"The Gales of November" | Reviewed by Bill Winkler

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down

            Of the big lake they call Gitchie Gumee

So begins Gordon Lightfoot’s iconic 1976 ballad “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” Michigan journalist John U. Bacon’s book, “The Gales of November,” published only weeks before the 50^th anniversary of the Great Lakes shipping disaster, (11-10-2025) offers a deep dive into the details of the tragedy.

But Bacon’s book offers more than a recounting of the Fitzgerald’s loss. The author provides us with a history of shipping on the Great Lakes, beginning with the 17^th Century trappers whose 16-foot canoes carried beaver pelts, on to the critical need to provide iron ore to the plants in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio which were churning out the planes, ships and tanks that defeated the Axis powers in World War II. This history emphasizes the importance to the U.S. economy of commercial shipping on the inland seas.

Bacon also spends valuable pages documenting the vastness of the lakes. If the volume of water in the Great Lakes were to be spread over the entire North and South American continents it would cover the surface to a depth of one foot. He then explains how this immensity contributes to the widely variable and often violent weather encountered by its sailors.

The author interviewed multiple members of the survivors of the 29 seamen who lost their lives in the frigid depths of Lake Superior in November 1975. The memories provided from those interviews are woven into verbal depictions of the majority of the crew. And they are also the basis for a touching epilogue of the lives of the survivors 50 years after the Fitzgerald’s loss.

Bacon goes into detail about the construction of the massive ship, for years after its launch the largest vessel plying the Great Lakes. He points how the requirements of sailing the lakes and passing through the locks at Sault St. Marie likely compromised the design, and thereby the safety, of such ships.

The Fitzgerald was 29 hours into its last run of the shipping season when it sank in an unprecedented storm only 15 miles short of the relative safety of Whitefish Bay. Bacon documents each hour of the fateful journey with documentation provided by sailors on the Arthur M. Anderson, a freighter traveling the same route, as well as interviews with sailors who had previously sailed on the Fitzgerald.

And finally, Bacon examines the thousands of pages of studies about the tragedy. Although the U.S. Coast Guard concluded that the ship broke up in the 30-foot (and greater) waves, there is strong evidence that multiple other factors contributed to the disaster, including a navigational error that took the Fitzgerald over a perilously shallow rocky shoal that may have caused fatal damage to the hull.

Readers who have heard Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting ballad over the years and who have wondered at the story behind it will enjoy this deeply researched and well-written account of the fate of the Fitzgerald and its 29-man-crew who lie entombed within her wreckage 500 feet beneath Lake Superior’s frigid waters.

Buy the Book.