The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. She was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes and remains the largest to have sunk there.
She was located in deep water on November 14, 1975, by a U.S. Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces. Although they still haven't figured out what led to the sinking of the ship, they do know that the waves from an intense storm kept crashing over the deck. The captain wired in that the ship and crew were in trouble and that was the last they heard from the vessel. "Later that night when the lights went out of sight, came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." Gordon Lightfoot was awesome!
Some stats from the ship: 1) It was 730 feet long (over two football fields in length. 2) Shipping weight capacity was 29,100 tons. They could fill up 1,450 tractor trailers with each shipment. Amazing! 3) It was over three stories tall and had a width of 75 feet.