Ernest M. McSorley

Ernest M. McSorley (September 29, 1912 – November 10, 1975) was the last captain of the lake freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald. McSorley perished along with the other 28 members of his crew when the ship sank in the Canadian side of Lake Superior on November 10, 1975.^[1][2][3][4]

McSorley was Canadian by birth. At age 11 in 1924, McSorley moved to the United States with his father and stepmother and spent part of his life in the St. Lawrence River town of Ogdensburg, New York, and eventually moving to the Toledo, Ohio, area. McSorley started sailing as a deckhand aboard ocean–going freighters when he was 18 years old. He began working with freshwater freighters as a wheelsman and achieved the title of third and second mate before becoming the youngest master captain on the Great Lakes. A veteran mariner, McSorley had over 44 years of experience on the Great Lakes, and oceans. McSorley took command of the Fitzgerald at the start of the 1972 shipping season and had captained nine ships before joining the Fitzgerald crew.

McSorley turned 63 a month and a half before the Fitzgerald incident and intended to retire at the end of the 1975 shipping season. His last known words were, "We are holding our own."

McSorley resided in the Toledo suburb of Ottawa Hills, Ohio,^[1][5] and married Nellie L. Pollock, a Chicago native, on March 19, 1949. Although he had no children of his own, Nellie was the mother of three children from a previous marriage. Nellie, who was in ill health at the time of McSorley's death, survived for another 17 years, dying at age 82 on February 13, 1993.

• Edmund Fitzgerald Online – Captain Ernest M. McSorley
• Edmund Fitzgerald – Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum
• Ernest M. McSorley at Find a Grave