the Great Lakes, too.

Few endeavors have bound time so mercilessly to money as Great Lakes shipping did at its peak. And no vessel had been more perfectly designed to maximize those elements than the Edmund Fitzgerald.

By determining the absolute limits of Great Lakes shipbuilding, and pushing the Fitzgerald right up to those lines, Great Lakes Engineering Works had created a ship built to do exactly what NMI’s president had dreamed it would: shatter every shipping record on the Great Lakes, and make unprecedented profits doing so.

Like most Great Lakes freighters, the Edmund Fitzgerald was built to last a century.

FOR THE CHRISTENING OF THE EDMUND FITZGERALD, Northwestern Mutual went all out. President Fitzgerald invited the public to join the launch ceremony on June 7, 1958, at GLEW’s dock on the Detroit River. Embossed invitations were sent to hundreds of Northwestern Mutual executives, dignitaries, clients and friends to fill 58 tables for the private reception to follow. The recipients eagerly accepted, many making the seven-hour drive from Milwaukee to Detroit.

The launch attracted an impressive 15,000 spectators, more than the Detroit Tigers averaged per game that season. A veritable flotilla of 250 recreational boats, many flying American flags from wooden poles off their sterns, bobbed in the waters nearby to get a closer look.

The crowd of history seekers walked briskly between the hulking workshops of rusted corrugated steel to secure a spot to see the festivities. The girls and women wore skirts or dresses, while the boys and men sported white dress shirts, slacks and dress shoes. Beefy shipbuilders wearing clean white T-shirts and sturdy work pants patrolled the rope to make sure everyone stayed behind it – but didn’t seem to care that hundreds climbed the roofs for a better vantage point. They all wanted a clear view of the grandstand, a glorified tree fort built for the occasion atop a two-story building, just a few feet from the ship’s bow. Patriotic bunting hung from the roof.

The biggest structure on the grounds, by far, was the Edmund Fitzgerald itself, which sat on the pier, waiting to be launched. Atop the pilothouse flew its signature V-shaped pennant with a white field, blue trim, and red capital letters reading EDMUND FITZGERALD.

The Fitzgerald’s baptism at 12:34 p.m. produced a mighty splash, a wave big enough to douse many of the well-wishers on the far side of the inlet, and a thunderous ovation from the expectant crowd – and then another splash, as the ship rocked back and forth until she banged into the opposite pier, hard.

The Detroit News called it “the biggest object ever dropped into fresh water.” One witness described the experience as “one of those moments in life that you do not forget.” 

President Fitzgerald’s son Edmund Bacon Fitzgerald later recalled, “The day the ship was launched was probably the happiest day of my father’s life.”

Edmund Fitzgerald retired two years later, a deeply contented man.

AFTER THE FITZGERALD’S SPECTACULAR LAUNCH, Northwestern Mutual had almost nothing to do with the ship’s operations beyond taking its share of the profits and occasionally inviting VIPs aboard. NMI handed over the Fitzgerald’s wheel to Oglebay Norton, which started in 1851 as an iron ore brokerage. It managed Rockefeller’s Lake Superior Consolidated Iron Mines and in 1921 formed a fleet of ships under the banner of the Columbia Transportation Co. It was Columbia’s trademark gold C on a red star on the Fitzgerald’s stack.

Columbia was responsible for hiring, training and retaining the Edmund Fitzgerald’s captain and crew, soliciting clients and setting the ship’s schedule. So once the Fitzgerald entered the water, as far as Columbia was concerned, it was full speed ahead.

And the Fitzgerald delivered. She set records for the largest single cargo carried on the Great Lakes with 22,059 long tons of taconite in her first weeks at sea, and for the most cargo hauled in a season. Then she kept breaking her own records, right through 1971. 

In addition to fulfilling the commercial aspirations its creators hoped it would achieve, its many admirers deemed it the most luxurious freighter on the Great Lakes. That phrase might seem oxymoronic until you hear from those who experienced it firsthand.  

When it came to the Edmund Fitzgerald’s interior, NMI spared no expense. The Fitz featured carpeting, air conditioning and TVs – all considered relative luxuries in 1958 – throughout its living quarters. At every level in the chain of command, from captain to deckhand, each crew member could be certain that no one at their rank had better accommodations on the Great Lakes.

The purpose of all this was not to indulge employees, but a shrewd wager to attract the very best crewmen at every position. 

But the Fitz’s best-in-class quarters weren’t just for the crew; it also boasted two guest rooms to host VIP passengers on its five-day round trips. A glassed-in observation lounge allowed guests to sit in leather swivel chairs and look out onto the ship itself and the vastness of the Great Lakes. “Magnificent,” one reporter opined, “certainly the equal of anything then available on commercial ocean liners.”

The meals, made in a spacious, state-of-the-art stainless steel kitchen, were equally luxurious: baked red snapper, New York strip, prime rib, Cornish game hen. On each trip, the captain would schedule one special candlelight surf-and-turf dinner for VIPs. He would arrive in full uniform at the head of the table, ready to answer questions and regale his guests with tales of maritime adventures.

But why should a company eager to shatter industry records for cargo and profits spend extravagantly to host VIPs? Northwestern Mutual knew that even the industry’s most impressive ship and crew couldn’t leave port without customers willing to pay for their services. The ship’s clients were high-powered executives and their spouses who had already sampled many of the world’s delights. But even the upper crust had never experienced anything like this: one of only two four-star rooms on the greatest freighter the Great Lakes had ever seen, an opportunity so rare you couldn’t buy it at any price. 

If the good people at Northwestern Mutual and Columbia Transportation thought you were worthy of one of the two berths offered just 30 times a year (they spared passengers trips in the cold springs and rough autumns), then you would be granted an experience none of your peers had ever enjoyed, one worth bragging about when you returned to your country club. 

In the staterooms hung pure white hand towels with red script stitching on the bottom: Edmund Fitzgerald. The guests must have appreciated this touch of class, because those towels seemed to disappear with impressive regularity; a small price to pay if it helped to land a contract to deliver another 26,000 tons of taconite.

“They’d ask the honchos, ‘How’d you like to go on a boat ride?’” says former Fitzgerald cadet Craig Silliven. “Well, who says no to that?”

EVEN PEOPLE ON SHORE with no particular connection to the ship were so taken by the Mighty Fitz that they tracked her travels and crowded near her whenever they could. Tourists collected at the docks in Toledo, the shore of the Detroit River, and under the Bluewater Bridge at southernmost Lake Huron just to see the great ship. 

But the best place to see the freighters, by far, is the Soo Locks, where the ships have to slow down and get in line to pass between lakes Superior and Huron. In the Fitzgerald’s day, Sault Ste. Marie’s newspapers in America and Canada printed lists of which ships were coming through which ports and when – news that also ran at noon on radio station WSOO. Any hotel clerk, restaurant hostess or bartender worth their salt working near the locks could tell you off the top of their heads which ships would arrive that day, and when. 

The tourists loaded their kids into cars fabricated from raw materials the ships carried through the locks and hustled to beat the traffic to find a parking space. When the ships approached the viewing platform just a few feet from MacArthur Lock, the fans responded as if they were parade floats. Even rain didn’t diminish the crowds very much. They came.

For people living in Sault Ste. Marie, the ships were so familiar “it was almost like seeing a member of your extended family,” says Roger LeLievre, who grew up on the American side. “‘There’s the Ryerson. There’s the Cliffs Victory. There’s the Fitz!’ It was always called the Fitz.” 

And the Fitz was always the fans’ favorite – a rare sight, as long as a skyscraper on its side. She was the star attraction, her captains and crews knew it, and they made sure she didn’t disappoint the folks who might get only one chance to see her. 

“Everywhere we went, we were a tourist attraction,” says Tom Walton, a former Fitz porter. “Standing on that ship, when hundreds were taking photos, you couldn’t help but feel a bit like a rock star. We loved being on the Fitzgerald. Out on the lakes, when we’d pass other ships, the other crews would all come out on deck and wave at the guys they knew on the Fitz. You could see the pride of the crew.”

The money Northwestern Mutual had poured into the ship had paid off handsomely. “When [Gordon] Lightfoot sang, ‘She was the pride of the American side,’ he nailed it, right there,” says LeLievre. “She was simply the best – and that’s before anything happened.”

“THE DAY THE SHIP WAS LAUNCHED was probably the happiest day of my father’s life,” Edmund Fitzgerald’s son, Edmund Bacon Fitzgerald, had recalled years later, then added: “The day it was lost was probably the worst day of his life.”

Edmund Fitzgerald did not know any of the men on the ship, and his company hadn’t operated it from its first day on the lakes. But the vessel still bore his name, his wife christened it, and it represented a dream fulfilled for generations of Fitzgeralds. The ship meant his family of Irish immigrants had arrived, in the most spectacular fashion. Fitzgerald beamed when his VIP friends came back from their trips gushing about the Fitz’s records, her crew and the unsurpassed quality of the ship itself.

Now he knew his legacy would be eclipsed by the name of the ship on the bottom of Lake Superior, and the 29 men forever trapped inside.

The late Milwaukee business leader and philanthropist Michael Cudahy knew Edmund Fitzgerald well. “There was a weight he carried around after that,” Cudahy said. “He didn’t like to talk about it.” 

All 29 men of the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald perished when the ship sank with nearly no warning during a severe “November Witch” storm on Nov. 10, 1975. The wreck, the subject of song and legend for generations, lies 530 feet under the surface of Lake Superior, about 50 miles from the Sault Ste. Marie Passage at the lake’s eastern end.