John U. Bacon

By Tom Kirvan

A noted author and public speaker, John U. Bacon gained fame for several best-selling books on college sports and leadership before he most recently took a hard look at the mystery surrounding the sinking of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975, a tragedy that claimed the lives of all 29 men aboard.

In his 2025 book “The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” Bacon offered a haunting and deeply researched look into the wreck of the 729-foot freighter in Lake Superior. The tragedy, which remains the largest ship lost on the Great Lakes, was immortalized in 1976 by Canadian singer Gordon Lightfoot in his iconic folk ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

The ship, which was bound for Detroit with a cargo of 26,116 tons of iron ore, encountered a severe November gale with hurricane-force winds and waves exceeding 25 feet. During the storm, the ship suffered topside damage, lost both of its radars, and began taking on water, according to Bacon. In its final radio communication on the evening of November 10, the ship’s captain, Ernest McSorley, reported, “We are holding our own.” Shortly after, the ship vanished from radar screens. Investigators later discovered that the Fitzgerald broke in two and sank in Canadian waters approximately 15 miles north of Whitefish Point, Mich.

John U. Bacon*

“Experienced sailors, commercial sailors, will tell you that the Great Lakes are more dangerous than the Atlantic Ocean, which seems impossible,” Bacon said. “The freshwater makes pointy waves like a mountain range.”

As to the ultimate cause of the wreck, Bacon framed it as an unknowable truth: “Only thirty know what happened – twenty-nine men, and God.”

As with most tragedies, some lessons were learned from the sinking, according to Bacon.

“The Edmund Fitzgerald disaster was so shocking, akin to the Titanic, that it forced the industry to overhaul safety measures and finally fix weather forecasting, halting a century-long trend of one sinking per week,” Bacon remarked.

“A ship fighting through a serious storm can get caught in a harrowing cycle of hogging and sagging every few seconds,” he noted. “This leads to a weakening of the hull, which can break like a paper clip.”

Bacon’s other literary works cover the rise and fall of University of Michigan football, the Halifax explosion of 1917, and leadership lessons from “America’s worst hockey team,” giving us his leadership philosophy in a nutshell: “Begging someone to work for you is as ill advised as begging someone to marry you.”

^{*Photo courtesy of}^{John U. Bacon's official website}