What was the name of a big ship that went down on lake Erie with iron ore in November?

Answer 1

This was the SS 'Edmund FitzGerald', but she sank in Lake Superior and not Lake Eerie, on 9th November 1975, carrying a cargo of taconite iron ore. Launched in June 1958, she served as a freighter on the Great Lakes for the whole 17 years of her career until sinking in Lake Superior in 530 ft. of water, and with the loss of all 29 members of her crew. Her loss is attributed either to structural failure, extreme weather conditions, or the flooding of her cargo holds- the former is thought to be the most likely, as a result of her captain William McSorley's final radio message which said 'We are holding our own'. None of the bodies of the crew were ever recovered, but about a week after her sinking, her wreck was discovered by the US Coast Guard lying upside-down and broken into two pieces, and a considerable amount of debris was recovered, including sections of her lifeboats and liferafts (half of one of her lifeboats is on display at the Valley Camp Ship Museum). Scuba divers later explored the wreck and recovered the ship's bell, as is traditional after a vessel has been lost. The families of her crew said that they did not want any bodies to be recovered, but for the ship to remain as their grave. She remains the largest vessel ever to be lost on the Great Lakes to date- singer Gordon Lightfoot released a song entitled 'The Wreck of the Edmund FitzGerald' in '76 after reading an article about her sinking in an edition of 'Newsweek'. Her sister ship, the SS 'Arthur M. Anderson' was first on the scene in a rescue attempt following the sinking- built six years earlier than the 'Edmund FitzGerald', she is of the same Laker-type design and is named after the director of US Steel at the time of her launch. She remains in service on the Great Lakes to this day, and is one of a total of eight vessels of the Laker Class. Gordon Lightfoot's song resulted in the 'Edmund FitzGerald' becoming a cult vessel, rather like the 'Marie Celeste' and the 'Titanic'.