On Nov. 10, 1975, the freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank while crossing Lake Superior during a storm. All 29 men on the ship perished and their bodies were never recovered.
Fifty years later, there is still no conclusive theory on why this seemingly impenetrable vessel sank. John U. Bacon, who previously focused on another historic maritime disaster with his 2017 book “The Great Halifax Explosion,” ruefully admits in “The Gales of November” that the only thing experts on the subject agree upon was that the ship went down.
