While doing some research on this ship I found the following incident that the Edmund Fitzgerald was involved during the 1969 shipping season.
Just before 2 AM on the morning of November 7, 1969, the Coast Guard station at Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, received notification that the fishing tug My Buddy was overdue from a trip on Whitefish Bay. Several freighters were immediately notified to keep a lookout for the 45-foot vessel. At 5:24 that morning, Bethlehem's Johnstown reported it had spotted the tug on its radar. Responding to Coast Guard requests, the Edmund Fitzgerald, Walter A. Sterling (Lee A. Tregurtha), and James Davidson used their radars to fix the position of the disabled tug at approximately 7 1/2 miles southwest of Isle Parisienne. The Coast Guard dispatched a vessel to the scene a short time later, and by 6:45 AM the My Buddy was under tow of the Polaris, a fishing tug from Brimley. The incident was attributed to theMy Buddy losing its propeller.
As a side note. A little more than six years later, the Edmund Fitzgerald sank less than 50 miles north of where it played a role in locating the overdue fishing tug.