Ridgetown woman to swim in Great Lakes relay marking 50 years since Edmund Fitzgerald wreck
Jane Baldwin-Marvell will be part of the team that swims from Lexington to Port Huron, Mich.
A Ridgetown woman is one of 68 people taking part in a swimming relay this summer that will symbolically complete the voyage of the Edmund Fitzgerald — to mark the 50th anniversary of its sinking.
Jane Baldwin-Marvell will be part of a four-person team that covers the 31-kilometre stretch of water from Lexington to Port Huron, Mich.
The prospect is both exciting and daunting, she told CBC's Windsor Morning.
"The closer it gets, it's getting more and more real and more and more exciting," Baldwin-Marvell said.
"I've had so much support from all my friends and family. It's been wonderful."
The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a raging storm on Nov. 10, 1975, 27 kilometres (17 miles) north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Mich.
All 29 crew members perished.
Singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot immortalized the incident in his 1976 song "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," which went to number one on the Canadian charts and number two on the Billboard Hot 100.
Organizers of the swim have called the disaster "the world's most famous shipwreck not named Titanic."
'Symbolically, we're going to finish that journey'
The ship was carrying 26,000 tons of iron ore bound for Detroit when it went down.
Relay swimmers will honour the vessel by carrying iron ore pellets with them and delivering them to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, said event director Jim Dreyer.
"So symbolically, we're going to finish that journey, and 50 years later," Dreyer said.
"It's just a great way to memorialize the 29 men who died … and we're all honoured to be a part of it."
Dreyer swam Lake Superior in 2005 for the 30th anniversary of the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy and delivered the bell from the boat to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on Whitefish Point, he said.
He says he got the idea for the upcoming swim in 2023 when reminiscing about the previous swim with a former museum executive director.
The relay begins July 26 at the spot in Lake Superior immediately above the wreck, where swimmers will take part in a ceremony to remember the crew lost at sea.
'Something I need to be a part of'
It then covers the freighter's planned 661-kilometre route to Detroit, where another memorial service will take place at Mariners' Church of Detroit.
It's expected to wrap up at the end of August.
Teams of four will each swim one of 17 stages, taking turns swimming for 30 minutes each while the other team members recuperate aboard a support boat.
Baldwin-Marvell, who regularly swims a kilometre a day, said she chose the stretch from Lexington to Port Huron because she wanted to be reasonably close to home and felt daunted by the prospect of swimming in Lake Superior.
But she said she had no hesitation about registering for the event.
"I grew up hearing the song," she said.
"When I heard about the swim, I thought, 'This is absolutely something I need to be a part of.'"
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