This week marks 50 years since the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank while crossing Lake Superior.

The shipwreck, which killed all 29 men aboard, became the most well-known wreck to ever occur on the Great Lakes.

William Brangham recently spoke with the author of a new book that explores both the tragedy and the enduring legend it inspired.

When the Edmund Fitzgerald first launched in 1958,

it quickly became the pride of the Great Lakes,

a mammoth ship measuring almost 730 feet from bow to stern.

It made hundreds of trips, moving mostly tons of iron ore from mines in Minnesota to the steel mills of Detroit and Toledo.

On November 9, 1975, the fits, as she was known, took off from a port near Duluth, Minnesota.

It was supposed to be her last run of the season, but a storm was brewing and headed for the Great Lakes.

To avoid the worst of it, the Fitzgerald's captain decided to steer the ship off its normal course,

moving north to get some shelter along the Canadian shore.

On the afternoon of the 10th, it started to turn toward Whitefish Point at the far

southeast corner of Lake Superior. Winds were gusting up to 100 miles an hour, pushing what could

have been 60-foot waves. The Fitzgerald lost its radar, sustained some structural damage,

and began to list or lean to one side.

Bernie Cooper was captain of the SS Arthur Anderson, which was trailing several miles behind the Fitzgerald that night.

Those two seas were the biggest that we ever had. And I just wonder if those two seas didn't catch up with the Fitzgerald.

The night of November 10th, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in the frigid waters of Lake Superior, just 17 miles from safety.

Today, the ship still sits at the bottom of the lake, more than 500 feet down.

No bodies were ever recovered.

Less than a year after the sinking, Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot released his folk ballad, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

The captain went in, he heard what you're coming in, and the Fitzgerald's story with an international audience,

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