Ep. 790: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
This is the me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely,
bug bitten, and in my case, underwear. Listening past, you
can't predict anything brought to you by first Light. When
I'm hunting, I need gear that won't quit. First Light builds,
no compromise, gear that keeps me in the field longer,

(00:30):
no shortcuts, just gear that works. Check it out at
first light dot com. That's f I R S T
L I T E dot com.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
Guy, I got.

Speaker 1 (00:44):
I got two competing ways I want to start the show.
One I just have to admit that I'm so excited
I already wet my pants. There's one like this is
this is the one of This is one of the
most exciting conversations for me because this is something that
I like, I'll just come out and say, here, we're
here to talk about the the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is

(01:04):
like weird, like I was one year old, but when
it happened, but it's it's sort of I don't know,
man has haunted and inspired my whole life being from
that neck of the woods.

Speaker 2 (01:17):
Sure. Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
The second opening I was gonna use is how I've
never done this before, but I want to dedicate this
episode drows fits poot mcgoot, my brother Danny. This one's
for you and everyone at the porthole in Sue Saint
Marie Michigan side.

Speaker 2 (01:34):
Been there, You guys better notice there are two talents
called Su Saint Marie right across the river from each other,
because why wouldn't you do that?

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Right?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
One's us one's Canada. Canada produces NHL Hall of Famers,
the Esposito brothers, Tony and Phil, et cetera, et cetera.
Gretzky played there for a while. Uh. The American side
produces guys like us.

Speaker 1 (01:56):
When I went to one of the times I saw
Uncle Gord was at at the hockey arena in Siue, Ontario.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Oh wow, I've been to that where the Greyhounds play.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
He Uh, I'll introduce you in a minute.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
Don't worry, we'll get to that.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
I tell the story every other episode. We're sitting there
and we're watching Uncle Gordon. You know, I'm talking about
Gordon Lightfoot and he's doing his show. He's got a
lot of hits. People don't realize how he hiss. Then yeah,
they're in the book, but then later in the app
later and not the episode later in the concert. This
will kind of date it because your book The Gales

(02:37):
of November, The Untold Story of the Edmond Fitzgerald by
John you Bacon. Should you want to find out what
the U stands for? Good luck? Not ulysses.

Speaker 2 (02:49):
He's very tight lift about it.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
Uh, at that the fiftieth we're at the fiftieth anniversary
of the sinking or the wreck of the Edmin Fitzgerald,
and your book's perfectly timed. I read you that you
wrote a proposal for this book decades ago or something.

Speaker 2 (03:08):
I did twenty years ago, pitched it to my agent.
He said no, So I got a new agent.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
As one does. You don't get no answer you want,
because I'm struggling with that professionally this morning.

Speaker 2 (03:23):
Just this very morning.

Speaker 1 (03:26):
Anyhow, at that time, I can't remember what year it was.
It would have been around ninety four, ninety five. Okay,
you're by twenty and I think and I remember, it
gets quiet. Gord comes out. The lights are down, and
Gord says, it'll be He says something to the fact

(03:47):
of like it'll be twenty years this November, wow, or
it'll be blank in the place. Just I mean erupts oh, Yeah,
no erupts. But that's home turf.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
That's very much home turf.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Yeah, I mean you're looking out you know, you're looking
out on white We used to fish in Whitefish Bay
and like dude, and when we're out there spearing spearing
whiting or sorry, spearing whitefish, we'd always be talking about yeah, man,
and telling people like, that's where if you're fishing in
Whitefish Bay.

Speaker 2 (04:21):
Whitefish Bay Lakes Pier's one hundred and sixty miles by
three hundred and fifty miles. It's as big as the
state of Virginia. It's bigger than Ireland. People don't realize
this unless you get up there. If you're up there,
of course, you can't see across any of the Great Lakes.
If you' in the middle of Lake Superior, you can't
see either side. It's not because of the mist of
the fog. It's because the curvature of the earth. It's
just too damn big. So there you go. So if

(04:42):
you're out there by the way, you know what you're
doing obviously. And sus Marie is where the Sioux Locks are.
That's the bottleneck of US industry. So all the iron ore,
the copper I know you guys got it here in butte.
The copper, the iron ore limestone all comes from the
northern part of the Great Lakes, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula.
It's got to go through this one spigot, this very

(05:03):
tight widget at the sew locks.

Speaker 1 (05:06):
Yeah, because Lake Superior falls twenty three feet to Lake
Huron or something.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Well done, young man. This guy, this guy passes.

Speaker 1 (05:13):
Caught many a fish out of those falls.

Speaker 2 (05:14):
There you go, exactly, it's a good place to catch him. Actually,
so during World War two they built a new lock
because I had to get all the iron and all
the steel from up there down to build. It will
run where the Ford Motor Company was. If you've seen
fer Our versus Ford, that's what it's all about. They're
cranking out one B twenty four bomber an hour every
hour for three years. During World War two. They build

(05:36):
a new again, one B twenty four bomber which has
one point five million parts. I looked it up. They've
created out one per hour every hour for three years, NonStop.
As Rosie the Riveter, all this.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
Stuff almost as fast as they were shooting down.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Almost as fast, but not quite as fast. That's how
you win the war. Yeah, so FDR during World War
two stations seven thousand soldiers where you were at the
Seoux Locks. It was the most guarded position in North
America during World War Two.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Seriously, yes, because they're worried about sabateurs.

Speaker 2 (06:08):
If they bomb that, there's no steal for the planes,
no steal for the planes and the tanks and the shells,
we lose the war. And after your knew.

Speaker 1 (06:16):
That, but who, like, who were they thinking would have
been like they didn't mean like an aerial bombardment from
enemy aircraft.

Speaker 2 (06:24):
We can get there, But I would.

Speaker 1 (06:25):
Picture like, like like I said, saboteurs, like someone plant explosives.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, I guess that's possible to look, the eyds aren't
very good. Obviously they didn't do it right.

Speaker 1 (06:33):
So they recognized that.

Speaker 2 (06:34):
It was like, but if it happens, it's over.

Speaker 1 (06:37):
We're gonna live sort of like the paraneum of the world.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
Man paranem See, these are the things I don't get normally.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
That's the name of the episode.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
That's Yeah, I gotta stay in newsed for this when
people I've done about thirty forty interviews, we've done CBS
and everything else. Yeah, I gotta, I got, I gotta
wide my strikes on here a little bit.

Speaker 5 (07:02):
We should just have a list of words when they're
used for the first time in here.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think istanbul probably is a good is another candidate.
Here's a word that has been used on this show.
Hampton Sides. Hampton Side has been on the show a
couple of times. Here's what hampton Side says about the
gales November. Here is a work of spectral beauty destined
to be a classic. Readers of Sebastian Younger's The Perfect Storm,

(07:30):
he's been on the show. Eric Larson's Dead Wake, we
should put that on our list of people get on
the show. And Nathaniel Philbricks in the Heart of the
Sea will love this deeply reported tale from our vast
inland ocean. With John H. Bacon's graceful and poignant retelling,
the Saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald now takes its rightful

(07:52):
place among the world's greatest legends of shipwrecks and tapentuous, tempetuous, tempestuous.

Speaker 2 (08:00):
You got it?

Speaker 1 (08:01):
Who got it?

Speaker 2 (08:02):
You got it? Tempestuous sees.

Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's from hands and Sides. There's a bunch of good
quotes on the back here, ken Burns, he's been on
the show. John U. Bacon has done it again. This
is another riveting narrative that puts facts on a still
memorizing legend. But this is more than getting the details right.
Bacon has distilled the essence of the story and rendered

(08:28):
a huge monument to those lost, to those lost, and
a great gift to the rest of us. Ken Burns filmmaker,
I'm excited to talk in I've read it. I'll tell
you what I did do is I looked at some
of the pictures. It's just heartbreaking to see the pictures
of the guys. I had a weirdly in my life.
I realized I've never looked at a picture of anyone
that died on that boat.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Stephen is exactly why I wrote the book. Wrote the
boat book. I can't get that word right. And people
ask me what drovee me? I yes, I want to
find out what happened, And that's always part of the
mystery here, of course, and we advanced certain theories and
we've probably diminished other theories. But I'm not here to
close that loop because you really can't. There are no witnesses.
All twenty nine men went down with the ship. Aunt Ruth,
who's the mother of Bruce Hudson, Ohio State student who

(09:13):
takes a couple of summers to get in the lakes.
He's a twenty two year old deckhand who goes down
with the ship and that's her only child, which I
can't fathom. She had a great line, she said, only thirty, no,
twenty nine men in God, and no one's talking, so
we're all trying to guess. So what did drive me?
And that's what it was. Who were these twenty nine
men all right? What were their jobs like? What were
their lives like, over their families like at home? I

(09:35):
interviewed half the families they talked for the first time this.
I got six crewmen who'd been on the ship obviously
before it went down, and those are not easy to find.
There's no list anywhere, and I got them all the
talk and it's just fascinating how it all works, and
I learned the process. Here's a fun fact for your
listeners who would be into this. For sure, you talked
to Great Lakes sailors by that know me of the

(09:55):
guys with the sales. Of course, these are commercial shippers.
Copper said, copper iron, all this stuff. They tell me
consistently that sailing on the Great Lakes is more dangerous
than sailing on the ocean, and that blew my mind.
I grew up on the Great Lakes, so did you?
How can that possibly be? And it's a few reasons.
One is saltwater, saltwater on the ocean on the Great Lakes.

(10:18):
And by the way, do hand gestures work really well
on radio?

Speaker 1 (10:21):
I bet some people it depends on how you're listening.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Well, if you've got the premium package, you'll get this one.
So on the Great Lakes you got these sharp, pointy
waves at the top like mountain ranges basically on the
On the ocean, the salt smashes those down, so the
nice and smooth so right, yeah, you get smooth roller coasters,
and they're twice as far apart. It spreads them out.
And on the ocean you get these storms from five

(10:47):
hundred miles away, a thousand miles away, So by the
time the waves get to you again, you have this
general roller coaster. Still no fun, and you've seen perfect storm,
but it's manageable. On the Great Lakes, they're sharp and
pointing like mountain ranges, they're twice as close to get.
On the ocean, they're ten to sixteen seconds apart. On
the Great Lakes are four to eight seconds apart. What
does that mean? That means you can have the bow
of your ship in one thirty foot wave, nothing in

(11:10):
the middle, and your stern in another thirty foot wave.
These ships are seven hundred feet long, and in between
you have twenty six thousand tons of iron. Oh that's
forty two hundred adult elephants. It's enough steel, enough irons
already to make seven thousand cars. What happens? It bends down,
it SAgs. Then you go over the next wave, and
it hogs, and it SAgs, and it hogs, SAgs and hugs.

(11:30):
Bend a paper clip back and forth ten thousand times?
Has how many waves you get in a day? What's
gonna happen? The paper clip's gonna snap sooner or later.
The Bradley nineteen fifty eight. I got a chapter on that.
We have witnesses it actually snaps in half between two waves. Really,
the morale not even six hundred feet Be sure that.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
The bow and stern would I just imagine that the
bow and stern would cut in into the way. It
would never have enough to lift it like a it does.
These waves are lifts the center.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
These waves are don't messing one with the waves, man.
One of these waves is the same weight as two
locomotive engines one wave. And these guys get these waves
every four to eight seconds. And the night of this
November tenth, nineteen seventy five, it's a storm of a century.
They got one hundred mile per hour winds. That's hurricane force.
At that point, the waves were thirty feet regularly, which
is still pretty intense. This ship only has eleven feet

(12:19):
out of the water, so thirty feet means you're underwater
twenty feet every time. This happens every four to eight seconds.
That takes a toll. But then we now know from
computer models that if you saw that many thirty footers,
you saw ten forty footers, you saw three or four
fifty footers, and you saw one or two sixty footers.
And as one of the experts toll me, this ship

(12:41):
ended up in exactly the wrong place at exactly the
wrong time, the only ship in that one hour area. Basically,
so there's part of your answer.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
We started out talking about sorry.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Sorry about that tangent, but no.

Speaker 1 (12:54):
No, you do that all day long for Ick Care.
We started out talking about Gordon Lightfoot as kind of
like a touch point where many many people, like undeniably
many people when they hear the Edmund Fitzgerald, they know
what that means because.

Speaker 2 (13:10):
Of the song entirely, no question, do you You know?

Speaker 1 (13:15):
I'm always interested in this concept of like there's like
a there's like an object, right, and then the object
has a shadow, you know what I mean, Like if
the object that's good, Like the object is the sinking
of the edm in Fitzgerald, and it's like shadow is
like that's perfect Gordon life was the wreck of the
Edmin Fitzgerald would like, in all honesty, would we be

(13:36):
sitting here right now if it wasn't for that song?

Speaker 2 (13:38):
I will say it from them from the mountaintops. Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Really.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
From eighteen seventy five to nineteen seventy five, there are
six thousand commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. That's one
per week every week for a century. Oh man, really,
thirty thousand men went down. That's one a day every
day for a century. And how many do we know?
We know one, we know the em Memphis Geriald for
exactly the reason.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
You see the sols the riff.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Hey, by the way, you non Michigan. I don't know
what he's talking about, but I do.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Well, that was the first ship.

Speaker 2 (14:08):
That was the first ship.

Speaker 1 (14:09):
It was the first ship on the Great Lakes and
the Eduond Fitzgerald's the biggest ship to ever sink.

Speaker 2 (14:13):
That's exactly right, and at the time the biggest ship
period on the lakes. But yeah, without that, there's no way.
There's six thousand we know one. Without the song, there
is no book. It's just that simple.

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Really, Yeah, what, uh can you explain? You kind of
did a little bit, but can you explain that that? Uh? Well,
first I got another thing to mention. You're a sports writer.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
Yeah, so what am I doing here? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (14:35):
So, like you've written books on hockey football? Yeah, yeah,
I had you. Is this your first like foray into
kind of like deep history where you're not able to
meet the people involved?

Speaker 2 (14:47):
And it's my second. The previous one was called the
Great Halifax Explosion. Oh that's right, from nineteen seventeen. Yeah, okay,
I'm sorry, from twenty seventeens when the book came out
nineteen seventeen. This ship called the Mountain Blanc World whe
one is leaving Gravesend Bay, New York. That's a pretty
good name with six million pounds graves End, graves End.
How about how prophetic? Right, It's leaving Gravesend Bay, New York,

(15:12):
basically New York with six million pounds of high explosives.
That's TNT, not gasoline like hauling, high explosive, hauling high exposive.
High explosives don't need oxygen to blow up. One good
bump and it happens, and it's in Halifax harboring. The
way to World War One, to blow up Germans is
the idea, I'm sure. And instead it bumps into another ship,
a fire starts. Well, the guys in the Mountain Blank

(15:33):
they know what the hell's going to happen, so they
get in the rowboats and get out of there. French crew.
The ship slips at eight forty five in the morning,
ghost ship slips perfectly into Pier six at the base
of Halifax. The timing's cruel because the kids are walking
to school, everyone's walking to work, and it's burning, so
they're not gonna come down to watch the burning ship.
They have no idea, what's on it?

Speaker 1 (15:53):
And how long is this after everybody bailed off.

Speaker 2 (15:56):
About fifteen minutes. Oh okay, very fast, so pretty fast. Yeah,
And then at nine zero four point thirty five we
know exactly when because all clocks stopped. Two million high
two million, two mile high Marsha mc cloud, the first
in the world's history. One fifth part of the atomic
bomb blows half the city away of fifty four people.
And Oppenheimer, of course, who built the A bomb. You

(16:17):
see the movie oppenheimri talks about this. He's when he
did the math. The only model they head for Hiroshima
was this. So this one fifth the power of the
A bomb. But people in Boston sent two ships, two trains,
one hundred doctors, three hundred nurses, and a million bucks,
which back then is a lot of money. And they
of the nine thousand wounded, they saved like ninety five percent,
which it should not have happened with the medicine at

(16:38):
the time. That's what made the US and Canada allies.
And I know this because my mom's Canadian, So trust me,
if you want a different version of the War of
eighteen twelve, give a Canadian two beers and they're gonna
hear a whole different version of however all that went down.
So I'm a hockey guy. I speak of experience here,
except that was my first forest A long answer, Sorry,

(17:01):
I was my first fey into that that allowed me
to write this book. Without that book, the publishers never
would have given me money for this book. God, so
I prove I could get up.

Speaker 1 (17:08):
For the Oh man, I think if you sent hell
whatever you got it published. I was gonna tell you
how you would have got it published. Anyways, Explain that,
Explain that, Explain the industry that the Edmun Fitzgerald was
involved in.

Speaker 2 (17:21):
Great question. That's another thing, dude. Again, I grew up
in Annabra, Michigan, and not too far from Askegan. We
go up to Travers City and so on. I've I've
swam in all these lakes. I've sailed on two or
three of them. I thought I knew them. I didn't
know anything. Ninety five percent of the stuff in that
book I had no idea about it. And one thing
is how incredibly important Great lakes shipping is. The French voyagers.

(17:41):
Here's your here's your predecessors. Here in the Mediator podcast,
these guys are badasses. I can say that in your show,
and I can't say that normally. So I'm taking advantage.
Man Captain buzzkilled from my right over here, here's my
one chance. Finally, Uh, those voyagers had thirty forty foot
news carved out of one tree. They got four hundred

(18:05):
They got four hundred million beaver pelts in two centuries,
almost made beaver extinct. But they're wearing those hats in Europe,
so they that's billions of dollars of that. Then you
got lumber. More money is made by lumber than the
Gold Rush. You got grain. The Great Lakes supplies the
world with food basically, and a lot of your food
comes all the zero companies are based in Battle Creek, Michigan,

(18:27):
in Minneapolis, Minnesota for a reason. But then you got,
like I said, copper, which now you mine here limestones
you need to make turn iron into steel and iron.
It was it probably still is the biggest producer of
iron in the United States. Here's a fun fact for you.
In nineteen so this is Silicon Valley before Silicon Valley.
After World War Two, the Great Lake States. Five of

(18:49):
the top seven were all around the Great Lakes. Only
California and Texas were in that pile. Here's a fun
fat for you. Nineteen sixty census, what great lake city
was bigger in Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Nashville, and San Jose, California, Cleveland, Toledo, Toledo,

(19:10):
ohiout was bigger than all those. This is how big
it all was. So Detroit was the epicenter of all
this stuff. And I grew up in the shadow of
that one at that tail end of that. But this
is what they did. Thirty seven of the top hundred
companies were all based around Detroit. Tire makers, oil, oil companies,
steel companies, car companies, GM's number one, four, number three, Chryslers,

(19:32):
number seven. That's I mean. They had no competition after
World War Two. So this place is humming. They're making
a lot of money. And these guys, the guys twenty
nine guys in the ship, the old guys, they grew
up in the Great Depression, they grew up in the
World War Two. Why do you have? These jobs are hard,
no question about it. But man, compared to being a
miner or a farmer or a factory worker, you'd take it.

(19:55):
Good union contracts. These guys are making good money. A
deckhand and seventy five Bruce Hudson guy I mentioned, and
he gets out of Ohio State.

Speaker 1 (20:02):
Is he the kid with no shirt on in the picture.

Speaker 2 (20:04):
He's a badass. He's one of yours. And he's got
the long the mutton chops the long hair. Rand It
looks like Randall, he was. I like him. Already, there
you go, I'll show you. There you go, go to
the picture section. You'll know exactly what we're talking about.

Speaker 6 (20:16):
That's what I do anyway when I.

Speaker 2 (20:18):
Pick up a book, the perfect you're my guy. So
this guy leaves Ohio State to be a deckhan. That's
the lowest guy in the ship. Basically, he's making, in
today's dollars, one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year.
Even back then, he's making three times what a teacher
makes four times, and he's salting the money away except
for one indulgence. He's got a nineteen seventy two Dodge Challenger,

(20:38):
badass muscle car. Beautiful Burgundy. We found the car. It's
still in mint condition. It's still fantastic. Still is a
sticker of Columbia Transportation, which least the emphys Yerald, I'm
looking at it right now. There's the sticker right there. No, shoot,
that car. That was last year we took that photo.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
I look through these pictures of my ten year old
this morning. Then I kind of choked up. We were
listening to.

Speaker 2 (21:02):
The song We'll get You Once you know the story.
The song kills you. So he gets on the ship.
He's one of these guys and he's making good money.
He's saving it pretty well. So he and his buddy
Mark Thomas in that photo, they're gonna when the season
ends in three days. This was the last run of
the season. Oh no, matter what happened, they're gonna finish
the season. That car is waiting for him on the
dock in Toledo three days later. The captain mcsordy. I'll

(21:24):
get to him in a bit. He's going to retire
after this run, after thirty some years, forty years in
the Great Lakes, promising his wife. All these guys. So
they're gonna get in that car and bomb across out
west where you guys are to go to Colorado to
get some Coors beer because in nineteen twenty five that
was exotic and you gotta be old enough. Remember that
one by the way.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Oh yeah, he used to make all those all those movies.
You got it, Like Burt Reynolds built his career on
this story.

Speaker 6 (21:50):
That photo really is speaking to me.

Speaker 2 (21:53):
There we go.

Speaker 5 (21:53):
I think, Ohio, Man, if I did a couple of
cycles on a GLP one I think would be you'ld
be looking quite.

Speaker 2 (21:59):
So well, le man. One third of the crew comes
from to luth one third from Toledo, one third from Cleveland.
So a lot of Buckeys. This guy was a Buckey also.
But then he finds out in September phone call back
to the port bar in Silver Bay, Minnesota. Beautiful spot,
the Silver Bay Municipal Bar. And I've been there, of
course for hard hitting investigative journeys. Pas. All right, that's
all I'm doing here now. A guy who got on

(22:20):
all the bars, Stephen and the bartender serve them. Steven
Burns is still He was eighteen at the time. He's
sixty eight now he's still there.

Speaker 1 (22:27):
You're kidding me, dude.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
I got so lucky on research again and again and again.
The guy at the President's Lounge in Superior, Wisconsin, he's
still there. He served him the night before they left,
so I'm getting all these guys. So Hudson finds out
by payphone that his girlfriend in Toledo, who's a waitress,
Cindy Reynolds by Vacious Blind and all that. She says, surprise,
I'm pregnant, And okay, you got that phone call. You're

(22:50):
not ready for that, so I'm not going to ask
for personal experience here. Who's gotten that phone call and
who hasn't, but you can imagine if you haven't that
you pause, Oh my gosh. He says the right stuff.
He says, don't worry. We're gonna moving together and we'll
raise the child ourselves. And when she hears that, she goes, okay,
go ahead and go on that trip because that's November.
The kids is that dud dull June. So now I

(23:11):
think it's going to marry this girl, of course. But
these are the stories that happen before November tenth, nineteen
seventy five. And you got to care about the guys
before they get in the ship. That's kind of my rule.
So these are real guys, I mean, these are guys,
these are your neighbors. They had plans, they had futures,
and of course no one thinks this is gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (23:28):
Yeah, that iron ore would come out of the Iron Ranges,
like in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, out of the the here
on range.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
Exactly right, called the Iron Range. Bob Billen's from there.
He even talks about that in the book, from a
players called the Iron Range. That's where my feelings and
my song has come from, he says. So Iron Range
is the northern part of Minnesota, northern part of Wisconsin,
and the up upper Peninsula of Michigan. Here's a fun
fact for you, a few football fans. The Wisconsin Badgers
are called the Badgers, not because of the animal, because
of the miners, because the winter they'd live in the

(24:02):
caves and the winter and their nicknames were the Badgers.
So those are miners they're talking about.

Speaker 1 (24:06):
Actually.

Speaker 2 (24:07):
So yeah, hard life to say the least. But all
that stuff goes to the louse Superior, Silver Bay, two harbors.
You put on the ships and all the factories are Gary, Indiana.

Speaker 1 (24:17):
Chicago smelting it down there exactly.

Speaker 2 (24:20):
Yeah, they smelt it right on the dock. Man. It's
a very efficient process. These pellets called taconite should have
brought some It's a little rusty pebbles. Guy figured out
how to do that, you know, fracking reinvigorated obviously drilling
here in the United States. We're out of the easy stuff,
so we start fracking. All the easy iron ore is
gone after World War Two. We used it up for

(24:40):
World War two. So what do we do. We're screwed. Well,
this one professor at Minnesota figures out how to pelletize
this iron ore. The scrap heap called taconite. You can
actually use it if you process it and so on.
We've been using taconite now for eighty years. That's what
we're on. So this guy figures it out. Five hundred
million pebbles of the stuff. Go on a ship. It's dirty,
its rusty, it's heavy. I've been on. They tell you

(25:01):
to wear a hat. I've been on two of these ships,
by the way, Arthur Anderson, I was out with them
that night, and I've been on the Wilfrid Sykes also
out with them that night. And they give you a helmet,
you know, and a stupid writer guy, right, okay, lamb
lever with a soft hands. Here's a helmet. Don't do
anything stupid. So you put the helmet on and you
realize very quickly there are pellets of the stuff nailing

(25:22):
your head right now as you walk to the ship
because they're loading. Oh so, and if a few spill,
they don't care, trust me, I from thirty or forty
feet down from their shoots, it'll crack your head open.
So yeah, wear the damn helmet. That's my advice.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
And like that was how much could you fit on that?
Oh yeah, we'll get you home. How much could they
how much of that stuff? How much weight could they
fit on the that ed Fitz.

Speaker 2 (25:44):
You're not gonna believe it. It's twenty six thousand long tons.
So the British measurement was actually bigger than us tons.
Why they do that, who knows, But it's equivalent of
forty two hundred adult elephants. Enough iron on that ship
to build by itself seven thousand cars, and they make
fifty runs a year, So one ship, the em Memphis
Derald per year gives you enough iron to build three

(26:06):
hundred and fifty thousand cars. And the course was eighteen years,
enough iron to build six million cars. That's one ship.
That's what the scale of all this is just mind blowing.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Yeah, and that thing. I didn't know that thing was
making forty some trips per year.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
Fifty yeah, and I mean it's NonStop. It's nine months
out of the year. And trust me, either loading or
you're sailing, or you're unloading. I took a Skip Barber
race card class years ago for the Trey Grand Prix.
He said, you either put your foot on the gas,
you'r foot of the brake. You do anything else, you're losing.
So you're either going as fast as you can or
as slow as you can. These guys same thing. If

(26:40):
your ship gets into Zug Island Detroit, a nasty little
spit of land, at three o'clock in the morning, they're unloading,
and then at seven o'clock in the morning they're loading,
and then then they're sailing. And they don't wait for
anybody or anything. You're constantly moving. And I was kind
of wondering if shipping is as big. It was a
great line from what you said. I this is dangerous.
Why do it? William Sutton, the old gangster said someone

(27:03):
once asked him why do you rob banks? And he said,
because that's where the money is. He's got a point.
Why if is this dangerous? Six thousand shipwrecks. Why do it?
Because where the money is? Like I said, the trade
was that big a deal. Then I also wonder, Okay,
you know I live in Michigan. You live in Uskegan.
Miskegan is one of the best natural ports on the
Great Lakes, and that's in the book several times. It's

(27:26):
a very important port. And that's lumber. In the old days,
the lumber from Muskegan built the first Chicago that burned
down in eighteen seventy one. So that's your town. As wonder,
why have I never met these guys? I mean, I
know factory workers, miners, farmers, et cetera. I don't know
any sailors because they're only nine thousand of them, thirty
guys per ship, three hundred ships in the heyday. It's

(27:47):
only nine thousand guys spread out over eight states. Right.

Speaker 1 (27:50):
And also they all passed through the porthole.

Speaker 2 (27:53):
They all pass through the portal. Yeah. And the second
thing is, even though next to you, you still don't meet him.
They're on a ship back. And then nine months out
of the year, no vacations, no weddings, no graduations, no birthdays,
no nothing. I talked to one of these guys, and
he said, I'm a good family man, happily married. You know,
forty some years. I got three great kids. I didn't
teach any of them how to ride a bike or

(28:13):
throw a baseball or hunter fish. You're not home and
it's heartbreaking. So it's a hard life.

Speaker 1 (28:19):
He was just on the ships.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
Nine months out of the year. You're home for three months.
He said, there's nothing better than coming home in January
with a big old bonus check to pays for everything.
These guys were paid. Well, there's no question about that.
These guys. You know, they weren't even all high school graduates,
but they were self educated. They're very good at that.
You have to pass all these tests, come on with
a nice, big bonus check, and my kids run up
to me and they give me a big hug. And

(28:41):
I'm home for three months and my kids say, Daddy,
you smell like a truck. And I say, no, Daddy,
smells like a paycheck. That's the life.

Speaker 1 (28:52):
Yeah. You know, when they launched that ship, there was
like some weird stuff happened or seemed weird later seem
weird even.

Speaker 2 (29:03):
At the time. Some of it seem weird.

Speaker 1 (29:04):
And by the way, yeah, talk about that. There's kind
of like three sort of I don't know, man.

Speaker 6 (29:09):
When you say launched, you mean that night or when the.

Speaker 1 (29:12):
Ship ris like the gal the first photo, Edmund Fitzgerald's
wife goes a smack a bottle, champagne bottle, takes three
hits to break it. A guy dies of a heart attack, right,
and then they have like a North Korean esque launch a.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, it's about right, by the way, you podcast listeners, mediator,
podcast listeners. This man is Range Hampton. Size is a
Yeale educated hotshot writer, one of my heroes. You've done
your homework on this one as well, so you got
it down. June twenty third, nineteen fifty eight, fifteen thousand
people show up in Detroit to see this ship get launched.
That's more than that Detroit Tigers average the entire year. Now, okay,

(29:59):
Tiger's base, Well they sucked. Okay, I'll grant you that
simple point. But it was a huge deal. And people
came in their Sunday best to see this NATA launch
padded and she was up there at the bunting and
all that and her Sunday Best three wax to break
the champagne bottle. Sailors are notoriously superstitious, and they're already

(30:19):
getting the bad voodoo on that one, so that's not good.
Took about half an hour to get that ship into
the water because guess what it weighs. The numbers in there,
some ridiculous number of tons. Crazy. It's the same height
as the Detroit Renaissance Center, the tallest one. It's seven
and thirty feet twenty nine feet, but it's no wider
than the run from home plate to first base. It's

(30:41):
seventy five feet. It's because of the locks. Because of
the locks.

Speaker 1 (30:45):
Is it really that narrow?

Speaker 2 (30:46):
It's these things are nuts, and no ships like this
will built anywhere else in the world.

Speaker 1 (30:50):
And if you're something is twenty five yards wide seventy
five feet wide.

Speaker 2 (30:56):
It's nothing. Your old ruler at school, that's about the
dimensions ten to one they know, I mean in the ocean,
they make them shorter and fatter like you should basically
like you would normally.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Man, I gotta just tell you a little deal about that.
When we used to hunt ducks right at like Sugar Island,
Nivish Island, and the Saint Mary's River, you have your
ducks out, you have your decoys out eighteen inches of water.
One of them sons of bitches that come by push
first off. All of a sudden, your ducks are in
thirty six inches of water. When that passes and the
water comes in, your decoys are laying in the mud

(31:30):
when it fills back in.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
And that's just when those these big old ships are
putting through.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
Yeah, your decoys are in the mud. And also they come.

Speaker 6 (31:37):
Back, come right back up.

Speaker 1 (31:39):
If you were a fix but I would never guess.
That's only seventy five feet wide.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
It's crazy. They look like bigger than God, but they are.

Speaker 6 (31:46):
It's seven hundred feet tall.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
You said, well, it's seven nine feet long. Oh long long?
Gotcha the Detroitment of Sound Center, if you know where
that is. They got the four shorter buildings in the
tall one. It's the tallst building between Toronto and Chicago.
It is seven hundred and thirty feet seventy three story
story skyscraper. That's the phrase I need Steven, thank you,
But only seventy five feet wide. And again, if your shipbuilder,

(32:10):
and these guys were great shipbuilders, you got three criteria. One,
haul as much cargo as you can, because that's how
you make money. Two fit the damn thing through the
SEU lots because they're only seventy five feet wide. As
that's the limit right there.

Speaker 1 (32:23):
Like that sets the ship's design.

Speaker 2 (32:24):
And that's exactly what they did. They were one foot
of one and no inches on the other. I mean
this is maxed out. Uh. And then of course the
third thing is handle rough seas well. If you're a
shipping company, what you can't do all three? Guess which
two you're picking? Yeah, So these things are very porty
designed for rough seas. Like I said, you can snap
it between two waves. They roll back and forth, which

(32:46):
is left and right? Hey, you're you're your podcast is
awesome because your guys have been in boats all right,
they've been out fishing and so on. When you're facing waves,
you think smashing the waves is you know, bad with
a v hale. No, it's not. It's broadside that'll screw
you up all right in the stake in the trough, baby,
exactly exactly, Brodie. It's exactly what happens with these ships.

(33:08):
Where do you not want to be in the trough?
And that's what's gonna happen later on. So smashing the
waves sucks. And one of the guys. I got one guy,
Rick Barthouli. You guys would love this guy. He's got
looks a bit like my buddy randall over here. He's
got people, the good people, self educated guy, very smart dogs,
life's hot. Oh hell yeah. So he does not own

(33:31):
a computer, he has not got the internet. All he
has is a cell phone. He's off the grid basically
except for the cell phone. So give me a year
to find this guy, another year to convince him to
talk to me. He's the last guy left, to my knowledge,
of anybody on the Arthur Anderson that night, which is
one hour behind the Fits taking the same route, and
they're the ones communicating back and forth. She's as close
as we can get to what's it like to be
on this thing? And he says, you know, you think

(33:52):
you're smashing this wave. Unless you've been on one of
these ships, you have no idea what this is like.
Every wave is a train wreck. It goes bang bang
bang bang bang bang, as it kind of crunches down
and then it stretches out again. Then it goes bang
bang bang bang, bang bang bang, And that's forty eight
seconds twenty foot waves. You ain't sleeping, there's no way.
And they got thirty and forty foot waves. So that's
how they designed them, and it's ten by one. It's crazy.

Speaker 3 (34:15):
Has that design changed since then?

Speaker 2 (34:17):
Not? No, no, because the SEU locks haven't changed. And
they're finishing another one, the first one since nineteen sixty eight.
They're doing that one right now, and trust me, they're
going to get bigger. Now you've got thousand footers that
are still seventy five foot wide.

Speaker 1 (34:29):
You're kidding me.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
How nuts?

Speaker 6 (34:31):
How deep are they sitting in the water.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
That is a brilliant question. How do you are they
supposed to sit? Or how deep do they sit?

Speaker 1 (34:37):
Loaded? Unloaded?

Speaker 2 (34:39):
So originally the plan was fourteen feet of what's called freeboard.
You guys know what that is. Again, dude, this is
my first podcast, my first interview. I've done thirty or
forty by.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Now with big mariners.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
Yeah, people, Actually, what the hell I expired captain's license.
You're as close as I get rand I'll take your
expired captain's license. Yeah, you guys know what it's all about.
So freeboard is a distance between the water and the
top of your deck and the US Coast Guard and
others ABS have got regulations on this. When the ship
was built nineteen fifty eight, it was allowed fourteen feet

(35:13):
of freeboard and then therefore about twenty five feet below
the water. Yeah, all these things you see those markers,
that is the Plimsaw line. I got a chapped on it.
You're on the Plimsall line. A British politician from the
eighteen forties, who Plimsall? Who made this line and ever
ignored it except Lloyd's of London. The insurance. You know

(35:35):
where I'm going with this one. If you break that law,
we're not paying you a dime. So now all of
a sudden, the equation ship shifted. In the old days,
the guys in England in the eighteen fifties eighteen sixties,
they would overload their ships, take out a ton of insurance,
sink it almost intentionally with crew on board that didn't care,
and collect the money. So this changed all that. So

(35:56):
this is how evil it was. So they were allowed
fourteen feet, and then who knows why, in nineteen sixty nine,
seventy one, and seventy three the regulations changed and allowed
it to go bit by bit from fourteen feet above
the water to only eleven feet above the water. In
the engineer's defense, they didn't design it for that. And
by the way, one inch of taconite, by the way,

(36:16):
is tons one inch cheating the thing. One inch is
millions of dollars of taconite. One inch is.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
That thing just a big tub in the bottomers that
divided in a compartment.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
It's divided into three main cargo holds, and I've heard
stories about guys who fell into those. Back then you
could drink on board and things like this, and drugs
were prevalent. You could guys who fell in and died
while trying to hose it down. So don't drink it.
Hose is my advice on that one. But yes, there's
three gigantic holes. It's most of the seven hundred feet
And I mean I'm standing there two feet away from

(36:49):
these things and it's only like two feet. I mean,
I could easily fall in. So it's one of those
things with tell you don't be an idiot. But yes,
that's a very good question. And they unloaded. Now they've
got sellfonloaders, but back then they scooped it out. So yeah,
so it's a it's a crazy setup, to say the least.

Speaker 1 (37:08):
Let's jump that night a little bit. There, we've kind
of established this run they're making. Oh, I got it.
Before we jump to that night. I got one more.
What are they coming? Are they coming back empty?

Speaker 2 (37:18):
Yes? Every time?

Speaker 1 (37:20):
There's nothing to bring up there nothing.

Speaker 2 (37:21):
To bring up. Well, here's a fun fact for you.
Trains are twice as efficient as trucks, and ships are
three times more efficient than trains. So ships are six
more efficient than trucks. It ain't even close. So you
carry so much on these ships you can afford to
spend three days going to Toledo and come back in
because it doesn't matter anything. You can put out a ship,

(37:42):
you put in a ship. It's just far more efficient.

Speaker 1 (37:45):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
So you're right. And also when you're coming back, you're
righting high. That's when you fill the ballast tanks with
water to give us some If you don't fill with water,
the screws, the propellers, which are thirty feet high, they
won't even touch the water. So you got it. Weigh it?
Oh no, kid, Yeah, you'll just grind it to death,
all right, So so you got to do that. But
when it's right, well, I'm going to photo even land

(38:06):
lubber me, I can tell you when the fits is
loading when it's not, and these guys can tell immediately.

Speaker 1 (38:11):
Got it.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
So you lose ten you know, five ten feet or something.

Speaker 1 (38:15):
So that night or I don't know what time they
take off, presumably they don't take off at night, but
they take it.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
They take them whenever they take off. Trust me, they.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
Take off knowing there's like like what is their awareness
of the weather, like what is the what is the
forecast when they take off?

Speaker 2 (38:29):
Might be a genius exactly right. The two problems they
had back.

Speaker 1 (38:32):
Then, that's a stretch. But I know that.

Speaker 6 (38:34):
I actually like the positive vibes in the room right now.

Speaker 1 (38:38):
But I just know the wind.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
That's rare.

Speaker 1 (38:40):
Now I know the wind and the wires made a tattletale.
Soith fully loaded.

Speaker 3 (38:45):
He doesn't pay any attention to the weather when we're
in Alaska.

Speaker 1 (38:51):
But now what the forecast is, I'll say, let's go
have a look.

Speaker 2 (38:58):
You fit right in on this ship. So here's what happens.
And you guys, your listeners got to.

Speaker 1 (39:04):
Know the weather.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
You gotta wash the weather. And one of my guys,
his dad was also a Great Lakes captain. He said
when the weather came on, and I'm a kid in Cleveland.
Everyone shut the hell up. And because that will determine
if your dad and your dad is listening like this.
I didn't get that until I got in the ship.
And the weather's why you come home or why you don't.
Now in this case, the gales of November, it's like

(39:25):
the hurricane season in Florida. When is that in September?
Because the water's warm and the air is cool, the
water wants to rise. When you boil water and you're
stove at home, it evaporates, it rises right because it
wants to join the cold there and so on. It
happens in November. On the Great Lakes, November is notoriously dangerous.
November tenth is the most dangerous day on the Great Lakes.

Speaker 1 (39:44):
Really, Oh yeah, and they and it's really worse than January.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
It's worse than December. It's worse than January because by
then winter has arrived and the water and the air
get along. They're not in contrast. So it's when they're fighting.
You get waves. So and on top of that, and
you're right about the forecast. So a few things happened.
One it's seventy degree and November ninth, the day they
take off at two o'clock in the afternoon, it's seventy
degrees into Luth. Wow, and it ain't supposed to be

(40:10):
seven degrees into Luth. All right, you think that's great news,
it's bad news for they learned doing this book and
the experts. The longer winter takes to arrive, the nastier
it shows up. It's like water behind a dam, and
the more water you get when that dam finally breaks,
the worst it's gonna be. So seventy degrees on Sunday
is really bad news.

Speaker 1 (40:27):
Just too warm. Water is too warm.

Speaker 2 (40:29):
Water's too warm, and the airs, the air switches. It's
gonna be It's gonna happen fast and nasty. Isn't that
like this year everything's been real hot up there. Yeah, basically,
but exactly right, Krinn. And if it happens suddenly, these
guys will know better.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
Yeah, the Great Lakes are big enough they'll create their
own weather.

Speaker 2 (40:46):
They actually do. And what the what these guys told
me that you have far away storms and the ocean,
as I said earlier, and the Great Lakes are called
locally occurring storms, which means the damn thing right over
your head. So you're fishing in the morning and you're,
you know, rowing for your dear life. Two hours later,
it happens very fast. So win is gonna come from
alberta clipper from obviously Western Canada, across the Dakotas Minnesota,

(41:11):
and that's gonna run all the way across three hundred
and fifty miles of fetch. And you guys know what
fetches across Lake Superior. That's nasty, cold, dry air. They knew,
they expected that. Basically, they didn't know how bad. They
did not know about another storm. They should have. Some
of the guys didn't know about this in the weather
forecasting business. A hot, wet air coming in from California, Texas, Oklahoma,

(41:32):
Iowa straight up to the Green Lakes. These two storms
are gonna meet right in front of Whitefish Bay, your
old fishing spot. White Fish Bay is home Plate. That's
where you're trying to get to. After two days getting
across Lake Superior. Now you've got it's like a catcher
in front of home plate, blocking your way home. And
this captain does not know that. So that's tragic. And

(41:53):
then what happens, So he does know is in for
a storm. So he and Bernie Cooper, Arthur Anderson their buddies.
But they're still competing, of course, to get there first.
And why to compete. If you beat a ship by
a minute, you beat him by a couple hours, because
you will get to the sua locks first, only one
ship at a time. You will get to the dock first,
you unload first. That's four or five hours a minute

(42:14):
is can be a half a day.

Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (42:15):
So these guys are competitive dudes to say the least,
but they still like but they still get along.

Speaker 1 (42:20):
Yeah, but they still come together. Is it just coincidence
that they're sailing together, No.

Speaker 2 (42:25):
It's not. They're talking to each other and early on
around four or five o'clock on Sunday, they say, you
know what, this thing's pretty nasty. Let's take the northern route.
And normally he'd never do that. And mcsorty was the
best captain on the Great Lakes captain when he's thirty
one years old. He's the youngest captain of the Great Lakes.
When he became a captain at thirty one. Now he's
sixty three. He's been a captain more than half his life.

(42:47):
He's the most aggressive captain. He never turns around, he
never takes the northern route, he never weighs anchor, He
just goes, goes, goes. So the company likes that he's
the best in rough weather. They all say. Got a witness,
Craig Sillivan, who's on the ship in seventy two. He said,
I saw that man park seven hundred and twenty nine
feet of steel between two other freighters with three feet
into your side and not touch a damn thing, like

(43:08):
you're parking your your parallel parking your Ford f one fifty.
This man was the best, and he's also beloved, which
those guys were not back then. These guys would throw
hot coffee at you, yell at cadets, and all the
kinds of other stuff. They're tyrants. Basically, this guy was
so beloved his crew would follow him from ship to ship.
So you have the best ship in the Great Lakes,
the longest, the fastest, the most luxurious. How about that,

(43:29):
the best food they had.

Speaker 1 (43:31):
They had air conditioning in their bunks.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
They had air conditioning in nineteen fifty eight. Homes didn't
have that.

Speaker 1 (43:37):
Those are like leather furniture and something leather.

Speaker 2 (43:39):
Furniture, two VIP quarters for the rich folks, the people
who write the checks, the National Steel US steel Ford
Motor Company to entertain those guys. Because you want the
best captain of the Great Lakes, you want the best
crew in the Great Lakes, and you want the most money.
That's how you get it. So it was not wasted money.
So mccerley, here's a more heartbreaking stuff. They're supposed to
end the season the week before tax on one more

(44:00):
trip to get his bonus. Why his wife, Nellie is
sick in Toledo. She's got cancer. We think. I'm not
tiredly sure about that, but I've got some witnesses on that.
So she's already in twenty four our care. She might
be able to pull through. So this trip is for
her healthcare. And he's about to retire. So normally he'd
never take the northern route, but he's thinking, who the
hell's gonna fire me? Go ahead?

Speaker 3 (44:23):
What was the advantage of taking the northern route?

Speaker 2 (44:25):
Smart man Brody?

Speaker 1 (44:26):
Uh, good job.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
A few things. One, they normally go straight across Lake
Superior south as you can. This is straight as land possible.
By taking the northern route, you get the lee of
the Canadian shore. And you guys know what lee is.
There are twenty terms I've used tonight that I could
not use last night. If you're in a bookstore in
the walk here in Minnesota, you better explain a lot

(44:49):
of stuff. So this is Mike, this is my gang.
So you get the lee of the Western Shore, the
Northern Shore. You're basically hugging Canada across Superior. Now a
few catches to that, though. One is the safe, rational
thing to do. So I'm not one of those ones
that Dublin mcstorians say, screwed the holding up. That's a
rational move, but a few catches one one of the yours.

(45:10):
You already know it's pay me now or pay me later.
So okay, the first two legs are quieter and softer,
not as windy and so on. But that third leg's
gonna be hell because now you're exposed. You have three
hundred fifty feet three hundred fifty miles of fetch and
now those waves are hitting you broadside. This is the
you're in your bathub and this is the drain, and
go ahead, make some waves. What's gonna happen at the end.
It's being nasty at that end. So and you're gonna

(45:32):
be hitting those broad side. That's not what you want.
All right, your last leg that's gonna be about ten hours.
That's one problem. Second problem is it's fourteen hours longer
than the straight shot. All right, you just gave that
Southern storm a fourteen hour head start to get to
Whitefish Bay first. And I pose it in the book.

Speaker 1 (45:48):
This is the captain's call completely like he's going a
unilateral that's what's happening.

Speaker 2 (45:53):
Not a democracy devotes one nothing in all decisions. You
might consult, and he did, but it's one nothing and
you are therefore response for all decisions. Another guy out
that night on the pikes, he said, this is too nasty.
And this is one of the best captains in the
Great Lakes, also probably the best at forecasting. And he says,
we're tucking in, we're going to go into the bay,
and his crew is warning him and ride it out.

(46:14):
And his crew is warning him, sir, if you do, captain,
you if you do that and there's no storm, it
can be your ass with Cleveland, with the company. So
those the pros and cons you deal with. Now m
Sworney only cares. This is his last trip. So anyway,
so fourteen hours. Here's the third problem. He does not
know this route nearly as well. He takes the southern
route fifty times a year, really, one hundred back and forth.

(46:37):
He's done that his entire career, forty years at least,
he's done this thousands of times. He knows all the islands,
he knows all the stuff out there, and the currents
and everything else. He does not know this. I had
two guys on the ship that year and they said,
we didn't take it in the last year and a half,
not once in the northern route. God, why does that matter?
It's Superior, it's thirteen hundred feet deep, it's gigantic. Not quite.

(46:59):
It's a little crappy pileo dirt called Caribo Island in
the northeast corner of Lake Superior. Right when you take
that final stretch down it's one mile by three mile.
It barely shows up on most maps. It's called Carib Island.
I have no idea.

Speaker 1 (47:13):
Why well, can I interject?

Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah? And by the way, it's your show.

Speaker 1 (47:17):
Historically, here's the crazy part. Like Isle Royal, yes, being
a wolf Moose Island, Yes, historically was a Caribou Lynx Island.

Speaker 2 (47:28):
I did not know that. Yeah. Isle Royal is the
nation's biggest I'm sorry, it's the nation's only island national
park and it's ten times the size of Manhattan, but
no one knows that.

Speaker 3 (47:39):
So there's caribou up there, like after nineteen hundred.

Speaker 1 (47:44):
Yeah, in Maya in the modern like in like modern America. Yeah,
during American history there was a caribouo Lynx Island.

Speaker 2 (47:52):
That was news to me. And by the way, it's
the first show also that I learned something.

Speaker 1 (47:56):
Oh, you can go there.

Speaker 5 (47:58):
You can hike up on a mountain on Isle Row
and you can look at the biggest island in the
biggest lake, on the biggest island in the biggest lake.

Speaker 2 (48:05):
That's in the book. It's a iroh is so big
ten times it says Manhattan. It's got a lake in
the island with an island with a lake. Been there,
There you go, Randall see it with my own eyes.
There you go, And they use ira Oyl that's part
of the lee. They go just south of Ale Royal
to get that protection. The word normally the.

Speaker 6 (48:24):
Worst boat right I've ever been on was getting to.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
Ale Royal on the on the Ranger three.

Speaker 6 (48:29):
From the from International Falls side.

Speaker 2 (48:31):
Oh god, that's brutal.

Speaker 5 (48:33):
And and yeah, I've never been seasick before.

Speaker 1 (48:36):
I was seasick on that.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
All right, we're getting pretty serious here. Here's the thing
they used to do. The guys on those ships who
work in those ships. I talked to one of those guys.
I had to cut the damn thing. But this will
be fun for you guys. I remember denty Moore, Hunter
Stu and all that stuff. I think one guy would
start acting like he's sick with five foot waves, five
waves enough get these campers to sick. He had some
denty more and he also go and spill the stuff,

(48:59):
and it's other buddy comes by and go, oh my god.
He'd have a spoon and he started eating it. And
that of course the campers, the poor campers that they
see that they're over the side.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
So okay, So yeah, Caribou Island, it's quite all.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
Right because we needed that left and I will never
get another chance of my life to tell that story.
So so Caribou Island. It's one mile by three mile.
It's called Caber Island. I have no idea. It's in
a swamp with Mosquitos. It's nasty. The caribou left. If
they're around there, they swam across the Canada long ad.
It's no reason to go there. But in front of it,

(49:36):
to the north, it's six fathoms shoal. You guys know
what a fathom is. My other folks usually don't. It's
six feet. Six fathoms is therefore thirty six feet. If
you're drafting twenty nine feet on a good day, and
this is not a good day, you have no reason
to be anywhere near this nothing to gain. But it's
awesome as leading. It's not six fathoms. In some places
it's eleven feet. That's no deeper than your backyard pool.

(49:58):
So you have no reason to be anywhere near this thing.
Why would he come anywhere near it?

Speaker 1 (50:01):
Got it?

Speaker 2 (50:02):
The storm now is seventy mile per hour winds, thirty
foot waves is pretty nasty. Not quite the worst he's
ever seen. But getting there, his long radars knocked out,
his short radars knocked out by waves by waves, exactly right,
thank you. And Whitefish Point and you've seen that lighthouse
is the one lighthouse on the Great Lakes. Everyone's dying
to see that light. Of course, goes out that night.
The radio beacon that signals the ships where you are

(50:25):
also goes out. Why the storm, I mean seven.

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Storm knocked the lighthouse out.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
Well, Domino start falling your power out and just dumb
luck in some cases. So there they are. So now
you have truly sailing blind. All you have are what
they call charts and we call maps. And it's about
as big as this table. It seems like four by five.
They're huge. And in these in the chart room because
these organic drawers. One says Lake here on one says

(50:52):
Lake Ontario. I mean you pull out six or seven
per Lake. Now, if you're old enough and you kids
have no idea how I'm talking about, but Triple A
used to gives them called a triptick, all right, and
put all your maps on a trip, all in an order.
So if I'm going from Michigan to Montana, I would
know how to do it. And it works pretty well.
That's how these maps work. But if you skip ahead,
you're screwed because now nothing makes sense. So if he

(51:14):
does not know where he is, Tom Wider a great hunter. Also,
by the way, it's also a sea captain in the
Great Lakes. He said, it's entirely possible he would have
changed maps too soon. You're in thirty foot waves. You've
not slept in thirty six hours. You get what's called
motion fatigue. That is like being drunk after thirty six
hours these waves, and you've not taken this route in years.

(51:37):
If he shifted his map too soon, all right, to
get whitefish ban in the map, because that's where he
wants to go. All right. The Cariber area is still there,
but it now disappears because the scale has changed, so
you might not be aware of anywhere near this. And
the Anderson is convinced that they saw them on the
radar go right over six fathom and shoal. If they did,

(51:57):
it would explain why. Two hours later, he's talking to
Bernie Coop, that is the captain of the Memphis Gerald
I McK sorely saying, my fence railings down, I've got
two vent covers blown off by the waves, a few
other problems, and in kind of in passing, I've got
a list. All right, you guys know what that means.
That's my thirtieth term I don't have to define to
you guys, but tilting to the right to starboard all right,

(52:19):
not that big a deal at first. Two hours later,
it's the first thing that he mentions. And these guys
are very reluctant to admit anything is wrong with their
ships for a few reasons. One, they're in competition. You
don't put anything on the radio, you don't have to.
Second of all, the whole matra aspect. Man, we've all
been on planes. We're experiencing little turbulence here. People. Yeah,
we're going bounce up and down two undred feet. We'll

(52:40):
be okay here in just a few minutes. That's what
these guys are like. So for him to admit this
much is very unusual. So now you've got a pretty
serious list. What does that mean? It means either taking
water from the bottom or the load has shifted, or
possibly both. And if they bottomed out at six fathom
the shoal, that could be the reason. Once you've starboard,
all right, you can't steer.

Speaker 1 (53:00):
And he had mentioned we hit.

Speaker 2 (53:02):
Here's the bizarre part. And I could not believe this either,
But I had ten experts tell me it's true. You
might not have known, And I thought that's impossible.

Speaker 1 (53:10):
Something enough to put a hole through that thing a sandstone.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
It's sandstone, for crying out loud. This is hard, hard stuff,
and you got a hard hardship. How could you not
know that? And I talked to experienced captains saying, the
waves are so nasty, like I said, they're a train
wreck that you can't tell the difference between the train
wreck of a good wave and one guy the badger
that runs from Muskegan.

Speaker 1 (53:31):
To uh exactly, man's right.

Speaker 2 (53:34):
That's right, will see is the captain of that ship?

Speaker 1 (53:37):
He said.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
I was leaving the breakwater one time, and the waves
are so nasty. I thought I hit the breakwater. I
had not, And I didn't know this stuff worked like that.
It does, so even a good captain cannot be aware.
So whether tore hole or scraped it or whatever, we're
not quite sure. But anyway, now you're listing. If you're listing,
you can't steer properly. You're much more in danger of
capsizing when you're going broadside and like a three leg

(54:01):
an animal in the wild. And you guys know what
those are like. All right, one good wave now can
take you out. And when it reaches the point that
they didn't want to be in. As I said earlier,
the worst place, the worst time, one hundred miles prior
wins and up to sixty foot waves. And at some
point the ship probably didn't come back up. We don't know,
but that's the best guest.

Speaker 1 (54:24):
The best guess right now is that it hit Did
it hit something.

Speaker 2 (54:29):
That I think if you're asking me, I know, like.

Speaker 1 (54:32):
I understanding that no one really knows, but like, where's
sort of the all right, let's get let's go sort
of like academic consensus.

Speaker 2 (54:38):
There is none, but I can tell you this some
new data in here. Dick Race, there's a name for you.
He's the best diver in the Great Lakes. He died
in two thousand and two when a seven forty seven
went in, Like Michigan in the sixties. He's the guy
who found it when no one else could. The lakes
are bigger than you think. He worked at the Chicago
Police Department and he did his own work. He's the

(54:59):
best in the lake. Three guys who knew him well
also the same thing. The company asked him to dive
down six months later on six to five of them shoal, yeah,
look for a strike, look for a strike, exactly right, Steven,
and wherever that report is, by the way, I found
the guy Peter grow was in charge of a thousand
boxes bankers boxes of that company's files when I went

(55:20):
bankrupt in two thousand and four. He spent two years
going through all these files. He found every box and
went through them all except for three, the three involving
the ed Memphis Gerald, and no one signed him out.
There's no trace. That's where his report is. I'm almost
sure of it, and I couldn't find it. Dick Race
reported on this, So his file is gone. We don't
know where it is. And I tried like a hell
to find it. But he told three different guys in Chicago,

(55:43):
Travers City, Muskegan the exact same thing. I saw the
Fitzgerald's paint on that bottom.

Speaker 1 (55:48):
I saw a rock.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Nearby with scratches that no animal can make. That had
to be from the ship. So is that proof?

Speaker 3 (55:56):
There wasn't like when they found the there was like
no like autopsy they could do on the wreckage.

Speaker 2 (56:03):
Yes and no. And it gets us closer to it,
but it's not definitive. Yeah. But anyway, So at seven
o'clock when Bernie Cooper calls him and he's the captain
of the Anderson, and he says, how are you making
out with your problems? He says an quote, we are
holding our own And that is the ringing line from
Captain MCSORTI. Those the last words from anybody on board.

(56:24):
Whatever happened next one thing we say that people academically
even agree on whatever happened was fast. And what's our
proof on that this guy is the best captain of
the great Legs. If he had ten seconds to get
out an SOS with coordinates, he sure as hell would
have done it. This guy's good, all right. The lifeboats
were secured, the life jackets were where they left them.

(56:44):
Only one guy we've seen in the bottom is wearing
a life jacket. So whatever happened happened very fast. They say,
when thirty five miles per hour down to the bottom,
it might have cracked on top.

Speaker 1 (56:54):
If there's a guy on the bottom wearing a life jacket, Yes,
how com we didn't float.

Speaker 2 (56:59):
Because he's inside the inside the Uh, they're all inside
the ship, understood. Oh they are yep, somewhere in the
pilot house and somewhere in the engine room and no
one's in the middle. So is that right? Yeah, we
don't want to be in the middle. Not that, not
that it worked out well anyway.

Speaker 1 (57:14):
But how deep did it? How deep did it?

Speaker 2 (57:16):
Here's the weird part, so kind of an academic question.
Did it crack on the surface as other ships had
or did it crack after it hit And a lot
of people say it cracked on the surface, And again
can't prove it either way. But here's a wild stat
for you. It's down five hundred and thirty feet deep.
Now you better you know you can't dive down there
for the hell of it. You better know what you're doing,
special gear, you know, license people, submersibles, all that stuff.

(57:39):
So it's five hundred thirty feet down. But this ship
is seven hundred and twenty nine feet long, So even
if it hits the bout, you have two hundred feet
out outside the water. Crazy, all right, So that would
certainly have cracked it at that point put all the
weight on it. So either one could have happened. And
I can't say.

Speaker 1 (57:57):
That's yeah, I never thought of. It's taller than it
is deep.

Speaker 2 (58:01):
And it's five hundred and thirty feet deep.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
How far are the two pieces apart?

Speaker 2 (58:05):
About a quarter mile about like that, and in between
it's like one third the bow upright, so you can
see the Memphis Gerald on the side, one third the
stern upside down. So we see in the book ed
Memphiserald upside down, which is sad to see. In the
middle is about a third and it's just blown apart
and the attack and it is still down there, so

(58:25):
and and all twenty men as well. And the line
from the song the chip Awad comes from a Newsweek story.
But Gordon Lightfoot got the great lick the great Lake
never gives up her dead. What that means is if.

Speaker 1 (58:37):
The lake, it is said, never gives up her dead.

Speaker 2 (58:40):
You think by now I'd be a nice pant on
this stuff. But this guy's got the lyrics exactly right.
Thank you again, doctor, And he's got it. He's right.
The leg it is said, never.

Speaker 1 (58:48):
Dead, honorary doctor.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
I call that a professional. Curtis, thank you. We need
we need a light moments. That's good too. Yeah. The
author of the book, wud paid two thousand dollars for
the rights. Didn't get the lyric right, So thank you
for that. Why is that because if you've drowned in Michigan,
like Michigan like Eerie, almost anywhere you go in the
United States, bacteria will eventually invade your body. And the

(59:09):
bacteria do that. They are lighter than water, so your
body starts floating up. So that's why they float up
within a week or two, usually in drownings. Fishermen included
on the Great Lakes. I'm sorry. On Lake Superior. You're
so far down, it's dark all day long, it's pitch black,
it's so cold. Bacteria can't live there. There's a sterile
down there. It is sterile. Bacteria do not live down there.

(59:31):
Almost nothing lives down there. So bacteria never invade your body.
So these bodies hate to get grim. They do not
decompose in the normal way. They're still largely recognizable.

Speaker 1 (59:41):
But what has been the argument, Why haven't the families
wanted to Why haven't the families wanted to bring up
the remains of their relatives.

Speaker 2 (59:54):
One of them did for a while until she found
out her she's an only child, also deb Shampa or
two days go to Milwaukee. She's a sixteen year old
girl when her dad's ship goes down, and they're very
close at first. She wanted to and his brother was
in Vietnam. And here's a little story he's thirteen years
old in the Great Depression when his dad dies suddenly.
He's the oldest of five kids. What do you do

(01:00:16):
if you're in rural If you're in rural Wisconsin, at
that point, you drop out of school and you start working.
These guys are tough dudes. So he paid for his
kid and your brothers to get through school. He joins
the military, sense checks back. He was decorated himself, gets
in a ship, makes good money, and gives the money
back to his family. But he always promises his brother
in Vietnam, if anything ever happens to you, I will
go to Vietnam and I will bring you back. And

(01:00:36):
he said that more than once. So when this ship
goes down, his brother wants to do the same thing.
I want to go down and bring you back. But
deb Champeaux realize, a it's very dangerous. They've made three drives,
three dives down there no accidents, but it's very dangerous
to do that stuff. Two the other people are also
on the ship, and she said in the Marines, you
never leave your men. So that was the ethos of

(01:00:57):
leaving the guys on the ship. So they all agree
they're not going to come up and they're all basically
entombed there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:03):
Essentially, they're all accounted for that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:08):
I can't say for sure, well I can, because by
now something would have happened. All twenty nine men are
on one side of the other. You would never be
in the middle of that ship anyway.

Speaker 1 (01:01:16):
But I'm just conditions were such that no one could
be No one would be on deck. It'd be like
laughable deck.

Speaker 2 (01:01:23):
Exactly, and laughable is right, and no no fence railing
even on top of.

Speaker 1 (01:01:27):
That, and so fast that no one ever attempted to like,
no lifeboats ever washed ashore.

Speaker 2 (01:01:33):
The lifeboats dead, but only if they popped out on
their way down.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
I see.

Speaker 2 (01:01:37):
And these things were destroyed.

Speaker 1 (01:01:38):
Okay, but no sign that someone had taken any kind
of steps to do that.

Speaker 2 (01:01:42):
The one life jacket is the only time we have
that anybody felt that, you know, doom was apparent. These
guys usually didn't wear life jackets. Some of these guys
couldn't swim. It seems crazy to me, but coast got
ever tested for it. And Ransom Condy, there's a name
for you. The nickname was Handsome Ransom Condy. He told
us daughter. All he does is prolonged the agony. So

(01:02:03):
these guys and yeah, you have ten minutes in net
water anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:02:06):
Kind of a fatal It's like, God, why bother kind
of thing?

Speaker 2 (01:02:09):
That's what that was the that was the mindset.

Speaker 1 (01:02:11):
So it's it's it's assumed that the men drown.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
Yes, I think proven basically, h so fast I answer
your question. I don't think anyone's gone down there and
counted the head count kind of the the dead.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
What was going on with the other captain?

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Uh, he was fighting for his life, of course, thirty
forty footers, but he was not quite in as bad
a place. He's an hour behind.

Speaker 3 (01:02:36):
Did he also take he did take the northern.

Speaker 2 (01:02:39):
The northern route. Yeah, and he's another aggressive guys. This
is unusual, but his radars working, so they certainly avoided
Careb Island. They got a map in there showing the
two routes they took. Man, they took a wide swing
around that whole thing. He told his wheelsman, we ain't
coming anywhere near this thing, right, I mean, I don't
want to see it. And with there's no reason to.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
Coming near the six fathom shoal exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:03:03):
That's that's death without an SOS call. He realizes that
something's awry when assuming I mean he loses contact, he
doesn't get any response on the radio or I mean
Bernie Cooper And at what point, at what point do
they realize something's happened.

Speaker 2 (01:03:21):
They come to it slowly because again he's fighting for
his life. Yeah, he's an hour behind. So the worst
of it lasts about an hour. And that's where the
Fitzgerald was. It's still bad when he comes through thirty
forty foot or whatever. But so he's keeping unmonitored, but
you only check it in every half an hour of
an hour. But he loses them on the radar. That
concerns him, but that's possible, that can happen. Then he

(01:03:43):
tells his guys the power might have gone out on
the ship, which does happen. The electrical systems can pop out.
But after an hour he realized this is not right,
so he calls the coast Guard. And I hate to
be critical of the coast Guard. These guys have saved
thousands of lives, and I got many of them in
the book. These guys risk their own lives, very very good.
But the seue Locks Coast Guard station did not come

(01:04:03):
through that night. They had two ships that did not
go out.

Speaker 1 (01:04:07):
And the guy wouldn't It wouldn't have mattered.

Speaker 2 (01:04:10):
It wouldn't have mattered, but you gotta be ready.

Speaker 1 (01:04:12):
But anyway, no, I understand the criticism. I'm saying, it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:04:16):
No, it was im material. You're dead right, Yeah, no,
punt intend it's sorry. But the captain Cooper of the
Anderson calls the Sioux group in in the seue locks
and talking to a petty officer branch. This guy's young buck,
and he asked Cooper to go from channel sixteen to
channel twelve because channel sixteen is for emergencies. He's reporting

(01:04:39):
the memphistial being missing. Is there a greater emergency than that?
I mean, what's even close? This guy's just not getting it,
and Cooper's trying to get through to them, Hey, I
think the ship is missing. When they finally get the
white Fish Bay at nine o'clock at night, he's certain
that it's gone. There's no reason why we wouldn't pass him.
It wouldn't be in home.

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
What time did the ship break apart?

Speaker 2 (01:04:58):
Seven o'clock ten somewhere in there, and that time of
you're dark. Oh yeah, absolutely, it's been dark for a
while at that point, it's like four point thirty, you
know that area. So the petty officer Branch testifies a
few days later and asks to explain himself his various responses,
and he says, I thought it was important, but at
that time not urgent, and I can't explain that answer.

(01:05:21):
So it doesn't Again, it didn't matter as far as
what happened on It's still that's a Cooper's dealing with.
When they get to Whitefish Bay, they've not even weighed anchor,
and coastguard says, can you go back out and look
for the Fitzgerald.

Speaker 1 (01:05:36):
So it says to who, Cooper of the Anderson want
to take a iron ore freighter and go look for it? Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:05:42):
And you just got in like this, yeah, skin of
your teeth. You're happy to be alive, and so is
the crew. It's the worst home he's ever seen his
entire career. And they ask him before you even drop
anchor to go back out, and you're like, I said.

Speaker 1 (01:05:54):
To take a loaded freighter out six hundred.

Speaker 2 (01:05:57):
Feet some oh, I was actually longer at that point,
seven hundred.

Speaker 1 (01:06:00):
What the hell is he supposed to do?

Speaker 2 (01:06:02):
It's I just gave a shrug for the radio. It's
a fool's mission. And they know damn well that you
don't lose seven hundred twenty nine feet of steal. It's
a fool's mission. They know that. But and the Bradley
in fifty eight and the Morrell in sixty six, great
first person testimony we've got in the book from the guys.

(01:06:22):
There are three guys in one raft and four guys
another raft, and end up being two and one because
the guys died on the raft and stayed on the raft.
They didn't have the energy to throw them over at
that point, at these horrible wrecks, and they said, we're freezing.
We have no energy to even grab a rope by
the time they get us. What kept us going? You know,
we're dying and so on. The only thing that kept
us going was the thin thread of hope that's somewhere

(01:06:44):
out there is some guy in the coast Guard or
somewhere else who's willing to risk his life to save mine,
because you can't save my life any other way without
risking yours. And Coastguard guys die doing this stuff, I mean,
other guys die too many examples, of course, so coast
Guard does that in a regular basis. That's what these
guys did. And I asked Rick Bartholey, who's a twenty
two year old guy in that ship. I said, what

(01:07:04):
do you think at the time? He said, we knew
it was a dumb idea, and we knew there could
be two ships in the bottom before we're done. And
that's exactly what Cooper tells the Coastguard. We could double
the accident at this point, he said, but we didn't
think twice because we knew they would do it for us.
And that is the Sailor's Code. And the chapter called
the Sailor's Code. All the American ships went out, and

(01:07:24):
all the ocean ships stayed in port because once again
the Salty's learned that the Great Lakes are scarier than
the ocean. So those guys are heroes to me.

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
When you say that the other the captain of the
other ship, you kind of answered this, but it's what
come back on it. The cat you use the term
of the captain dealership was fighting for his life, yes,
like did he later describe describe it like that? I mean,
did he feel like he was in a life death situation?

Speaker 2 (01:07:51):
I should have the thing. I got my pdf my computer.
How about that for a non Fiserald response, I can
find exact quote when the coastguard captain tells him to
go out. He we have his quotes and what he said,
where's that damn thing? Is right there? I'll get in
a second. He said, do you know? Do you know

(01:08:12):
what the conditions are like out there? And the guy
doesn't answer, and Cooper says, again, do you know what
the conditions are like out there? And again he doesn't answer,
and I said, he didn't answer, but we can. He
had no idea because even on shore with twenty footers
going over your building on shore, if you weren't out there,
you'd have no idea. And so Cooper knows this guy's
asking a lot and he has no idea what he's

(01:08:33):
asking for. But they didn't. He didn't even stop and think,
I mean, you didn't like it, but you gotta go.
And these guys are different breed.

Speaker 6 (01:08:43):
How long were they out there?

Speaker 2 (01:08:44):
About fourteen hours? Because that's all it takes to go
to make a loop.

Speaker 1 (01:08:48):
And the scary loaded with all But that's the thing
that I keep, I know, I keep coming back, was
like loaded with all that iron orange shit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:53):
Yeah, you can't drop it first and go back out.
That's that's part of your problem. I mean his history board.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
Do you're gonna it's crazy, do what like throw some ropes,
like you're gonna try to pull up along You're gonna
try to pull that thing up alongside a life raft.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
I guess, And they have in the past. They would try,
but it would work. I mean, I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
It also could be as much about like confirming and
recovering bodies, and.

Speaker 1 (01:09:20):
Or you'd find it a drift. I guess.

Speaker 2 (01:09:22):
Yeah. And they found debris, they found the lifeboats. Those
things were steel, not aluminum. Even Arthur Anderson's lifeboat was
destroyed by a wave, and Arthur described it, it's like
taking a pop can, stepping on it and taking a
hacksaw through it. That's what our lifeboat looked like. And
again made of steel, not of aluminum. But the way
they dreaded, they're going back out in the seas and

(01:09:43):
it's still bad and you're smashing into those waves. That's
not the scary part. The scary part is the turnaround, turnaround.
You have to pick the right wave to turn around
in to go into the trough.

Speaker 3 (01:09:53):
Yeah, and it takes fifteen minutes for those things.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Around exactly fifteen minutes, take an hour. Yeah, these things
they're not that. They're sixteen miles hours and they're big
and slow. So you got to And I talked to
captains about this. It's dark, you can't pick the right wave.
It's too dark to see, like you're saying earlier. So
just making that turnaround. And Barthuli, who's not an emotional guy,
he said, trust me. When we got back into Whitefish

(01:10:18):
Bay the second time, there's a lot of guys who
became very religious. Yes, who had they come to Jesus
moment on your way back, so they knew how bad
it was. So those guys were impressive. The ocean guys
did not go out, as I said earlier. John Hayes
had sailed in both twenty three years the Great Lakes
and twelve on the Ocean. He said, the Great Lakes

(01:10:39):
and the Ocean, it ain't even close. And anybody who's
sailed both will tell you the same thing. The Salty's
always laughed at us until they got in the Great Lakes.
Then they shut up pretty damn fast and started looking
for safe harbor and that night a half dozen American
Canadian ships went out and all the salteast stayed in bay.
So that's the difference.

Speaker 3 (01:11:00):
Has there anything comparable happened since then?

Speaker 2 (01:11:04):
Rody? Great question, And by the way, this is the
best damn interview I've had to check. I ad my
ignorance I had been my ignorance about the media to podcast.
I'm not kidding you. I'm getting the best questions. That's
been very impressive. So six thousand shipwrecks between eighteen seventy
five and nineteen seventy five. From November tenth, nineteen seventy

(01:11:25):
five to the present, almost exactly fifty years, zero not one.
So you go from six thousand in the century to
zero for fifty years? And why is that? Just what
you said Steven earlier? Forecasting is better. They're also taking
it more seriously. Communication. Don't just know the information, tell
the captain, and tell the captain on a regular basis
what they're in for today. So they had more technology

(01:11:48):
back then. And one of my experts said, when do
you fix anything when it's broken? All right? Nine to eleven.
We're complacent. We got smart about certain things, but we
could have done things then to be smarter. Of course,
same thing here. But the biggest change I believe since
then is simple common sense. The author photo there on
the back is me at Whitefish Point. This is November

(01:12:08):
eleventh of last year of twenty twenty four, the day
after the anniversary. I spoke with the families the night before.
I'm looking at about thirty to forty mile prior wins there.
I don't want too happy about ten foot waves every
single ship that day. In my computer program on my
phone shows this. Every single ship was anchored in Whitefish Bay.
And I guarantee you in the old days, not one.

(01:12:31):
And if you're anchoring, you're fired. You're not going to
make it or ridiculed at least, so way to day,
way to day. The next day in the Lake Superior,
after the ship went down it was glass. Oh you
could have gone out one day later and made up
all your time straight shot. So next part of the tragedy,

(01:12:51):
I'll added the tragedy. Eddie Bindon, forty seven years old,
first assuch An engineer high in the pecking order, handles
the engine been married twenty five years to the lovely Helen.
Her photos in there in Cleveland area more or less.
He about to celebrate the twenty fine Anniversary's about to
retire after this trip as well. He gets from Superior,

(01:13:11):
Wisconsin to Duluth to the jewlier store because Spirit didn't
have one. Apparently, gets a very nice twenty five year
diamond and anniversary ring, and for reasons only he knows,
he does not pack it in his duffel bag. He's
gonna see her in three days. She's gonna be there
on the dock he lived two hours away. He gives
it to a friend and tells his friend to mail

(01:13:32):
this to my wife and gives the address.

Speaker 1 (01:13:34):
That is so wild, though, man.

Speaker 2 (01:13:36):
I cannot explain why he did that, what he thought
any of this, But sure enough, a week later she
gets a ring she wore the rest of her life
and never remarried. But stories like that, those are the
stories that no one's got. So it makes some human beings.
That's that's the most important thing. Man.

Speaker 1 (01:13:58):
Did you feel like when you when you started working
on the book, did you feel it necessary to reach
out to the family members?

Speaker 2 (01:14:04):
Oh? Essential, And it took me about six months to
a year to get to them. I got lucky. The
guy who is the director of The Great Lakes Shipwreck
Museum in Whitefish Point. Bruce Lanne a true class act,
former Army captain, square jot guy, all this good stuff.
He's a big o'house State fan. But he got his
master's agree at Eastern Mischian University in Ipsilanti. So he's

(01:14:24):
hearing me on the radio for years talking about this
stuff and reading my football books, and so and so
I already knew me. Thank god. He read the Halifax
book and we got it along very well. He had
the trust of the families. I did not. He was
their gatekeeper. He keeps all the wackos and the grifters
away from them. But we got along and he told
them to trust me, and without that the book barren accounts,

(01:14:47):
in my opinion, So they trusted me, and that one
worked out very well. They love the book, and I'm
grateful for that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
When we say the like if I say the families,
or if you hear the families, are there? Are there
still twenty nine families? There's some like semi cohesive units
or are some of the families sort of dissolved and.

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
Some have dissolved? Well, Eddie Bendon and his wife Helen
no kids, I see, so there you are, which is
why I feel very.

Speaker 1 (01:15:16):
Good about and she and she's and she's she's deceased.

Speaker 2 (01:15:20):
Okay, I see she was forty seven at the time.

Speaker 1 (01:15:22):
So there's no there's no fa in that case. There's
no family spokes.

Speaker 2 (01:15:26):
Three or four of the cases, they're not a deckhand
who's single. There you go. So in those cases they
ring the bell twenty nine times every anniversary. My son
once rang the bell. He's he was eight at the
time for Eddie Bendon and he wore a suit and tie,
took it very seriously, practiced earlier in the day. We
have pictures of him walking away Tyrian volunteers. Basically, so

(01:15:49):
as through my son, I discovered Eddie Beindon, and then
I found a guy, Patrick Devine, who talked to me
late in the process. He was very reluctant deckhanded on
the ship. Two months earlier. He was replaced by Bruce Hudson.
He's mad about it at the time. He was, Yeah,
it took ten years to get over survivor's guilt and
all this. I mean, he's in a bottle for a while.
As he said, he loved Eddie Bindon. Eddie Bindon was

(01:16:10):
his mentor and his boss and just a great guy.
Knew his stuff and was very kind to him and
protected him. So now Eddie Beindon, you know, we'll know
about Eddie Bindon now at least. So I got to
eat another one. Bruce Hudson. I told you that his
girlfriend's pregnant. Ruth Hudson loses her only child, and I've
got my wife. I'm a late starter. I got a
ten year old kid. My wife has assured me I've

(01:16:31):
got an only child. She was very clear on this.
You've got to and you know who the gate came. Yeah,
well there you go. Who decided that not you? Well
to do that? Well, then no one decided that there
are accents in their accents. We can talk about that
another time, but anyway, uh.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
So, I just to clarify that was our best accident.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
There you go.

Speaker 1 (01:16:54):
Everyone said that genius is a genius moment, the third one, by.

Speaker 2 (01:16:57):
The way, the trailers we call him. Everyone always says
that worth the price of missioned right there. But so
Ruth Hudson, she finds out she's four foot nine and
her mo.

Speaker 1 (01:17:07):
On backup, This is not the girlfriend, this is his mom.
Bruce Hudson's mother, Ruth, thank you for the Claire. She
has one child, one child, She had one child. Her
niece saw her every day, Pam Winning in the same neighborhood.
She's been great to me and thanks for the clarification.

Speaker 2 (01:17:20):
So, Ruth Hudson, she's four foot nine, but she tells
you that she's five foot five, and you believed her.
Apparently she was a little spark plug, just full of
energy and all this she the company called nobody. She
finds out the next day driving to her job at
the Bunny Bell Cosmetic factory in Cleveland. On the radio,
that's yeah, this is this is brutal, this is cruel.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
This is before the time of like contacting next of
kin before you announced.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
No, it was not. You should have proded them immediately.
This is ninety seventy five. The company did not do
what it's supposed to do. So Dennis Anderson channel ten
and du Luth WTL number channel eleven and Toledo. That's
how these people find out and neighbors fight out. They
knocking your ten o'clock at night and tell you that
your dad's ship is gone. Just brutal. So she finds

(01:18:06):
out like that, and she thinks I've lost my family.
This is you know, we're a coupled with one child.
She finds out six months later that she's gonna be
a grandmother.

Speaker 1 (01:18:15):
Six months later. The person ever thought to make the connection.

Speaker 2 (01:18:19):
No, the seventeen year old girl at the time, twenty
year old guys seventy year old girl wish back then
was not that uncommon. She didn't tell her parents that
she was pregnant. She just starts showing into like month eight.
That's when she calls Ruth Hudson. And that's a tough
phone call. And Ruth at first thought, you know why
you're telling me, She goes, I'm not asking for anything.
I think you should know that you can be a grandmother.
And she has Heather, and Ruth and Heather are very close.

(01:18:42):
They went shopping together and so on. Heather has four
kids and the oldest is Austin now twenty five, who
looks just like Bruce Hudson apparently. And yes, Aunt Ruth
played favorites. She lost her son and she gains a
grandson who looks just like him. It's pretty amazing. So wow,
I know these stories go on like this. I got
to tell you one more that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:04):
Yes, it's like just to sure you're right, like putting
the names to it, you know what I mean, Like
you never think that you'd run into a dude who's like, no,
I lost my father on the Edmund Fitzgerald. It's just
like it's just like they're chimes, they're church bell chimes.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
It's a song. It's a song. We don't know anything else.
I didn't know a single name.

Speaker 1 (01:19:25):
Church belt chime till it rained twenty nine times.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
That's right, And now they were got thirty times for
all the other accidents as well, and sort of the families.
But yeah, I mentioned earlier, maybe I didn't the last words,
of course, mcsorty. I did mention that we are holding
our own. So Heidi Wilhelm is a twelve year old
girl at the time. She's the youngest of seven kids,
and all seven kids depend on one guy on the ship.

(01:19:47):
And because the mom's raising seven kids, she's working her
weight off. Two next door neighbor knocks in the door says,
your dad's ship is gone. So mor mom's on the
phone trying to get anyone to answer. No one does
at the company, and they never called Wow, what do
you do? And the insurance companies didn't pay in many
cases because it's an act of God. You got some
social security.

Speaker 1 (01:20:07):
In most cases, it's like inherent vice or something else.

Speaker 2 (01:20:10):
Exactly hair advice. There you go, you're legal to Resultso
paying off the day and the company paid the minimum
that they had to, basically maybe a year's salary. Well
what does that get you with seven kids? So and
she said, what do you do? You do what we
always do in the Midwest. You suck it up. You know,
we're gonna we're all gonna get jobs. We're all gonna
start working. They pulled through. They joined the military. They

(01:20:33):
often went to the then very cheap state schools and
not so cheap anymore. They raised kids. They often did
a combination. Heightis now sixty two. She's got a daughter, Sarah.
She went to the Air Force or daughter Sarah's also
in the Air Force. And Sarah was born on the
twenty third anniversary of the sky November tenth, nineteen ninety eight.

(01:20:54):
The grandfather she would never meet, obviously in a really
great guy ball accounts. When she turns twenty one, this
is six years ago on number tenth in nineteen ninety
or sorry, twenty nineteen, she gets a tattoo, and we're
hanging out at wife. It's point a table kind of
like this, but you're a black table in the crews
quarters for where these people stay when they're in town.

(01:21:14):
We're having some beers, we're telling some stories. This is
where I got to know these people, and this is
where I get choked up. And at this point, Heidi says,
Sarah's got a tattoo. Sarah showed you on your tattoo.
And she pulls up her left sleeve and her hoodie
and it says, we are holding our own oh man,

(01:21:34):
And that's what these people do. M and has gotten
me too, So yeah, that's how Well, that's incredible. That's
what these people were. And I guess one of the
points is they were heroes before the ship went down.
You're steel, your food, all this stuff. It's these guys.

Speaker 1 (01:21:52):
So sat that's incredible. So is it. I was telling
my little boy this. Then I realized maybe it didn't happen,
but I think it did. They lifted the bell from
the ship, they did, and that's in the museum. And
then they took another bell and engraved it with the
names and put it back and then one like Gordon
Lightfoot died, did they put his name on the bell.

Speaker 2 (01:22:14):
They didn't put his name on the bell, but they
did at Mariner's Church, Okay, they added it there. They
rang the bell for him when he died. And that's
no small trick. By the way, any special welding tools.
You got an underwater welder who knows what he's doing.
That bell is heavy, it's it's brass. Yeah, so bring
that up five hundred and thirty feet. The family was
there the next boat over when they brought the bell

(01:22:35):
up as an emotional moment.

Speaker 1 (01:22:37):
Fourth, Yeah, I've seen that stuff from that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:39):
And they put other bell down there.

Speaker 1 (01:22:41):
And there's no like from what you know, there's been
like like you didn't experience any kind of concerted pushback
from families not wanting you to tell this story and
investigate individuals or were some people unhappy not with me?

Speaker 2 (01:23:01):
And so far knock on wood is for mic or
whatever you get. No, I think it's a bamboo. I
involve the families, and I also do something that most
journalists don't. If I'm talking to Brody or Steven, I said,
we're gonna talk freely. I'll send you your quotes you'll
fix them as we need to. Uh, you have you

(01:23:22):
have a right, I believe to be quoted accurately, and
that way you build trust. Certainly it takes longer, but
you always get more than you think that way. Once
it is where you're going, people will usually own their opinions.
It's beening misquoted that I fear I get misquoted. You
get misquoted. I'm sure of it.

Speaker 1 (01:23:37):
Dude. It's to the point where like it's painful to
it's painful to participate in anything with journalists. It's and
I got friends that just that don't.

Speaker 2 (01:23:47):
I can't blame you in many cases I'm a journalist.
Why because they're twenty five year old kids who I
mean budget cuts.

Speaker 1 (01:23:53):
Because they already know, Like, dude, they already know what
they want you to say.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
That's the that's the crap I hate.

Speaker 1 (01:23:58):
Like they need the quote they need and then they
call you for the thing and you say, you know what,
there's so much more to it. Let me explain. They
don't want that, and then you're like, you know, here's
the thing you want, but you really need to understand,
and then it's just the thing they want.

Speaker 2 (01:24:14):
I've seen it in hockey locker rooms and football locker
rooms exactly. Asked the guy the same question three or
four times, and I hate that kind of journalism. One
of my bosses once asked me, I was doing a
story in the Potawata me try basketball team at Escanaba, Michigan.
They played away games in Beaver Island and Macin Island
because the casinos they get a little plane. So that's
pretty cool. And my guy asked me. My editor said,

(01:24:37):
what's your angle? I said, I got no idea. I
haven't met anybody, I've not seen the place. I don't
know what the hell I'm talking about. I got a
lot of questions, all right, I have no idea. So
you go. And that's what you guys did here in
this interview. You go where the interview goes. Don't just
have your questions and force it. You get crappy interviews.
You want a conversation. It's exactly what you guys are
doing here. And yes, so I get nervous about that.

(01:24:59):
So with these guys, I mean, we talked ten, fifteen,
twenty times and to make sure that any scene involving
them was accurate. And it's also scary how many things
I'm talking to you. I'm writing it down things I
got wrong or maybe they said them wrong, but I
probably got it wrong. I mean, you cover yourself that way.
If some jackass in California says your book sucks on Amazon,
I'm not happy about it, but it's gonna happen. Already

(01:25:20):
has we're getting four point seven. But there's joye of
jackass in California. You know that guy exactly who knows
more about the book than I do. So all right,
pale whatever, and didn't sign his name naturally, he's pretty
tough until he's time to sign your name. But whatever,
keyboard collage as we call them. But but what I
can have is somebody who's in the book telling me

(01:25:41):
I got it wrong in writed a book on your podcast.

Speaker 1 (01:25:44):
All right.

Speaker 2 (01:25:44):
You know what I can have happened is Krin says
you got it wrong. You say I got it wrong,
then I got it wrong. So I've never in fourteen
books had anyone say misquoted, out of context, inaccurate, any
of that. So these the people, I'm not trying to
panner to them and writing the book. I mean, there's
still tough things book, no question about it. But it's
accurate and it's fair, and those people, I mean, they

(01:26:07):
trusted me, and I appreciate it without them as not
a book.

Speaker 6 (01:26:10):
Did they feel like.

Speaker 5 (01:26:13):
They I mean, I assume that their feelings over time changed,
you know, throughout the writing process, but did they feel
like they'd never had a voice before. I mean, I
that's really good because it is. It is one of
these things where it's a line and a song to
most people, right, And I imagine it's tough to open

(01:26:34):
up about tragedy. But at the same time, like this
story hasn't been there, their story hasn't been told, and
so there's there's sort of a tension there between.

Speaker 2 (01:26:46):
That's well said and good insight. Six crew members we've
never been talked to before. We've been in the shit beforehand.
Half the families I got to the twenty nine fourteen
I have some voice in here, and they did kind
of say that that we've been holding us back because
we're afraid you'll get screwed up this. I mean, I
interview you know, rich, famous athletes and coaches. They get

(01:27:07):
quitted all the time. They don't care all that much,
and it's irritating to you and me a little bit,
But so what I'll get over it. This is their
one chance, you know, this is these are people who
are not rich, not famous, and this is the one
chance to tell their dad story in many cases. So yes,
there was, and the Grifters have come and gone. Bruce
Lyn again is my key there? And now we got
to know them. I've known for three and a half

(01:27:27):
years now. So now when I see them in Milwaukee
or Grand Rapids, Michigan or whatever, I get big hugs
and they're crying and all this. So that's how that
one works.

Speaker 3 (01:27:37):
So you you mentioned like we wouldn't be sitting here
were it not for the song. Yes, And later on
you mentioned there's like some local news coverage. What was
like the national awareness of this thing when it happened.

Speaker 2 (01:27:52):
That surprised me actually, and uh, there's far more than
I thought.

Speaker 1 (01:27:59):
Oh okay, here was a national news story.

Speaker 2 (01:28:01):
Yeah, and I wasn't sure about that one. I when
when you pitch a book proposal to New York. By
the way, I spent six months on this one. That's
unusually long. Usual about two months, you write about fifty pages,
you sent it out there. You're kind of like a
geologist telling show oil I swear to God there's oil
in my land. I swear to God, just give me
some money.

Speaker 6 (01:28:17):
Now, I'm going to show him what the time said about.

Speaker 2 (01:28:19):
It, exactly right, exactly So then they call your bluff
and say, you know what, here's some money, take some tame,
go find the oil. And you go, oh crap, they're
better be oiled down that And I kept on getting
lucky more luck. I'm working out it not recently, obviously,
shame on, maybe not en off hockey these days, but
I'm working out about about a year and a half
ago or so. And a buddy of mine, Larry Lage,

(01:28:40):
who does associated press for the State of Michigan, covers
all sports. We've been friends forever, and he says, you know,
Harry Atkins wrote the first story on the Mphis Gerald.
Harry Atkins had his job doing sports before him thirty
years ap sports writer. I've been sitting next to Harry
in the damn press box for decades. I had no idea.
Usually he goes up that night with the crazy photographer.

(01:29:00):
They get a plane in the wind, they do Walla
and he does a wonderful job. And he still had
a copy. He's still alive. He's eighty four, he's still sharp.
Gave me an original copy computer print out of that
thing from seventy five and without a cell phone, without internet.

Speaker 1 (01:29:16):
That I picked up on the wires and sixty.

Speaker 2 (01:29:18):
Five hundred newspapers around the world, including La Where Life
it was that day or the next day whatever. He
gets that Newsweek magazine picks it up two weeks later.
He needed a beautiful job. His name is Jim Gaines.
He went to the University of Michigan. We got mutual
friends in common. He's still alive, he's still sharp, lucky
as hell, and his story was so good that five

(01:29:42):
or six lines in the song are from his article,
which I lay out in the two article two articles,
two chapters, third or Now and the Rolling Stone. Let's
do the damn song. We might as well do it now.
He got asked about the song people obviously, so. Gordon
Lefett is an experienced sailor. He did the port heuron
to sal to Macinaw Race. I've done that right. This
is like three days. It's brutal. You think it's oh,

(01:30:02):
let's go sailing. Nah, it's freezing your cold. It's miserable.
But he's a really good sailor, and he's serious about it.
On November tenth, nineteen seventy five, Monday night, he is
working on a song in his attic in Toronto, and
it's an Irish Sea shanty, the earliest song he can
remember when he's three and a half years old. And
he's obviously changing it, but he's working on this. He

(01:30:23):
goes down to get some coffee. It's ten o'clock at
night and the wind is howling in Toronto also and
he said he had the explicit thought it must be
hell on superior to night. He was connected at that moment.
I mean he knew that these guys are going through.
That's where the spirit comes from. He starts working on
the song, doesn't play for anybody. It's too self conscious.
The reason I was a lot of ways to screw

(01:30:43):
this up. Remember Body Heat. By the way, if not
seeing this movie, people go see it. It's like forty
years old now. Launched Kathleen Turner and Mickey Rourke and
William Hurt and at some point William Hurt's character, a lawyer,
wants to blow up his girlfriend's husband. Bad idea and
one of his repeat fellon bombers. Basically just teach him
how to do it. And finally Mickey Yorke says, hey, man,

(01:31:06):
do you have any FN idea? I can probably swear
in your thing, can't I Just there you go, you
have any FN idea? What the hell you're doing? Because
if you're a genius, you can think of fifty ways
to can go wrong, and you ain't n fing genius.
You can think of twenty five. And that's how I
felt about the book. There are there are fifty ways
to screw this up, and I might be able to
think of twenty five. So and that's not how he felt.
And I knew exactly how.

Speaker 1 (01:31:26):
He made one. He made one mistake. He oh, he
made a couple mistakes. There's some ad there's some like
assumptions about what the cook said, and he says, and
he couldn't do Toledo, right, good, Toledo left fully loaded
for Cleveland because he doesn't. Yeah, couldn't make Toledo.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
That was ar tisic license on that one. But everything else,
I mean, twenty six thousand tons, all this stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:31:49):
The ship was the prior to the American side. I
didn't know that was actually I didn't know that that
was actually a nickname for the Edmunds.

Speaker 2 (01:31:54):
Absolutely, and these guys, the guys I talked to the sailors.
He said, this guy nailed it. Family that he nailed.

Speaker 1 (01:32:00):
It in his description of the lakes, like because I
grew up on Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan steams like young.

Speaker 2 (01:32:04):
Man's dreams, the islands sportsman, and they are that's where
you learn how to fish, right, I mean in Miskegan
Bay and all that.

Speaker 6 (01:32:13):
So what was the family's reception to the song?

Speaker 2 (01:32:20):
Well before that? So he's gonna record his new album
in March of seventy six, about five months later, and
they got eleven songs lined up, not this one. That's
when he's convinced he's not ready. He's not played for anybody.
So but each day after they do their songs, he's
screwing around with this and his guitar. They're a tight band.
After three and a f days, they got five days
rented in the studio, three and f days, they're done.

(01:32:42):
And that's how tight they are. He says, Okay, you know, gentlemen,
good job, let's go. They're literally packing up their guitars
and their instruments, and then the producer on the piegis
on the PA says, why don't you try that song
you've been screwing around with? And he says it's not ready.
It's not ready, it's not ready. And he says, look, dude,
I'm charging you for five days whether you play a
damn thing or not. So I'm here now, the band

(01:33:04):
is here, why not give it a shot. So he
gets talked into it, and he finally says okay. So
he says he asks him to turn the lights down,
and he's quiet for like a minute. The drummer, Barry
Keen still alive, and so is the bass player, God
bless him both. He's there. He says, what do you
want me to do? He's never heard the song. He says,
when I want you to come in, I'll give you
a nod. Okay, So he's going a minute and thirty

(01:33:27):
on the song. That's where songs end in seventy five
seventy six, and Barry thinks that, okay, you've forgotten all
about me. Nope. At one thirty four, he leans over,
he looks over and gives him a nod. That's when
he comes in with a thunder and lightning, you know
that part, and he just makes it up in the
spot and then you just keep going. After six and
a half minutes, which is three times longer than a
normal song, they finished and they go, that wasn't half bad.

(01:33:51):
But he's a perfectionist. Life it is, So let's try
it again, not as good, Try it again, not as
three more times, four more times. That afternoon. They come
back the next day for this one song, not as good,
not as good, not as good, all day long, and
finally they picked the song You Hear in the Radio.
It's not a first take. The song You Hear in
the Radio is the first time the band ever played it.

(01:34:12):
And as Barry Keen, he.

Speaker 1 (01:34:13):
Never hit that emotion again.

Speaker 2 (01:34:15):
Man, that's you guys are brilliant. That's exactly it. Barry Keen.
He's been on fed albums for all kinds of.

Speaker 1 (01:34:20):
Can you ever hear the Dandy Warhol's cover it?

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
Oh yes I have? And Billy Strings by the way,
Billy Strings got a new version up from Traverse City, Michigan.
It does a brilliant job.

Speaker 1 (01:34:29):
He does. Yeah, the Dandy Warhol's kind of phoned it
in a little bit. Yeah, they're big drug takers.

Speaker 2 (01:34:36):
Agus say about that his throwing stick. So is Gordon Lightfoot.

Speaker 3 (01:34:39):
Yeah, he had a little problem.

Speaker 2 (01:34:41):
He got clean around nineteen eighty or eighty one, so that's.

Speaker 1 (01:34:44):
When the Dandy Warhols were getting born.

Speaker 2 (01:34:46):
There you go, but uh, probably true too, we're around that.
So Barry Keane tells me, look, man, first takes happen
once in a blue moon. First first me ever played it.
He goes, never ever, ever, ever, said I'm willing to
bet never in the history of rock and roll recording.
And I asked him why and exactly where you're going Steven,
He said, this is not a song. You think your

(01:35:07):
way through this song. You either feel it or you don't.
If you feel it, the technical stuff doesn't matter, you
feel it. That's the spirit they got to hear. So
song comes out. They're on the Midnight Special, the old
Friday Night concert Show. You're allowed to play six songs,
and they don't pick this one because they think there's
no wa in hell that's gonna work. And this song
ends up being number two in nineteen seventy six, behind

(01:35:27):
Rod Stewart's Tonight's to Night with his hot girlfriend ritt
Eklan cooing in the background. That's the seventies man that's
the me generation. This song is the opposite.

Speaker 1 (01:35:37):
He's got a couple, he's got a couple good cuts, though, Man,
there's no question reason to believe.

Speaker 2 (01:35:42):
And then when you get the mandolin and all that,
that's good stuff. But the point is this, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
it's not that that one. That's the mandolin, I guess
like that. But anyway, uh, but the families, they played
at all the reunions, they played for the grand kids
whove never met the grandfather.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
Oh they yeah, wow.

Speaker 2 (01:36:04):
And Cindy Reynolds, the mother of Bruce Hudson's child, she said,
to this day it comes on the radio, I pull
off and I cry. Really and that's that's your best
review right there. And life became great. Friends of the families.
He's a hero in this book. He's given money for
scholarships in Traverse City with the Great Lakes May Time.

Speaker 1 (01:36:23):
I saw him play in Travers City once there.

Speaker 2 (01:36:25):
You go scholarships in his name the Marytime Academy. Ruth
Hudson is on her deathbed on November ninth, twenty fifteen.
November nine, yes, this is the day before the fortieth anniversary,
and Gordon Leiffett goes to white fish point, not to play,
just to pay his respects to these handful of families.
That's what I mean. Way out of the way obviously.

(01:36:45):
And he asked Pam, where's aunt Ruth, And she's on
her deathbed, give me a phone, And that picture's in
the book of him in the kitchen on the phone
talking to Ruth hu Hudson und her deathbed, and she said,
I promised Bruce I would be in heaven with him
for the fortith Anniversary's been a lot too long. And
that was her last phone call. And she gets off
the phone and tells her tells the mom she's the child,

(01:37:07):
and she said, I was talking to Gordon because that's
how close they were. So he's a hero in this book.

Speaker 1 (01:37:14):
Man, I got to just hit you with something totally
unrelated but a little bit kind of similar, you know.
And Neil Young's Old Man, the Pedal Steel.

Speaker 2 (01:37:21):
It's in the book, was because David Cowboy Rice Weiss
was on a date with another Cindy and they're playing
Neil Young's one of his albums and that song is
on it. Oh old Man.

Speaker 1 (01:37:33):
So they had a dude come in, They had a
studio guy come in to do the pedal steel on
Old Man, which is great. Well, he just was warming
up and they had some tracks to him warming up
and that's what they plugged into the tune. And my understanding,
I could be wrong. My understanding, they don't know who
the hell it was. Wow, I don't know if that's true, but.

Speaker 2 (01:37:50):
Trust me, the stars are about the seventies in rock
and roll. Yeah, it was true.

Speaker 1 (01:37:55):
What are you gonna write next? You know?

Speaker 2 (01:37:57):
Yeah, I don't know yet. There's a few good options
out there.

Speaker 1 (01:38:00):
Come work for me and Randall were in need of.

Speaker 2 (01:38:03):
We're in need of a writer.

Speaker 1 (01:38:06):
History.

Speaker 2 (01:38:07):
Careful what you wish.

Speaker 6 (01:38:08):
For project, as long as you maintained the compliments, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:38:15):
Hey, they're an easily profit trust me. Look, you know
very quick when people know what they're talking about when
they don't. When you do these things, and it's like
when people call it you have you ever heard my
podcast or not? You can tell pretty quickly. So you guys, man,
I never had an interview like this. Twenty terms not
defined at this table that I have to explain everything normally.

Speaker 1 (01:38:35):
But what kind of book are you going to do next? Sports?

Speaker 2 (01:38:38):
No, not sports? Probably do there are for your other
Midwestern disasters. Sadly, then I know about that. I'll probably
dive back into those. This one. We're dealing with movie rights.
Now we'll talk about that.

Speaker 1 (01:38:48):
Sure, Man, how I was going to ask you that,
but that I didn't ask I get too jealous.

Speaker 2 (01:38:52):
Well there you go. Don't don't get jealous yet, trust me, and.

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
Plus text me when I should get jealous, I'll let
you know. Just text me a Jay.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
That awesome means, dude, Jay, sit with that for a
little while. As they said in Casablanca, Humphy vog, that's
gonna be the start of a great franchise. Classic ending scene.

Speaker 1 (01:39:19):
So a Midwest disaster, because but you don't want to
wind up that. They're like, you know, the great Midwestern
disaster writer.

Speaker 2 (01:39:25):
Yeah, exactly, you want to be that guy, right, Oh, no,
Bacon's coming. That's something bad you don't want Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:39:33):
I don't want to wind up one of his books.

Speaker 2 (01:39:35):
So that's a possibility, the Great Halifax explosion. Talking to
Hollywood about that for a possible five part TV series.
Previous book let them lead about coaching my old high
school hockey team in ann Arbor and we're Huron river Rats.
I'm not making that up. For some reason, we're the
only high school in America name their team the river Rats.
Go figure on that one. That's a good one. So
but uh, worst than in America. Coach by the worst

(01:39:57):
player in school history. Yours truly, I stild record for
the most games and here on uniform eighty six. I
played all three years, played every game with the fewest
goals zero and I played forward.

Speaker 1 (01:40:12):
So you're gonna do You're gonna do a book like
How I Did It?

Speaker 2 (01:40:14):
No, did that book? It's in this fifth Praying, but
we're in a third draft with Disney.

Speaker 6 (01:40:19):
Plus it's another Midwestern disaster story.

Speaker 2 (01:40:21):
And Miskegan's in it. Miskegan makes an appearance. So yes,
so doing all that stuff first, they don't get back
to a book.

Speaker 1 (01:40:27):
So like disasters like the Edmond Fitzgerald or your hockey
worse my hockey career.

Speaker 2 (01:40:33):
It's actually it's a family record. Actually hold out with
my brother here is also on the team. He also
failed to score. I'm gonna throw his ass under the
bus right now. He likes to point out that he
played goalie, but hey, we all got problems, you know,
so he didn't score goal either.

Speaker 5 (01:40:48):
Well, if you have any if you have any saying
the casting for this and they're looking for a Bruce
Hudson type.

Speaker 2 (01:40:55):
Yeah, you're thinking, let me know, Randall's the guy. Yeah,
you can see how buff Bruce.

Speaker 1 (01:41:00):
By the way, Randall, instead of sending me one letter,
send him to and it's no hot dogs and you'll
know to get ready.

Speaker 2 (01:41:09):
H twelve months good news and bad news. Good news
as you got the parts.

Speaker 1 (01:41:16):
Well, let me remind you of grow the hair out
the more Randall. There's there's more to it than the hair.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
But I don't mean to make a light of Bruce Hudson, obviously,
but Pam did say she's about four or five years
younger than Bruce, her cousin, and she saw him every day.
She said, whenever Bruce came over, all her little twel
year old girlfriends all came over.

Speaker 1 (01:41:37):
To So listen. I'm very I'm very comfortable and with.

Speaker 2 (01:41:43):
Your sexuality, I landed very comfortable.

Speaker 1 (01:41:47):
Bruce is a striking man.

Speaker 2 (01:41:49):
Yeah, striking.

Speaker 1 (01:41:50):
He's a striking man. Like that him. The photo of
the guys at the wedding, it's heartbreaking.

Speaker 2 (01:42:00):
Their human games.

Speaker 1 (01:42:00):
Never seen the pictures. Man, I don't like. I don't
get it. Well, I do get it. But I mean
it's just like it's like anything you just put and
you're like, shit, man, he's like guys, like it looks
like pictures of like just people from around when I
was growing.

Speaker 5 (01:42:13):
I was gonna say, my parents were born on either
end of nineteen fifty by a couple of years, and
this just looks like every photo that they have from
their wedding, wedding that they went to that's.

Speaker 2 (01:42:25):
Exactly, and then their old Kodak photos little Granny.

Speaker 1 (01:42:29):
It was back in that era. Those weddings would have
been when you would take those little mints and cocktail
peanuts and time up in a spawn sack. Yeah, and
had a dollar dance.

Speaker 2 (01:42:38):
There's a classic for you.

Speaker 1 (01:42:40):
Yeah, was a photo of uh, some.

Speaker 2 (01:42:42):
Of these guys at a wedding by the second Batch photos.
And yeah, the guy's best man went down with the ship.
That's what happened. So as far as Hollywood goes, don't
be too jealous yet. So the guy I'm writing the
hockey story with Jim Bernstein, he did Mighty Ducks, he
did Renaissance Man's Mothers, and I've done about I don't know,
seven or eight trips out of Hoighwood for various books.

(01:43:03):
These Hollywood meetings have you had? Have you had Howard
meetings yet?

Speaker 1 (01:43:06):
Let's let's have another podcast discussion about this. Sometimes but
you're not better. But anyway, it's like the first early
on it would be that here's people that aren't they're
kind of like they're come in and mind you for
what's going on in your neck of a woods.

Speaker 2 (01:43:23):
They want your knowledge without paying.

Speaker 1 (01:43:25):
It because they're like they're not out and about and
they're like, so, what kind of things are you in?
And you'll be like, oh, you know about this, you
know about that, you know about this, you know about that,
And then later you learned this to shut up.

Speaker 2 (01:43:34):
Right, you just fuked over with the store. Basically, So
these meetings in Hollywood a KOBOOKI theater, So they that probably.

Speaker 6 (01:43:43):
Has not been used in this Maybe.

Speaker 1 (01:43:47):
I don't know what it meant.

Speaker 2 (01:43:48):
It means it's kabook. It's all been rehearsed. It's like
you think you're doing a pitch, but you're really not.
So they always meetings at ten o'clock. Are it's going
to be as ten oh five maybe ten to ten.
How late the make you wait? As one indicator who
shows up. Martin campbellsh up from one of my meetings.
He's the director of Casino Royale and Zoro. Okay, that's
a big boy meeting or the intern, right. And the

(01:44:11):
quality of the water they give you, if they get
the fancy, you know, the best ballatle stuff, that's one thing.
If the interests given you a side from a cup
of tapwater, you're just practicing. What about the middle ground,
We gave you a nice glass. You're not Hollywood. I'm
in Montana. I am in Bozeman, Montana. So Burnston told me.
They said they liked it, they hated it. They say
they loved it. They liked it if they actually paid you,

(01:44:32):
they loved it. There's not one out of Hollywood, one
out of love in Hollywood. And the check clears. If
you guys say let's do lunch, we eat this actual
food as just bs in Hollywood, that's how you say goodbye.

Speaker 1 (01:44:43):
I believe that this. I don't even want to say
the name, but I have to because he's such a
controversial character. The Congress. He said a shift a senator
or Congressman California, Adam Schiff.

Speaker 2 (01:44:54):
He's a senator now from California, I believe he was
a screenwriter. Do you know that I did not know
that he had written some screenplays.

Speaker 1 (01:45:00):
I think that it was Shift.

Speaker 2 (01:45:01):
I'm sure shocking up, back up, I've written some screenplay.
Don't make me a damn screenwriter? Was?

Speaker 1 (01:45:07):
I know it was Shift? Adam Schiff had a quote
from his old days. He said, he said, there are
two answers in Hollywood. Yes, and here's a check.

Speaker 2 (01:45:21):
How about this.

Speaker 1 (01:45:22):
I keep getting you and you get to the meaning.
They go, No, we love it.

Speaker 2 (01:45:30):
This is great exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:45:31):
Oh, we're gonna get a hold of you know, we'll
call you. Yeah, this is the last we're gonna end
the podcast. I might to give this last bit of advice.
This is a career advice for people. If you get
into this world, this business, books and all that, and
you do these and you do Hollywood meetings, here's how
you end them. Well, let me preface this. Last night,
my Boddy had to call my boy had to call
my body to ask a favor. I said to him,

(01:45:54):
I'm gonna give you a pointer. I want you to
ask the favor. I don't want you to push for
an answer. I want you to then say, give it
some thought and text me, and I said, that's how
I want you to end the call. Okay, you're not
after an answer, give it some thought and text me
when you have a Hollywood meeting. End it by saying,

(01:46:16):
thanks for the time. Here's what I'd like you to do.
Get with your guys, think about it, and just give
me a shout and just that's it.

Speaker 2 (01:46:26):
You know what.

Speaker 1 (01:46:27):
That's it I'm because and saves them going like, oh,
it's fantastic, we're so excited.

Speaker 2 (01:46:32):
Do you know what I mean? Perhaps you've seen that
before I did.

Speaker 1 (01:46:44):
And just leave it. Leave it you think about it,
Get with your guys.

Speaker 5 (01:46:49):
Just let me not say I'm gonna end my next
performance review here.

Speaker 1 (01:46:52):
I think.

Speaker 2 (01:46:55):
This is how I think I've done. You think about that.
I'll tell you what when you're ready. You know that's
right next year, the year after that.

Speaker 1 (01:47:05):
Don't rush yourself and then you hang up and it
just never happened.

Speaker 2 (01:47:08):
Look, and that way, you've maintained your own dignity at least. Yeah,
I'll tell you what. I'm all in twenty. My way.

Speaker 1 (01:47:17):
Your way is like sign this sign.

Speaker 2 (01:47:22):
Oh we love it, we love it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:23):
Now you don't, all right, ladies and gentlemen, The Gails
of November, The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by
John you Bacon, New York Times best selling author. Dude,
that that was a lot of fun. I'm glad you came.
It's such a dude, I can't wait to read it.

(01:47:43):
I'm in a little streak where I'm talking to writers.
I haven't read the damn bookship. I'm a little behind
on them.

Speaker 2 (01:47:48):
Yeah, but you know you're talking about that's all I
care about it. That's big and like I.

Speaker 1 (01:47:51):
Said earlier, people don't think about that.

Speaker 2 (01:47:53):
You don't have to read my book. You gotta buy it.

Speaker 1 (01:47:57):
Yeah, by that of course, but it's about.

Speaker 2 (01:47:59):
The family, is uh No. This has, when I swear
to God, probably the best interview I've done so far.

Speaker 1 (01:48:05):
You know, when you feel the book, it feels good.

Speaker 2 (01:48:06):
Man, it's a heavy book.

Speaker 1 (01:48:08):
It's like it feels too much.

Speaker 5 (01:48:09):
Much like Hampton Side blurbed your book, you should blurb
this podcast.

Speaker 2 (01:48:15):
I mean, I'd be happy to give you a shock
in the good endorsement for my guy doesn't hunt or fish.

Speaker 1 (01:48:22):
No, you just feel it.

Speaker 2 (01:48:23):
I don't know how they're talking about normally, but when
I'm on there were great. Everyone says I got to
do it, and they're right. This has been fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:48:32):
When you get another, uh, you know, whatever you do
for your next book, just make just check them me
and make sure it fits.

Speaker 2 (01:48:38):
YEA. We wedge a lot of.

Speaker 1 (01:48:42):
Even if I'm interested, Like if you do a book
about the mob or something, I'd be like, that's cool.
But I can't wedge it in. Right, But this has
got like bad weather ships.

Speaker 2 (01:48:49):
Bad weather ships, sailors, all that good stuff, badge lee
see free board things. I did not explain broadside waves.
I mean I can get ten don't even this.

Speaker 1 (01:49:00):
I don't need to wedge it. And I can put
this book in like this.

Speaker 6 (01:49:02):
That's how it feels, right Sideway seventy five ft wy.

Speaker 2 (01:49:05):
Yeah, that's right. And it's John Youbacon dot com at
the website book tours on there all that stuff.

Speaker 1 (01:49:10):
Oh, I got one last tip for you. When you
talk to you know what they should have done. They
should have made this book the proportions so it's like
a big tall skin.

Speaker 5 (01:49:21):
I've heard that's the next that's next book publishing two
and a half inches.

Speaker 1 (01:49:27):
Big tall book. Man.

Speaker 2 (01:49:31):
Well, let me explain.

Speaker 1 (01:49:33):
They shipping the gun. They shipping the gun box.

Speaker 2 (01:49:35):
That's right. Take that book into a bathtub. No, no
follow me here, turn that thing around.

Speaker 1 (01:49:43):
John you Bacon, Thanks again, man.

Speaker 2 (01:49:45):
Thank you for real pleasure. Truly

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Host

Steven Rinella

Popular Podcasts

On Purpose with Jay Shetty

Ruthie's Table 4

The Joe Rogan Experience

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. 790: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald