The ship was carrying iron ore from Superior, Wisconsin, when it ran into a November gale with waves as high as 35 feet. Captain Ernest McSorley's last radio message to a nearby ship was "We are holding our own." Soon after, the Fitzgerald vanished from radar about 17 miles from Whitefish Bay.
No bodies were recovered, and the cause is still debated. Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 song The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald made the disaster known around the world.
Source: Wikipedia