SS Edmund Fitzgerald - Memorials

Memorials

Fitzgerald bow anchor on display at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum

The day after the wreck, Mariners' Church in Detroit rang its bell 29 times; once for each life lost. The church continued to hold an annual memorial, reading the names of the crewmen and ringing the church bell, until 2006 when the church broadened its memorial ceremony to commemorate all lives lost on the Great Lakes.

The ship's bell was recovered from the wreck on July 4, 1995. A replica engraved with the names of the 29 sailors who lost their lives replaced the original on the wreck. A legal document signed by 46 relatives of the deceased, officials of the Mariner's Church of Detroit and the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historic Society (GLSHS) "donated the custodian and conservatorship" of the bell to the GLSHS "to be incorporated in a permanent memorial at Whitefish Point, Michigan, to honor the memory of the 29 men of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald". The terms of the legal agreement made the GLSHS responsible for maintaining the bell, and forbade it from selling or moving the bell or using it for commercial purposes. It provided for transferring the bell to the Mariner's Church of Detroit if the terms were violated.

An uproar occurred in 1995 when Jeff Stevens, a maintenance worker in St. Ignace, Michigan, refurbished the bell by stripping the protective coating applied by Michigan State University experts. The controversy continued when the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum tried to use the bell as a touring exhibit in 1996. Relatives of the crew halted this move, objecting that the bell was being used as a "traveling trophy". The bell is now on display in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point near Paradise, Michigan.

An anchor from Fitzgerald lost on an earlier trip was recovered from the Detroit River and is on display at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum in Detroit, Michigan. The Dossin Great Lakes Museum also hosts a Lost Mariners Remembrance event each year on the evening of November 10. Artifacts on display in the Steamship Valley Camp museum in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, include two lifeboats, photos, a movie of the Fitzgerald and commemorative models and paintings. Every November 10 the Split Rock Lighthouse in Silver Bay, Minnesota emits a light in honor of the Edmund Fitzgerald.

On August 8, 2007, along a remote shore of Lake Superior on the Keweenaw Peninsula, a Michigan family discovered a lone life-saving ring that appeared to have come from the Fitzgerald. However, it bore markings different from those of proven rings found at the wreck site, and was thought to be a hoax. Later it was determined that the life ring was not from the Fitzgerald, but had been lost by the owner, whose father had made it as a personal memorial.