Description

By: Bruce Lynn & Christopher Winters– The Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society

The Book features rare archival material and exclusive underwater images.

Description: The legend of the largest ship ever lost on the Great Lakes began as a capital investment by the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. On February 1, 1957 Northwestern Mutual contracted with the Great Lakes Engineering Works of River Rouge, Michigan, to construct a maximum sized Great Lakes bulk carrier. Her keel was laid on August 7, 1957, as Hull 301.

The Mighty Edmund Fitzgerald was launched into the Detroit River on June 7, 1958, before an assembled crowd of thousands. Named for the President of Northwestern Mutual Life, she was the largest bulk carrier on the Great Lakes.

On November 9, 1975, the Fitzgerald was to transport a cargo of iron ore pellets from Superior, Wisconsin, to a steel mill on Zug Island at Detroit, Michigan.

She never arrived.

In the years since her mysterious sinking in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, the story of the Edmund Fitzgerald and the 29 men who sailed with her into the unknown has been launched into enduring myth.

Drawing from rare archival material and exclusive underwater images of the wreck site, “The Legend Lives On” is a richly illustrated meditation on the remarkable life and tragic loss of a ship and crew woven inextricably into the fabric and folklore of North America’s inland seas.