“Does anyone know where the love of God goes, when the waves turn the minutes to hours?”

Fifty years ago today, November 10, 1975, the Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared into Lake Superior with all 29 souls aboard. No one made it back. No distress signal. No bodies recovered. Just silence, and a ship split in two at the bottom of the lake.

Fifty years later, that silence still echoes.

But why? America has known larger tragedies, more dramatic, more destructive, and with greater death tolls. Yet somehow, the Fitzgerald remains singular in our collective memory. It wasn’t a military vessel or a luxury liner. It didn’t carry VIPs or spark political change. Still, the loss feels deeply personal to so many, like the ache of something we never quite understood, but somehow always knew.

What pulls us into the Edmund Fitzgerald’s story, over and over, is its unsolved nature.