The Great Lakes are the defining geographical feature of the Midwest, and one of the most striking in the entire nation. Nigh-oceanic in expanse and replete with scenic splendor, they are great for vacations in warm months, and have a spare and imposing beauty in the long Midwestern winter. But as forces of nature, the lakes can be both beautiful and dangerous. The latter is also an essential element of their majesty. Midwesterners both admire them for their grandeur and respect them for their power.

Today is a perennial reminder of that power. It was on this day in 1975 that the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, one of the largest ships ever to sail on the Great Lakes, was claimed by Lake Superior, the greatest of the lakes; it remains the region’s largest shipwreck. This time of year, the transition from fall to winter, can bring sudden storms on Superior. That day’s storm claimed the ship’s entire crew of 29 sailors. Today, a Lake Superior Twitter account is tweeting out their names in memory.

That is hardly the only tribute the Edmund Fitzgerald has received over the years. The most famous one is Gordon Lightfoot’s 1976 hit song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Lightfoot, a Canadian folk singer, wrote and recorded this haunting, ethereal dirge less than a year after the wreck occurred. The lyrics are not entirely accurate. Lightfoot (reluctantly) changed some of the details for artistic license. But also some of the details were unknown to him; as I learned from a Political Beats Patreon episode on the best songs about real historical events, the wreck investigation was incomplete at the time of the song’s recording. Hence the hedging: “They might have split up or they might have capsized/They may have broke deep and took water.” Lightfoot later changed some of the lyrics when performing the song live to make it more accurate. For example: When he learned that the Mariners’ Church of Detroit (which he calls the “Maritime Sailors’ Cathedral”) was “musty,” he would describe it live as “rustic” instead. Lightfoot regularly performed at Edmund Fitzgerald memorial events and even befriended some of the “wives and the sons and the daughters” left behind.

Gordon Lightfoot died earlier this year at age 84. I learned today that the Mariners’ Church of Detroit marked his death in a singularly appropriate way. Per the Detroit Free Press:

Decades ago, in the final verse of his most beloved hit, Gordon Lightfoot depicted a solemn scene at Mariners’ Church of Detroit: “The church bell chimed ’til it rang 29 times / For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

At 3 p.m. Tuesday, the bell at Mariners’ Church rang out again – now chiming 30 times to honor those perished sailors along with the artist who famously memorialized them in song.

The legends of Lake Superior, the Edmund Fitzgerald, and Lightfoot are now intertwined, and they live on. And his song has become a kind of regional anthem for the Great Lakes, a fitting tribute to their beauty and power.