(NewsNation) — On this day 50 years ago, one of the largest freighters ever to set sail in the Great Lakes region went down in a violent storm, killing all 29 crewmembers on board.
The shipwreck occurred near Whitefish Point, Michigan, where thousands of people gathered Monday to commemorate the lives lost.
When the Edmund Fitzgerald launched from Detroit in 1958, it was known as the greatest ship on the Great Lakes. But 17 years later, on Nov. 10, 1975, the Fitzgerald sank in what’s become one of the most mysterious shipwrecks in history.
Deb Champeau’s dad, Buck, was an engineer on the ship. She was 17 years old, a senior in high school, when her father perished in the wreckage.
“I got called out of history class to go home immediately, and that’s what I did. We waited and waited,” she said. “It seemed like eternity for confirmation that, first of all, the ship was gone, and second of all, that my dad was on it.”
Deb says she initially hoped her dad was on a lifeboat or able to swim to shore, but none of the 29 victims were ever found.
“That is the mystery part of it. Did it happen in seconds? Did it happen in half an hour?” said Ric Mixter, who has been researching the Edmund Fitzgerald for decades. He even explored the wreckage with a submarine.
“Twenty-nine guys … vanished into thin air. The National Enquirer reportedly said aliens took the crew. This is how mysterious it was,” he said.
The crew went down with the ship without issuing a distress signal. There are many theories why. One of the most popular is that the ship was taken down by a giant wave during a storm.
Now, 50 years after the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, much of the mystery remains. Was it a 60-foot wave or something else?
The largest ship to ever sink in the Great Lakes remains broken into pieces, 500 feet below the surface.