The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald

(album: The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald - 2023)

The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down
Of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead
When the skies of November are gloomy
With a load of iron ore twenty-six thousand tons more
Than the Edmund Fitzgerald weighed empty
That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed
When the gales of November came early

The ship was the pride of the American side
Coming back from some mill in Wisconsin
Concluding some terms with a couple of steel firms
When they left fully loaded for Cleveland
And later that night when the lights went out of sight
Could it be the north wind they'd been feelin'?
At seven PM, the old cook came on deck
Saying, "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
When the captain wired in he had water coming in
He said, "Fellas, it's been good to know ya"

(In a rustic old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times)

Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings
In the rooms of her ice-water mansion
Old Michigan steams like a young man's dreams
The islands and bays are for sportsmen
And farther below, Lake Ontario
Takes in what Lake Erie can send her
But the iron boats go as the mariners all know
With the gales of November remembered

(In a rustic old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
Once for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves [?]
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters)