The SS Edmund Fitzgerald was a bulk carrier freighter that sank on November 10, 1975, in Lake Superior during a fierce storm, with the loss of all 29 crew members. The ship, once the largest on the Great Lakes, is famously memorialized in the 1976 Gordon Lightfoot ballad, "{The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald}". The exact cause of the sinking remains a mystery, but theories include the ship taking on water through improperly closed hatches or structural failure due to extreme weather.