The Great Lakes of North America are some of Earth’s most impressive treasures left to us by the massive glaciers of the Ice Age 11,000 years ago. Stretching 1,160 miles from New York to Minnesota, these magnificent fresh water seas have at once fascinated, terrified, and beckoned us for centuries. Composed of five bodies, they are, from east to west, Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, and Lake Superior.

If you were to make a Great Lakes’ journey, following the shoreline of all five lakes, you would pass the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania,...

“Welcome to Rogers City—the Nautical City.” That is the message on the sign that greets you as you enter the city limits of Rogers City, Michigan. Located on the shores of Lake Huron, at the northern reaches of Michigan’s Lower Peninsula, this place could be called the little town on the big lake. With one stoplight, one movie theater, and a population of about 4,000, this sleepy little community is the epitome of small-town America. Well-maintained brick and clapboard homes with neatly trimmed lawns line the residential streets that ultimately lead you down to the shores of the Great...

In 1927 the New York Yankees ruled as baseball’s World Series Champions. Known as the “greatest team of all time,” they were led by the legendary powerhouse, Babe Ruth, who hit a record-setting sixty home runs. That same year, another record-setting powerhouse was born: TheCarl D. Bradley. And she was a giant in every sense of the word.

At 639 feet long, longer than two football fields, theBradleywielded 5,000 horsepower. Fully loaded, she could move along at fourteen miles per hour, a pretty good clip for a freighter. Launched on April 9, 1927, in Lorain, Ohio, she...

The day was Monday, November 17, 1958, and theBradleywas making her forty-sixth and final voyage of the shipping season. The trip down Michigan’s west coast to the U.S. Steel mill in Gary, Indiana, was without incident. She had just finished unloading her cargo, and the limestone rolled off the boom’s conveyor in a fairly quick six hours. It was now time to think about heading home.

At this very moment, much of the rest of the country was in the throes of a terrible storm. In true November fashion, a warm-air mass from the south had collided with...

Around 5:30 p.m. Captain Bryan and his First Mate Elmer Fleming, both in the pilothouse, heard the very same deafening sound coming from behind them. Instinctively, they spun around, and were horrified by what they saw. Looking down the long deck toward the ship’s stern, the string of deck lights still lit, a mariner’s nightmare unfolded. TheBradley’s stern was sagging! Incredibly, she was breaking in half in the middle of Lake Michigan!

Mays and Price ran back to their cabin to get their life jackets, also grabbing Mays’s wallet and watch. Then, taking giant steps, they leaped up the...

Four miles away, those aboard the German freighterChristian Sartoriwitnessed the flash of flame and smoke when theBradley’s boiler exploded at about 5:40 p.m. At the same time, theBradley’s image dropped off their radar. Even though they had not heard theBradley’s “Mayday,” theSartoribravely rushed, at the height of the storm, in the direction of the explosion. The 254-foot ship and her courageous crew struggled against the high water and fierce winds. Captain Paul Mueller, a former German U-boat (submarine) officer, said that “it took us two hours to reach the spot where theBradley...

The ominous words of the captain of theChristian Sartoriput into motion a flurry of newspaper stories, coast to coast, that would end up on people’s front porches the next morning. A November 19 headline in theLos Angeles Timesread, “‘No Lifeboats Visible’: 35 Missing as Ship Splits in Two, Sinks.” Sometimes the information was not entirely accurate, as was the case with theWashington Post and Times Heraldheadline of November 19: “Ship Sinks in Storm; No Trace of 37 Found.”

Throughout the night, before the grim newspaper headlines appeared, some of the friends and families of...

The four men on the raft watched helplessly as theSartorisearched for them in the very waters that had, just hours before, consumed theBradley, dragging her broken hull 365 feet beneath the raging turbulence. Disheartened that they were neither seen nor heard, the men knew that their only hope for survival was to cling to their raft, try to keep each other warm, and to stay awake. Elmer Fleming reminded them that since theSartoriknew about the wreck, the Coast Guard was probably on its way. Mays remembers adding these words of encouragement, “If we make it...

There was a hint of sunlight on Wednesday morning, November 19, about 8:00 a.m. The winds had slowed somewhat, allowing three Coast Guard helicopters, an Air Force plane, and a Navy plane to join the search. The Coast Guard CuttersSundewandHollyhock, who had been battling the storm all night, were still searching. After combing the area for more than twelve hours, all of the commercial and military vessels involved came up with the same result: No luck. They found no sign of survivors; not a single body had been recovered.

The brave and now exhausted crew of the...

The reality was just beginning to sink in. Thirty-three men had lost their lives in one of the worst maritime disasters of the century. And twenty-three of them came from Rogers City, a town of less than 3,800 people. The community now had to brace itself for the arrival from Charlevoix of those bodies recovered from theBradleytragedy. In fact, of the eighteen bodies recovered, fifteen were coming home to Rogers City or nearby Onaway. On November 20, in theDetroit Free Press, Eleanor Tulgetske, whose husband Earl was lost on theBradley, poignantly observed that she always knew...

The funerals had concluded and the loved ones buried. It was time for the families to try to piece their lives back together. But closure did not come easy. There were still many unanswered questions. Why was theBradleyeven out on the lake that night, when eight other ships had dropped anchor in safe harbor? What condition was she in? After all, the ship had been scheduled during winter lay-up for work totaling more than $800,000. Was she really seaworthy? How much of the tragedy could be due to the storm and how much to the ship’s structural weaknesses?...

After theBradleytragedy, life in Rogers City was slow to return to normal. However, lives had to go on, sailors had to ship out, and business in the nautical city resumed without incident. That is, until May 7, 1965, when tragedy once again struck the harbor town.

In a thick, dense fog in the Straits of Mackinac, the waters separating Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, theCedarvilleand theTopdalsfjord, a Norwegian freighter, attempted to pass each other. The captain of theCedarvillemade a right turn, thinking that this would enable them to pass on each other’s left...