The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is a song by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot. Though not his highest-charting hit (the song hit #2, whereas "Sundown" reached #1) it is by far his best known and Lightfoot considers it his best work.

The song is a somewhat fictionalized account of an actual incident: the November 10, 1975 sinking of the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald in Lake Superior during a violent storm. Lightfoot read an account of the incident (the Newsweek article "The Cruelest Month", published two weeks after the sinking) and wrote the song afterwards.