SS Edmund Fitzgerald was an American Great Lakes freighter that sank in Lake Superior during a storm on November 10, 1975, with the loss of the entire crew of 29 men. When launched on June 7, 1958, she was the largest ship on North America's Great Lakes, and she remains the largest to have sunk there. She was located in deep water on November 14, 1975, by a U.S. Navy aircraft detecting magnetic anomalies, and found soon afterwards to be in two large pieces.

For 17 years, Edmund Fitzgerald carried taconite iron ore from mines near Duluth, Minnesota, to iron works in Detroit, Toledo, and other Great Lakes ports. As a workhorse, she set seasonal haul records six times, often breaking her own record.[4][6] Captain Peter Pulcer was known for piping music day or night over the ship's intercom while passing through the St. Clair and Detroit rivers (between lakes Huron and Erie), and entertaining spectators at the Soo Locks (between Lakes Superior and Huron) with a running commentary about the ship.[4] Her size, record-breaking performance, and "DJ captain" endeared Edmund Fitzgerald to boat watchers.[7]

Carrying a full cargo of ore pellets with Captain Ernest M. McSorley in command, she embarked on her ill-fated voyage from Superior, Wisconsin, near Duluth, on the afternoon of November 9, 1975. En route to a steel mill near Detroit, Edmund Fitzgerald joined a second taconite freighter, SS Arthur M. Anderson. By the next day, the two ships were caught in a severe storm on Lake Superior, with near hurricane-force winds and waves up to 35 feet (11 m) high. Shortly after 7:10 p.m., Edmund Fitzgerald suddenly sank in Canadian (Ontario) waters 530 feet (88 fathoms; 160 m) deep, about 17 miles (15 nautical miles; 27 kilometers) from Whitefish Bay near the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario—a distance Edmund Fitzgerald could have covered in just over an hour at her top speed.

Edmund Fitzgerald previously reported being in significant difficulty to Arthur M. Anderson: "I have a bad list, lost both radars. And am taking heavy seas over the deck. One of the worst seas I've ever been in." However, no distress signals were sent before she sank; Captain McSorley's last (7:10 P.M.) message to Arthur M. Anderson was, "We are holding our own." Her crew of 29 perished, and no bodies were recovered. The exact cause of the sinking remains unknown, though many books, studies, and expeditions have examined it. Edmund Fitzgerald may have been swamped, suffered structural failure or topside damage, experienced shoaling, or suffered from a combination of these.

The disaster is one of the best-known in the history of Great Lakes shipping. Gordon Lightfoot made it the subject of his 1976 hit song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" after reading an article, "The Cruelest Month", in the November 24, 1975, issue of Newsweek. The sinking led to changes in Great Lakes shipping regulations and practices that included mandatory survival suits, depth finders, positioning systems, increased freeboard, and more frequent inspection of vessels.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald

“It’s Never Too Late” is a series that tells the stories of people who decide to pursue their dreams on their own terms.

In her 40s, Dierdre Wolownick taught herself to swim. In her 50s, she took up running. Then, at 60, she became a rock climber — and not just any rock climber. Four years ago, at 66, Ms. Wolownick made a record-breaking ascent up El Capitan, Yosemite National Park’s granite monolith that has some of the longest, most challenging rock climbing routes in the world. And she did it in style. The route she tackled then, Lurking Fear, typically takes four days to complete. Ms. Wolownick did it in one.

Of course, it helped that the author and now-sponsored athlete had one of the most accomplished rock climbers in the world to guide her: her famous son, Alex Honnold, the star of the 2018 Oscar-winning documentary “Free Solo.” The film chronicles her son’s breathtaking journey to become the first person to climb “El Cap” with no rope or safety equipment whatsoever. Her own effort — which did use ropes — was “by far” the most demanding thing she had ever done, Ms. Wolownick said.

Reaching the summit of El Capitan in 2017, she became the oldest woman to make that ascent, according to Hans Florine, an American rock climber with a record 179 climbs of the vertical rock formation.

And she has not slowed down. In late September, Ms. Wolownick returned to El Cap without her son to climb it again, this time to celebrate her 70th birthday with a small group of friends and guides. On that adventure she went up an easier route that climbers typically use to descend. It took her six hours to reach the summit, and after camping there overnight, she came down in six and a half hours the next day.

The grueling climbs were a departure from the first half of Ms. Wolownick’s sedentary and cerebral life. Growing up in New York, she painted and played the piano in Jackson Heights, Queens. As an adult she taught five languages and wrote books, including a 2019 memoir, “The Sharp End of Life: a Mother’s Story,” in part about her first El Cap ascent. In 1990, a few years after moving to suburban Sacramento, where her husband grew up, she founded an orchestra in West Sacramento and conducted it.

“These were wonderful, greatly satisfying things but nothing was really physical. There certainly was no danger,” she said. “I never in a million years thought that I could climb El Cap.” (The following interview has been edited and condensed.)

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/26/sports/alex-honnold-mother-el-capitan.html?smtyp=cur&smid=tw-nytimes