Wreck of the Carl D.: A True Story of Loss, Survival, and Rescue at Sea

Imagine if you can spending 15 hours in the dark on an 8 by 10 foot liferaft in northern Lake Michigan during late November with 20 to 30 foot waves buffeting the raft and tossing you into the big lake several times . . . and surviving the ordeal. This is what happened to two crew members of the Great Lakes freighter CARL D. BRADLEY after their boat broke up and sank with no warning on November 18, 1958 during a gale (winds of approximately 60 - 65 mph). Unfortunately, 33 other crew members weren't so lucky and drowned. 56 children from Rogers City, Michigan (the boat's home port) were left fatherless on that night fifty years ago. This well-written book tells the story, in the present tense mainly, of the BRADLEY disaster in an exciting and detailed manner. If a person has an interest in Great Lakes maritime history, they in all likelihood will have a hard time putting this book down once under way. (In this respect it reminds me, somewhat, of THE GALES OF NOVEMBER by Robert J. Hemming, a fascinating book about another Great Lakes tragedy, the EDMUND FITZGERALD.) In the book under review, Michael Schumacher describes the BRADLEY, talks about individual crew members, life in Rogers City, and, of course, narrates in great detail the boat's final voyage up Lake Michigan, and the aftermath of the disaster, including the US Coast Guard investigation and report. As I was reading the book I kept wondering and thinking about two key questions: why did this tragedy occur and could it have been avoided? My answer to the second question really ties in with the answer to the first one. Yes, the horrible event of November 18, 1958 could have been avoided if Captain Bryan had remembered this fact about his boat, in which he had earlier noted to a friend: "The boat is getting pretty ripe for too much weather. I'll be glad when they get her fixed up...The hull is not good...and was badly damaged...." He also said he had been ordered by the boat's owners to "nurse" the boat in bad weather and to "take it easy" on his boat. (quotes from p. 8) With all this in mind and given the weather forecast he received, and because of increasing winds that he observed the afternoon the boat sank, I conclude he should have done what some (though not all, I admit) other captains of Great Lakes freighters were doing that day: heading into a port, or bay, or taking cover behind one of the many islands along the Wisconsin side of Lake Michigan. So it appears that maintaining his schedule was more important to the captain than putting his damaged boat and the human beings who sailed it in possible peril. Sad indeed, but he was certainly not the first Great Lakes captain to put his crew in jeopardy, nor the last. Included in this book are the names of the BRADLEY crew on the fateful day, the findings and report of the US Coast Guard panel which studied the sinking, the Coast Guard Commandant's dissent from the panel's conclusion, a glossary of nautical terms, a m