re: Why was the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald such a big deal?

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You’re missing the heartbreak and pain and what a horrible person you are. Your OP was not in the least bit entertaining and was very much painful to those with family ties to those who died. Yeah I’m one of them. Tell me where and when to meet you and we can make things right. Anything else within reason solidifies your being a pussy.

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It is one of the greatest songs ever written. So many great lines, a storytelling masterpiece. The music brings a grand importance to the words. Lightfoot's voice is perfect for this song.

I like many of his songs, Sundown, If You could read my mind, Carefree Highway, In the early morning rain, The circle is small, etc.....but The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald is his magnum opus.

I heard Lightfoot is working on a new one about the Wreck of the Brian Kelly

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Gordon Lightfoot wrote The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald after reading an article in Newsweek about the disaster

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Fun Fact:

Lake Ontario takes in what Lake Erie can send her.

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Is it romanticized because of the song?

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Yes. 100.%

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Don't threaten me with a good time

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I'd say the gauntlet has been thrown, baw....

The song made it memorable. I thought it was a much older wreck and I was alive and reading newspapers when it sank.

To me, the wreck and sinking of the cruise ship Andrea Doria in 1956 was more memorable. I checked google and there were 51 deaths and 1,660 were rescued. I remember reading a story in the (yes, I'm 'that' old) Saturday evening Post about the sinking and a husband not wanting to leave his wife who was still alive, but her body was trapped by the bent steel from the collision. That massive rescue deserves to be remembered. But isn't.

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You'd be famous too if you lost 26 thousand tons of taconite.

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Quick math $528~ milllion dollars in today's money.

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The song made it a widely known story. It’s one of the deadliest Great Lakes shipwrecks in modern history and I think it brought a lot of attention to just how perilous Great Lakes shipping is.

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That shite is frigid too. I think about the oil baws dealing with brutal heat in the gulf. Even though the Great Lakes isn’t technically as vast as the gulf you are still relatively isolated I’d think and have to deal with frigid conditions.