Whitefish Bay – The Graveyard of Lake Superior
- Richard Crowder
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
November 10, 2025 marked the 50th anniversary of the tragic 1975 sinking of the largest ship to ever go down in Lake Superior. In a fierce November gale, the Edmund Fitzgerald, nick-named “The Mighty Fitz,” at 729-feet (222 metres) long and weighing over 13,600 tons, was carrying a full load of 26,000 tons of iron ore from Superior, Wisconsin to Detroit when she went down.
In Gordon Lightfoot’s famous folk ballad the following year, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, he wrote: “The searchers all say they’d have made Whitefish Bay / If they’d put 15 more miles behind her.” The words imply Whitefish Bay is a sanctuary in a storm on Lake Superior, and in that gale in 1975 when the Edmund Fitzgerald was battling waves of up to 35 feet (10.6 m) and wind gusts up to 85 mph (140 km), Whitefish Bay could very well have been a sanctuary in relative terms.
Located at the extreme southeast corner of Lake Superior, the largest and deepest of the Great Lakes and the largest freshwater lake in the world by surface area, Whitefish Bay drains all of Lake Superior into the St. Mary’s River, which flows 75 miles (120 km) southeast over the St. Mary’s Rapids with a drop of 25 feet (8 m) and empties into Lake Huron. The Sault Ste Marie Canal and the Soo Locks between the twin cities of Sault Ste Marie, Ontario and Sault Ste Marie, Michigan allow ship traffic between the lakes as part of the St. Lawrence Seaway System. Every vessel entering or leaving Lake Superior must pass through Whitefish Bay.
But, sanctuary or not, Whitefish Bay has the highest concentration of shipwrecks in Lake Superior. It has claimed an estimated 200 vessels, and has been called in some quarters the “Graveyard of the Great Lakes.” At times it is a bottleneck of heavy ship traffic, it is full of shoals, and as the shallower catchment for waves as they push down the main body of the lake in a nor-wester, is known for powerful storms, waves, currents, and surges. Fog, driving rain, and snow often cause poor to nil visibility.
Below are just a few of the known shipwrecks in Whitefish Bay, concentrating on those in shallow waters plus others of a more historical note.
The first known commercial shipwreck in Lake Superior was the 60-foot two-masted schooner Invincible, which sank off Whitefish Point in a November gale in 1816. Increasing ship traffic resulted in the building of the Whitefish Point Lighthouse in 1849. The current brick tower was built in 1861 and is the oldest operating lighthouse on Lake Superior. The first Soo Lock was opened in 1855 bringing with it even more shipping to and from Lakes Superior and Huron.
The shallowest wreck is that of the Ora Endress, a substantial fishing tug resting since 1914 in 15 feet of water within a mile of the Whitefish Point Lighthouse. All 11 crew members from the capsized vessel were rescued by the lighthouse keeper and his friends.
When only 10 years old, the 308-ft Sagamore whaleback steamer barge sank in July, 1901 in Whitefish Bay with a loss of two lives following a collision in dense fog. She lies upright in roughly 50 feet of water.
Again in a heavy fog in June, 1916, a few miles southeast of Whitefish Point, the 237-foot wooden steamer Panther was rammed amidships by the 478-foot steel freighter James J. Hill. The Panther sits upright and somewhat intact in roughly 100 feet of water. There were no casualties.
Built in 1873, the 191-foot wooden double-deck bulk freighter Vienna was carrying iron ore and with a schooner barge in tow downbound on a clear day in September 1892 when was hit on its port side by a small steam tug Nipigon, which itself was towing two barges. The Vienna lies relatively intact in about 150 feet of water just below Whitefish Point. Its engine, boiler, rudder, propeller, and below deck cabins are all intact, and a lifeboat is still strapped to the deck. There were no lives lost in the mishap.
The largest freshwater ship in the world when launched, the 450-foot Superior City, after 22 solid years of service on the Great Lakes, was running downbound in Whitefish Bay fully loaded with iron ore when it was hit portside in 1920 by the even larger but empty 600-foot ore carrier Willis L. King. The collision caused a massive explosion of the Superior City’s boilers, resulting in a loss of 29 lives. It lies in over 200 feet of water.
In an eerie comparison between the ore carriers Superior City and the Edmund Fitzgerald, they were both the largest Great Lakers carriers of their day when built, and were similarly downbound and similarly fully loaded with iron ore when they sank within miles of each other on either side of Whitefish Point -- each with a loss of twenty-nine lives! Then ironically, some six years later, the Willis L. King, which had collided with the Superior City itself, collided in heavy fog with another 600-foot laker, the Pontiac, some 12 miles from the Soo Locks in Whitefish Bay. Neither vessel sank.
In 1909, the 420-foot steel freighter John B. Cowle was rammed by the brand new 500-foot Isaac M. Scott in heavy fog and sank in 220 feet of water off Whitefish Point with a loss of 14 lives. The Isaac M. Scott itself later sank in Lake Huron in the tragic and horrendous Great Lakes Storm of 1913.
In his song, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Gordon Lightfoot mentions the ominous gales of November. Perhaps the worst gale ever to hit Lake Superior, so large it affected the entire Great Lakes and most of Midwestern United States and southwestern Ontario, happened during four days in early November, 1913. Known as the Great Lakes Storm of 1913, and often referred to as the White Hurricane, it was the deadliest and most destructive Great Lakes natural disaster in recorded history. More than 250 people were killed, 19 ships destroyed, with the most of them on Lake Huron. 19 more ships were stranded.
The Edmund Fitzgerald herself became the timeless symbol of the ominous November gales on Lake Superior. When she sank on November 10th, 1975, all 29 crew were lost, their bodies never found, believed to still be inside the boat. The exact cause of her sinking remains the subject of debate, with leading theories like high waves, a possible hull breach, and a nose dive into a massive wave all considered possibilities. Her hull was found in two pieces by U.S. Navy aircraft on November 14th, 1975, using a magnetic anomaly detector. The ship sits in the silt roughly 17 miles (27 km) northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan, in Canadian waters, at a depth of about 550 feet. Her location is considered a protected grave site and is not open to public divers.
However, by 1975, the growth of freshwater scuba diving resulted in many historical artifacts being removed from many accessible wrecks, especially those in the vicinity of Whitefish Point. To protect and preserve them from further pilferage and damage, a group of local private Michigan divers founded the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society (GLSHS) in 1978 along with the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum located at the Whitefish Point Lighthouse. The non-profit GLSHS operates both the museum and the lighthouse today.
At the same time, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources created the Whitefish Point Underwater Preserve as an underwater museum to protect and conserve 375-square miles (970-square kilometres) of bottomland and shipwrecks around Whitefish Point. This is said to be one of the last scuba diving areas in the Great Lakes where skilled divers can observe shipwrecks free of zebra mussel encrustation. The Preserve is administered through the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Many of the shipwrecks within the Preserve have been moored to prevent shifting while at the same time protecting divers.
Lightfoot reflected on the horrors of Great Lakes storms and the plight of the seamen who faced them when later in his tribute to the Edmund Fitzgerald he sang, “Does anyone know where the love of God goes / When the waves turn the minutes to hours?”
Lastly, he added: “And the iron boats go as the mariners all know / With the gales of November remembered.”
Whitefish Bay will always be remembered, both in popular music and in maritime culture, for her unrelenting pressure amidst the fog. #culture
