Countdown: Random Places Immoralized in Music, #9

As a refresher, this is a bit of a geography lesson, looking at oddball places that musicians have chosen to sing about, or at least include in their lyrics. And next on the list, number nine is...

Whitefish Bay

"The searchers all say, they'd have made Whitefish Bay if they'd put fifteen more miles behind her."

When "the Mighty Fitz" went down in Lake Superior on the 10th of November in 1975, it was nothing new to " the big lake they call Gitchee Gumee." Such is the history of the Michigan shoreline in the area of Whitefish Point, the northwestern boundary of the bay, that it is referred to as "The Graveyard of the Great Lakes."

A preserve located within Whitefish Bay, which makes up the entire southeast corner of Lake Superior, alone contains an impressive roster of shipwrecks: Comet, Samuel Mather, Sagamore, and John B. Cowle, to name just a few.

As a result, even though Gordon Lightfoot's "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" describes only one vessel's saga upon these waters, there are countless more ships that are unheard of, their stories known only to those that went down with their ships, and a few dedicated maritime historians such as those at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, located where else but at Whitefish Point.

And while we may hope that tragedy does not hit the Great Lakes once more, history seems to show that it is only inevitable that another should happen, and someday, we may sadly hear of Whitefish Bay in lyrics again...