50 years after Edmund Fitzgerald sank, swimmers to complete ‘final voyage’

• A team of 68 swimmers will complete a 411-mile relay to honor the 29 crew members lost during the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck
• Swimmers will deliver iron ore pellets from Lake Superior to Detroit, symbolizing the ship’s unfinished journey.
• The month-long effort begins July 26 and will be featured in a documentary

Fifty years after the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, a team of swimmers will symbolically complete the ship’s final voyage, delivering iron ore to Detroit in a month-long relay honoring the 29 crew members who died.

Jim “The Shark” Dreyer, a marathon swimmer known for crossing all of the Great Lakes, will lead a team of 68 swimmers from Lake Superior to Detroit to commemorate the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. 

The 17-stage swim will begin July 26 and take more than a month as swimmers complete the 411-mile voyage — the distance the ship would have traveled to reach Detroit had it not sunk in November 1975.

“We want to do what we can to always remember the 29 men who died in that shipwreck,” Dreyer said. “We're symbolically completing their last, final, tragic journey.” 

At the end of the relay, the team will deliver iron ore pellets from the dock in Superior, Wisconsin — where the ship was loaded for the last time — to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. 

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The Edmund Fitzgerald, once the largest carrier on the Great Lakes, was known for transporting iron ore pellets. In 1964, it became the first ship to carry over a million tons of the pellets through the Soo Locks, according to the National Weather Service. 

The iron ore will be presented to Duggan during the Mariners’ Memorial Service at Mariners’ Church in Detroit on August 28, the day after the swim ends. The church bell will ring 29 times in honor of each Edmund Fitzgerald crew member. 

“We can thank the Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot” for popularizing the ship, Dreyer said. His 1976 song, “Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” helped it “become the world's most famous shipwreck — after the Titanic.”

The 729-foot S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald was headed to Detroit to deliver more than 26,000 tons of iron ore before it went down during a bad storm in Lake Superior on November 10, 1975. The ship sank in Canadian waters, 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point in Michigan, where it remains today. 

The first four relay swimmers starting at the wreck site — Joe Barr of Manistique, Daniel Chaffin of California, Dennis Crumpler of Virginia and his daughter, Cat Murdock of Marquette — will hold a memorial ceremony above the wreck as families gather for a simultaneous service at Whitefish Point.

The final four relay swimmers finishing at the Detroit Yacht Club — Maddie Diedo of Dearborn Heights, Melissa DeLuka of Westland, Tracie Baker of Florida and Barry Alper of Toronto — will deliver the iron ore carried by the team from Lake Superior.

Their delivery marks the final leg of a swim with a larger purpose: Swimmers are raising funds, and proceeds will help preserve the Whitefish Point Light Station. So far, they’ve raised more than $187,000 for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which maintains the Civil War-era lighthouse at the entrance to Lake Superior.

The Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial Swim will be featured in a documentary, The Legend Lives On. You can track the swimmers’ progress online.