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age, it carried a full crew of sons, brothers, fathers, husbands, and friends. When that ship sank, like so many others across the Great Lakes, the impact rippled through entire communities. The disaster left fatherless children, widows, and lives turned upside down in an instant.

Despite extensive investigations, authorities still aren’t sure what happened after McSorley’s last transmission. Theories range from the ship striking a shallow causing damage to the bottom of the vessel, to flooding through ineffective hatch covers, to rogue waves, to structural flaws that succumbed to the 1975 storm. And because its true story is buried deep in the lakebed, we probably will never know exactly what happened.

What we do know is that Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting folk ballad etched this tragedy into pop culture forever. The song spent 21 weeks on the Billboard charts in 1976. On paper, it should never have been a hit at all. At six minutes, most found it too slow and too long to be a hit. The somber subject matter also made it a long shot, as most music of the time was upbeat and happy, such as “Silly Love Songs” by Wings and “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” by Elton John and Kiki Dee. Still, it became one of the defining singles of the 1970s.

Gordon Lightfoot, who died in 2023, called it his finest work.

This is how historic events have been chronicled through the centuries— with poems and songs being written and sung to generation after generation, keeping the facts of events alive. That radio in my childhood bedroom didn’t just play music; it told stories, preserved history, and taught me that some tragedies deserve to be remembered.

Fifty years later, I still remember.