(thirty years ago today…)
The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
of the big lake they called “Gitche Gumee.”
The lake it is said never gives up her dead…
…When the skies of November turn gloomy.
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty.
That good ship and true was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early.
Scary, they just has an F1 touch down in Hamilton, Ontario yesterday about 4 p.m. KO’d a public school. Only two kids slightly injured. They say if it had happened a half hour earlier the school would have still been full.
Around here they call these winds the November Witches, same as took the Edmund F.
djm
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral
The church bell chimed, 'til it rang 29 times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Living across the river from Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral, I often here the church bells being rung, but it was several years ago, when along the river I heard the bells peeling and thought it odd that they have been going at it for a time. Then it dawned on me what day it was because from the river I heard a cacaphony of ships whistles, from up and down the river.
MarkB
There have been many many wrecks on that lake. When at the Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point I became slightly disconcerted that so much attention was payed to the Edmund Fitzgerald over all the others. They were all tragic.
True, but they didn’t have way cool folk songs written about them by gordon Lightfoot. 
Then again, it may be that we are gripped by a general fear of a watery death on open waters. I know the Christian hymn “For Those in Peril on the Seas” always gives me the willies.
djm
You know, that songs the closest thing to a genuine ballad that anyone’s managed to paste onto the pop charts–a hooky, minor key yet short and repetitive melody & an endless string of narrative quatrains, telling a topical story.
The cool thing is that he managed to do it without ever feeling retro, like he was trying to write a neuvo-ballad..
~~
Dylan managed to write some cool songs riffing on the ballad structure, but all of his had a lot more abvious artifice to them.
Edmund F is the best reason yet for buying a 12-string. 2nd best reason? SR Vaughn’s Life By The Drop.
There’s some controversy here as to whether Edmund F is an unlucky song when played on a boat.
We moved my wife up from Richmond to the DC area (120 miles/200 km) ten years ago. We had arranged for a truck to pick up her stuff, but it never showed. So we rented a 17-foot U-Haul truck. I was driving this thing up I-95 when a freak blizzard hit. We’re talking white-out with wind gusts up to 70 mph. I was listening to a local folk show, driving through this blizzard fearing for my life, when a set started that was dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald. There were about 10 songs in a row, each darker than the last. There was one, done a capella, with the refrain “43 went out, none came back.” (or however many it was) Talk about my life passing before my eyes!
the captain they said lay blind drunk in his bed as the first mate ran her aground… oh sorry that was the wreck of the exxon valdez.
(Any of you tunesmiths wanna take that one on?)
Nah…you’re thinking of “Drunken Sailor”
“Make him captain of an Exxon tanker,
Make him captain of an Exxon tanker,
Make him captain of an Exxon tanker early in the morning.”
Redwolf