Whitefish Point has been called the graveyard of Lake Superior because more vessels were lost in its area than in any other part of the lake. Since navigation began on Lake Superior, there have been approximately 550 wrecks. The high loss of ships near Whitefish Point resulted from three major factors: the congested eastern end of the lake where traffic moving both directions had to pass as the lake narrowed like a funnel, poor visibility from fog, forest fires, and snow that caused numerous collisions and groundings, and the nature of the largest lake itself, whose expanse of over 200 miles of open water could build up terrific seas during a Superior “Northwestern” storm. Collisions were more common in earlier times because there were more vessels, with over 3100 commercial vessels on the lakes in the 1880's compared to less than 200 today. From the first known shipwreck of a commercial vessel in the area, the Invincible in November 1816, to the Edmund Fitzgerald on November 10, 1975, approximately 320 lives were lost in over 300 shipwrecks and accidents there.