Frazz by Jef Mallett for November 02, 2012

Ships traditionally are considered female. And that ship in recent decades had been raised.

Gordon Lightfoot for the song an donation in recovering the ore ship.

First time I heard of the tragedy of the Edmund Fitzgerald was on “The Lost Side of Suburbia”, another comic here on GoComics, 2 of the characters were taken as prisoners by Jamie Jones, Davy Jones’ brother, ruler of the Great Lakes, whom had the crew of the Edmund Fitzgerald as his prisoners, when I looked it up I found info about her tragedy and Mr. Lightfoot’s song about the tragedy.

Grammatical gender has little or nothing to do with natural gender. There are languages that have no gender, like Finnish and Turkish; Basque has two – animate and inanimate; Ganda has ten and Swahili eighteen.

Maybe the Edmund Fitzgerald was a transgendered ship.

I read that the Edmund Fitzgerald, like the Kursk and the Lusitania, sank in water shallower than it was long.

I think the song works extremely well. It’s eerie and haunting. I’m glad that Frazz has decided to refrain from criticizing. (We heard it quite a lot here in Michigan.)

I believe they recovered the bell in 1995, not the entire ship.

Edmund Fitzgerald raised?? Not!They did recover the bell and it is in a museum but the ship remains at the bottom of Superoir

gordon lightfoot…if you could read my mind.

Um, sailors always refer to their ships as “her” and “she” no matter what the ship is named.

The Fitzgerald was 729 feet long and sunk in 530 feet of water of Whitefish Point. The bell is now at the Great Lakes shipwreck Museum.

I remember when it happened and I’ll let a sailor talk about the gender of a ship, regardless of name.

I’m going to look this up in a minute, but what is the one note refrain that most people criticize, Gordon’s guitar playing ability?

So, what DO most people criticzie about the song?

I have the 45 a home. Right next to C.W. McCall’s Convoy and Burton Cummings’ Stand Tall. (He should never have left The Guess Who.)

So, what DO most people criticize about the song?

I remember the night it sank. The Soo (Sault Ste. Marie) was a busy town the next day!

Only criticization of the song is the line “The ship’s bell chimed ’till it read 29 times for each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald”. did it ring 29 times per person, or 29 times being once for each person?

Well said, Jef. I love Gordon Lightfoot, but that song is nine kinds of monotonous.

Finally, comments on a comic strip actually worth reading! The song is still one of my favorites, but being from the Great Lakes State and having been on Lake Superior and in the maritime museum at Whitefish Point, I may be more in tune with the song than, say, someone from California. As for the 29 times thing, hey it is a song, some poetic license is allowed.

I think everybody here missed the real pun – Ella Fitzgerald, the singer!

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. Get a bigger mind, Frazz.

Verbs are conjugated; nouns are declined.A verb went up to a noun at a bar and said, “Hey sweet thing, wanna go to my place and conjugate?” The noun said, “No, I decline.”

I think Jef with one eff, should Come to Cleveland and visit the Soldiers and Sailors Monument. The Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck is one of many. I know where I was standing when I heard that She sank. Many here in Cleveland and the Great Lakes area hold this stuff close to their heart.

Sailors always refer to their ships as female, but I don’t know of too many US Navy vessels, if any that are named after a woman.

c001: Even less logical is das Fraulein, neuter.

US Navy Captains always refer to other ships as he, a reference to the other Captain. Be interesting when we get female captains on warships

Actually, the CRITICISM I have heard mentioned most often are more about the song “taking advantage” of the tragedy of the sinking of the ship and loss of life. The basic idea is that Lightfoot had a hit song based upon this tragedy and that because of this, the song is in poor taste.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Personally, I do not think the song or songwriter meant any disrespect in his efforts with the song. I actually like the song a great deal, and I think its structure is quite suitable for the theme. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++But, to me, at least, this is what Frazz’s friend is referring to…. THAT CRITICISM.

I can’t believe Frazz would be wrong about something. Ships are always referred to as “her”, no matter what the name.

In Africa, most farm work is done by women. I don’t know about ancient Rome; maybe the same was true there.

For a good cry, it is one of the best, along with Fred Small’s “Heart of the Appaloosa.”

I just listened to the lyrics. The ship is never called “her” or “she” in the song – the one place a pronoun is used – “as the big freighters go IT was bigger than most”.

I think the “one-note refrain” that Frazz is referring to is in the criticism, not the song. Everyone else picks on the song’s monotony. He’s got nothing to add to that, so he’s picking on a different aspect.

“The Fitz” lies as Maridozi said, about 16 miles off White Fish Bay. The battered bow is upright, the center was torn apart and lies scattered and the stern lies upside down not far from the bow.

I did not learn until not long after I first heard the song (which was right before it hit #1) that not only was the song NOT an old sea chantey, but that the wreck had happened basically one year prior to the song hitting #1. Historically, turning tragedies into songs such as this was folk music’s stock in trade. And I understand he did donate his take from the song to a suitable charity. To top it all off, I don’t have a problem with the recurring distorted guitar riff. I think it lends character. You don’t hear anyone grousing about the recurring sax riff in Gerry Rafferty’s “Baker Street,” do you?

In Icelandic, personal names are declined just like anyy other noun. There are some men’s names that are grammatically feminine and some women’s names that are grammatically masculine or neuter.

In some cultures, women are the farmers. Not that they are Latin speakers. The one that bothers me is “Santa Claus.” Shouldn’t that be San or Santo? Yes, I know it’s from St. Nikolas.

Swahili: It is based on Arabic roots, but a very simplified grammar. It is similoar in that regard to Pigin in the south Pacific, but based on English with Chinese grammar (the word comes from Cantonese attempt at “business” but has no b or z phoneme. Cantonese Chinese are the primary retail merchants in the south Pacific, while English (and French) were the main colonial powers.

I love this strip, but this one missed the mark more than once. Firstly, nowhere in the song does Gordon Lightfoot refer to the ship as “she”. Indeed, in the fourth verse we have “…later that night when HIS lights went out of sight came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”. Secondly, this song has neither refrain nor bridge. There is a riff that is played between some of the verses, but that’s hardly monotonous The style of the song intentionally evokes maritime sea shanties, which were work songs, thus deliberately simple and repetitive, musically. I play this song quite often myself (to great appreciation), and my only criticism would be its length—7 verses!—so yes, as a musician, I can say that it’s a challenge to play it in a way that it sounds fresh each time I play it—not unlike another long song, “American Pie”.

I know I’m a few years too late but oh well. 1. Love this song although it took me a while to be able to listen to the whole thing. Give me a break, I was 6 when it was released.. and the melody always gave me chills.. still does actually. 2. I don’t pay attention to criticisms most of the time because each person is entitled to his or her opinion. 3. There’s no clear cut reason as to why ships are referred to as “she”…. it’s simply tradition. 4. This song earned me an A+ on a test in school once…. “Name ALL of the Great Lakes”……. “Lake Huron rolls, Superior sings in the rooms of her ice-water mansion. Old Michigan steams like a young man’s dreams, the islands and bays are for sportsmen. And farther below, Lake Ontario takes in what Lake Erie can send her” although I did get a dirty look for humming during a test!

I just recently read in a book on military trivia that it was only recently that they officially stopped referring to all ships as “she”. (Unofficially, a lot of them probably go right on saying it.) BTW, if you refer to “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” as a “lament”, not just “a song”, it goes over better.