'I was afraid of dying': 50 years since Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy

It was a day Randy Colombo will never forget and one that always comes into focus whenever he hears the Gordon Lightfoot hit The Wreck of The Edmund Fitzgerald on the radio.

Colombo joined Ryan from 104.7 The LIZARD and OV1039 for an in-studio interview recently.

The SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in a violent storm on Lake Superior on November 10, 1975, with the loss of all 29 men aboard. It was later discovered the vessel had broken into two pieces.

Colombo was the wheelsman on another large ship, the VM Canadian Progress, in that same storm. He retired as a seaman not long after.

"We were a long way behind the 'Fitz and could not assist in any way, but still in the same storm, worst I had ever been in!" Colombo told Ryan from 104.7 The LIZARD.

"Whenever I hear that song it brings back a lot of memories, it was the only time in my life I was afraid of dying!"

To sum up just how frightening things were, he said he and fellow crew members went down into the bowels of the ship to where a conveyor belt in a special tunnel brought freight aboard. The area was lit with a row of lights.

"When we looked down there the lights disappeared," he said. The ship was bending so much in the storm they could no longer see the row of lights down the freight tunnel.