In 1975, a mysterious shipwreck killed 29 men. In 1976, Gordon Lightfoot turned it into a number one hit

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a storm on Lake Superior on 10 November 1975, killing all 29 crew members; none of their bodies were recovered. The disaster inspired Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 ballad, which became a number one hit in Canada and a top-five hit in the United States, turning a still-unexplained loss into a widely remembered song.

Lightfoot drew on journalist James Gaines’s Newsweek report, including its reference to a Chippewa legend that Lake Superior “never gives up her dead”, and researched the sinking himself. He received 27 letters from relatives of crew members asking what had happened, and replied to each. The article says Lightfoot resisted later film and television projects that proposed assigning blame without evidence, and sought to update his lyrics as new information emerged.