Ep. 91: The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum

[00:00:08] Welcome back to Around the Buoy, broadcasting from the East Passage Boatwright Studios. I'm Carter Richardson and I'm here with Tyler Fields of Tyler Fields Photography. Tyler, Happy New Year. I know Larry David says you've got like four days in January that you're allowed to say Happy New Year, but Happy New Year, buddy. Happy New Year, Carter. It's great to be back in 2025, I guess? 2025?

[00:00:36] Yeah, it's 2025. You gotta have a little more oomph and pizzazz about this starting this new year off. 2024 went fast. Yeah, 2024 was, it was a year. It wasn't my favorite year, but it was a year. And I'm really glad to see 25 come into existence, I will tell you that much. Yeah, I mean, I think we're about through the social media posts of, and there's really no

[00:01:06] middle ground. I didn't see a single one that was like, yeah, 2024, that was 365 days. It was either, it was the best of times or it was the worst of times. There was no middle ground. Yeah, there was no middle ground in there. Yeah. You got to ring in the new year in a pretty, well, I don't, man, I don't know how we broached this topic on this show. We have not been shy about our opinions on cruise ships.

[00:01:35] And we have not, we, we have not, but yes, I did celebrate. I did ring in the new year, um, off of the co off the coast of Roatan, which is the, an island just north of, uh, Honduras. We were on a cruise ship, the Norwegian. Oh no. No. It was a total last minute, um, or shame.

[00:02:06] Listen, if my Navy career was as good as the last week on the Norwegian bliss was, I'd be a frigging Admiral by now. So that's, I, as much as we have stated our opinions on cruise ships, we have equally stated that our standards are low and we are easily bought. Easily bought. And this episode is brought to you by Norwegian cruise lines.

[00:02:35] Yeah, we, uh, it was a total last minute. It was right around Thanksgiving. And, uh, my wife and I looked at each other and we're like, we've got the kids were out of school for like two and a half weeks. We didn't have to go back to school to like January 6th. And we said, we're doing it. We're going away and we're going somewhere warm. We ended up getting a wicked good black Friday deal and tickets to

[00:02:59] Miami. And we, let's see, we left Miami on the 27th. We pulled into a small little town in Mexico called Costa Maya. And then we pulled into Belize. We pulled into Honduras and then Cozumel and then back to Miami on the 4th. But yeah, we rung in the new year. Uh, we're in the middle of the Easter. I'm sorry. Western, uh, Caribbean, uh, sea. You make it sound like you would have lost money if

[00:03:26] you stayed. Well, while you were, while you were out doing your famous impression of the love boat, I got to babysit your puppy dog and she was a wonderful puppy dog. Thank you, sir. I do appreciate you taking care of, uh, Jenny bear. She is very grateful for you. But during your radio silence, the only thing I could come up with was, and I didn't know what boat you were on. I just saw this

[00:03:52] news article that a Norwegian cruise, a gentleman on a Norwegian cruise took a triple gainer off of the upper deck and ended up in the, in, uh, the turquoise water down below and they're lost. So there was a good three days there where I was like 50, 50, whether you were coming back or not, I was, I had already reached out to a few people about co-hosting duties and, uh, you know, I was, I was making

[00:04:18] plans. I was hoping for the best, but I appreciate that you're hoping for the best Tyler. Yeah, no, it happened. That news came out the morning we were going to get on the ship. So we went, we flew down to Fort Lauderdale and on a Friday, we were getting on the ship on Saturday afternoon, Saturday morning, I wake up and I go down to the hotel in the lobby and to get a cup of coffee.

[00:04:41] And I see that article and I was like, Oh no. And I decided not to tell my family that someone was lost. Cause they, we still don't really know. I don't think we really know what happened, but someone fell overboard. And unfortunately it was, uh, the, the search was called off about, uh, 16 hours later, they did not find the gentleman. Uh, but I decided not to tell the family that, Oh yeah, by the way, someone, uh, was lost at sea on a Norwegian line, which is again,

[00:05:10] what we were on. Um, and I think that was the right call. Yeah, probably, probably it took, it took a little while of, um, kind of process of elimination, but I, I, after a day or so, and I figured out which boat you're on and from the, the, uh, magical powers of Marine traffic, I was able to, to follow your little adventure. And my daughter got a huge kick out of finding out

[00:05:36] where the Richardsons were every, every night before she went to bed. And she did in a very adorable way, update your dog on where her family was every night before bed. So Jenny, I don't think Jenny cared for much when I was flying in, I thought it was very odd that I was flying in. You were being very kind and delivering Jenny back to our house in Newport. And the plane just

[00:06:02] happened to be flying over the house while you were dropping off. And I'm starting to worry that you're, you're following me and you're stalking me because you sent a picture of flight tracker of the plane flying over my house with you in it with the dog. And I'm, it really, you're starting to worry me, Tyler. Here's the thing with technology today, there's really no way of being off the grid,

[00:06:26] right? You're always like between Marine traffic, uh, flight aware and the air tag that I hid on your dog's collar. Pretty sure where you are most of the time. All the time. Yeah. If you show up like single white female, you're probably not familiar with that movie, but if you show up single white female with a high heel for our listeners who have seen that, you'll understand that that it's time

[00:06:51] to run when that happens. I have not, but coincidentally, I am wearing high heels. Uh, but it is, it is great to be back on, uh, I'm not saying I wouldn't rather be in the Caribbean right now, but it is, it's great to be back, uh, in the States. It was a wonderful,

[00:07:17] wonderful trip. Um, I was excited because I think anyone who's listening to this after we release it like relatively soon is going to know you're completely full of it. It is like, uh, 12 degrees outside and it's been 12 degrees for like two weeks. Um, and not only is it 12 degrees, it's blowing 40 and it has been for days. So, um, let's just not lie to the people.

[00:07:42] Yeah. Waking up on the ship at like six 37 o'clock and it's like a balmy 75 degrees breeze over the bow. Cause the, the, the ship's doing 20 knots was really quite nice. It was quite delightful. It was 15 and a half, but that's fine. Again, you were tracking me. That's right. Well, as we get back into the swing of things, we also have some updated news on our movie night, the hunt for red

[00:08:10] October that we had to postpone here a month or so ago is back and it's going to be January 30th at the Jane Pickens theater in Newport. Uh, show starts at seven 30 doors open about six 30. Yeah. It's it's I've reminded again, I think you've probably listened to the book like twice since the movie got canceled. At least it's a, it's on permanent rotation on your audible. Um,

[00:08:37] but I I'm excited. I was flipping through the channels at one point through Christmas and I caught a clip of it and, uh, I'm, I'm so excited for this movie. I cannot wait to sit down and watch this movie. If die hard is a Christmas movie, then the hunt for red October is definitely a Christmas book. I don't necessarily think they played it hard enough in the movie, but

[00:09:02] it is a Christmas book for sure. Because Jack Ryan brings back a, cause the, their daughter wanted a son for Christmas. No, she wanted a skiing Barbie. And while we, while the, uh, English aircraft carrier had turned around to help with the search, um, its crew was hoping that they were going to make it home in time for Christmas. That's right. That's right. Very

[00:09:29] good job, Tyler. Again, you've listened to the movie a couple of times. You've listened to the book a couple of times. I listened to it a couple of times while you were on the cruise in your head. Do you have Sean Connery's voice doing Marco Ramius while you're listening to it? No, it's the narrator of the audio book from like 1987 or whatever it is. It's that voice in the back. He's fantastic. Oh, it's wonderful. Yeah. He's fantastic. Well, we look forward to seeing everybody in Newport at

[00:09:57] the Jane Pickens on January 30th. Uh, definitely come out. It's going to be a great night. All right, let's get into the episode, Tyler. We got a couple of news items we want to take care of now that we've taken care of movie night being back on, uh, the first one. Um, it's not weird. We at around the buoy, we are very apolitical. We are not going to get into politics, but we've, we really should talk about, um, wind generation and power generation in this country. And, uh,

[00:10:27] we're going to, we're going to touch on that. And then some really questionable things are going on, uh, from some Chinese, uh, tankers and cargo ships. Allegedly. Allegedly. Thank you. Allegedly, uh, has been going on, uh, in Taiwan. And then also we'll go back a couple of months, about a month or so ago and, uh, in the, uh, Bering Sea as well. It's going to, we're going to

[00:10:51] talk about that. But before we get to those news topics, um, we got a really, really cool episode coming forward. Uh, this is something that I've been wanting to do probably since the very, very early days of the podcast. We're going to be talking to Bruce Lynn of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum about not only the Fitzgerald wreck, but thousands of other wrecks. We could talk to Bruce about the wrecks for days on days on days.

[00:11:18] It's going to be a great conversation. I'm very much looking forward to it. The history and lore that comes from, um, the seafaring traditions on the Great Lakes is something that's always really interested me. And like you said, the, the wreck of the Fitzgerald has been on all this for a long time. So this is going to be, uh, this is going to be a great one. All right. We'll be right back

[00:11:40] with Bruce right after our break. Located on the banks of Lake Superior at Whitefish Point, the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is dedicated to telling the stories of the brave sailors and

[00:12:08] countless tons of cargo lost to the depths of the Great Lakes. Using the latest technology, they're also on a mission to identify those ships who quote went missing or left the docks never to be seen again. Their stories live on in folklore and popular culture. And we're excited to be talking with Bruce Lynn, the executive director of the museum to learn more about them and their recent discoveries. Bruce, welcome to Round the Buoy and thanks for coming on the show. Hey, thanks Carter. Thanks for, thanks for having us.

[00:12:34] Fantastic. All right. So the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum is an incredible organization with an important mission, part of which is to discover, document and interpret lost ships in the lakes. We will talk more about the research and discoveries later, but what are the origins of the museum and how did you get involved? Sure, Carter. Well, the origins go back to the mid 1970s. You know, scuba diving was becoming a big thing and there's a lot of shipwrecks near Whitefish Point. As a matter of fact, just to,

[00:13:04] you know, I don't often like to use statistics, but there's about 200 shipwrecks. If we were to look at Whitefish Bay and for your listeners, if they looked at a map, they would find a town called Sault Ste. Marie. There's navigational locks, a lot of ship traffic coming through, a lot of commercial vessels, but big Whitefish Bay. And then we get up to Whitefish Point. And if we go about 60 to 80 miles to the west, there's a stretch of shoreline there that's really, really desolate, if I could use that term, not a lot of harbors there. But along that stretch and Whitefish Bay, if you combine

[00:13:34] those areas, there's about 200 shipwrecks. So if we look at a lot of the scuba divers back in the day, a lot of people were locating these wrecks using, you know, technology of the day, or in some cases, some of those wrecks are in a shallow water, six and eight feet. So you can be kayaking or canoeing and below you is suddenly a 200, 300 foot shipwreck, which is pretty exciting when you see it kind of startling sometimes to see that thing below you. But in the end, there was a group of scuba

[00:14:02] divers, a group of educators, historians that came together in 1978 to start the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society. And there were a number of reasons for this group getting together. I'm the executive director at the Shipwreck Museum. My predecessor, a man by the name of Tom Farnquist, was really, really instrumental in getting this organization started. And really the idea was to document a lot of these wrecks, learn more about them, share that history with people,

[00:14:29] and to a degree, also protect the wrecks as well. Because a lot of the artifacts were being taken off, you know, just things, objects were being taken off of these shipwrecks and, you know, ending up in somebody's garage in Florida or something to rust away and no one ever see it. So that's an aspect of the story as well. But so that's how the organization started in 1978. Over the years,

[00:14:54] Whitefish Point, there's a lighthouse located at Whitefish Point. It was built in 1861. It's still an operating light today, but that became part of what came to be and what is a National Historic Site at Whitefish Point. And the museum was built in the mid-1980s. And then some of the historic structures that date back to the United States Coast Guard lifeboat station era

[00:15:19] were returned to the site. You know, even all these years later, we're still working on some of these buildings and bringing them back, the Coast Guard. Consider those buildings in the late 50s, early 60s, redundant property. They sold off a lot of them to a local family. And we've been bringing them back and restoring them. My role at the Whitefish or at the Shipwreck Museum and at Whitefish Point really started back when I was a child. My family had purchased property just south of the point,

[00:15:49] right on the bay. And as a kid, my siblings and I would go up to Whitefish Point. We would hang out up there. There would hardly ever be anybody up there back then. The lighthouse was still operating, but automated. And the keepers' quarters and these other structures were boarded up. So as kids, we'd run around that place. And to us, it was just this kind of mysterious, quiet, interesting place

[00:16:14] with ship traffic passing constantly. My degree is in historic preservation from Eastern Michigan University. They've got a graduate program there. But to make a long story short, I never did lose that fascination, I guess, if you could put it that way, with the maritime history. And going through Ohio State University with a history undergrad and then a historic preservation degree at Eastern

[00:16:38] Michigan, I ended up becoming an intern at Whitefish Point at the Shipwreck Museum in the 90s. Most of my work was at a place called Mackinac Island, Mackinac State Historic Parks. There's many, many historic sites there. But in the end, I ended up getting hired in 2011 to be the executive director here to replace my predecessor. That same individual that I mentioned before, Tom

[00:17:00] Farnquist, he retired at that point. I stepped in. Here we are all these seasons later. And we are, we're having a good, a good year, a good series of years, I would say, as far as shipwreck documentation and discovery. And so in a lot of ways, we're carrying on that original idea back in the 70s that these divers and historians and teachers had to find these wrecks and document them. And that's,

[00:17:27] that's really the core, the original mission of the organization. We talked a little bit about the facilities and the trip out to the museum seems like it just to explore the light station is, is worth the trip in itself. But you have the light station and also a sister property, the US Weather Bureau building. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Absolutely. Yeah, that's actually where I'm talking to you from today. It's situated on the

[00:17:55] grounds of the Sioux locks. Again, for your listeners, if they're not familiar, there are navigational locks. So there's a difference between the Lake Superior lake level and the Lake Huron lake level. There's a there's a difference in elevation there, I guess, if you want to put it that way. Here in Sault Ste. Marie, really, really an old community in North America. There were, of course, Native American tribes that were coming here for centuries. But when the French explorers came up

[00:18:25] through this area, there was a settlement that was established here in the late 1600s. And part of the reason you had groups of peoples that were coming and settling in this area was because of the there were rapids that were here between those lake levels. And, you know, a lot of whitefish, you know, it would draw the Native American tribes up to this area. And the Europeans when they came in could see that there was a strategic value to this area. But if we turn the clock forward, we get into

[00:18:54] the mid 1850s, the first navigational locks were here. Prior to that, believe it or not, they would portage some of the ships from the Lake Huron level to the Lake Superior level. Imagine that for a second. I'm looking out on Portage Avenue right now. I think of portaging, I think of picking up our canoe and going from maybe one lake to another. But imagine doing that with a ship. Yeah, it's hard to get your mind around. We have some artwork. We don't have any photographs of that happening. But we have

[00:19:20] some artwork, artist conceptions showing what that might have looked like. But in any case, the Weather Bureau building here, it is situated right on the grounds of these navigational locks. And the idea was that these meteorologists that work for the really kind of, I guess, relatively young Weather Bureau at that point in the United States could, you know, use their instruments of the day and try to give these captains and these mates and crew on board these

[00:19:48] ships a better idea of what was happening up on the big lake. You know, there were reasons for this Weather Bureau, you know, being established here in Sault Ste. Marie. Shipwrecks, you know, not an uncommon thing, which, you know, I think we'll talk far more about these shipwrecks as this program goes on. But there's a whole myriad of reasons. But the weather is in the center of why

[00:20:11] there are so many shipwrecks in this area. And so the idea was to give these ship captains an idea of what was happening up on Lake Superior. But I think the meteorologists would have acknowledged this too. I believe that a lot of times, you know, you'd had a lot of heavy weather sailors and they weren't going to worry about what these meteorologists told them because I think they felt that half the time those predictions were wrong anyways. So what's the point? We've got to get this cargo to port. And if I'm a

[00:20:40] ship captain, if I don't do it, there's a few other captains that are out there that are looking for a ship that they can be in charge of or they can, you know, be the master of and they'll get it to port. So kind of a different era in that sense. But the weather bureau itself, this building, it's a beautiful two and a half story hip roof brick building. People that visit the locks often miss it, unfortunately, because they want to see these ships going through. There could be a panic

[00:21:09] sometimes when a ship is coming through the locks and if people really want to see it, it looks like the gates are opening and that ship's about to move on. People are running to get out to the observation platforms to see these ships. I think we get missed a little bit. There's a big visitor center that's here on the grounds as well. And so, but it's cool. We have exhibits in here. We have a small museum store, but our administrative offices are located on the second floor and that's where I

[00:21:34] am right now. So yeah, it's a, it's another part of what we do, but, but a little, I'll say lesser known compared to Whitefish Point. Well, going back to Whitefish Point. So not only is she a lighthouse, but she was also a lifeboat rescue station and the museum just dedicated a freshly restored, let's see, it was, it's a 36 foot, I believe a lifeboat. Talk to us about the story behind CG36381.

[00:22:04] Certainly. Yeah. So it's a type TR 36 foot motor lifeboat, very similar to, for anybody who watched the movie, The Finest Hours, practically the same boat, if not exactly the same type, you know, those motor lifeboats, they have the type T type TR type TRS used by the Coast Guard, all built in Curtis Bay, Maryland. We had a type TR that was at Whitefish Point. The number on that one was 36371

[00:22:30] back in the day. And I have to clarify that. So when this was an active lifeboat station from 1923 up to the late fifties, early sixties, there was a type H motor lifeboat that Whitefish Point had. And then eventually they moved on to a type TR. And again, that one was 36371. Part of the story goes back to the motor lifeboat house that we had been restoring. And we, you know, we always kind of felt, hmm, we're, we're, we're restoring this motor

[00:22:56] light boat house, which will be filled with exhibits and it will also be eventually our theater. So when people buy a ticket to the museum, there's a, there's a video that we show, not exactly about the Coast Guard, more about the Edmund Fitzgerald, which we'll talk about here in a few minutes. But we always felt, gee, you know, if we're going to have a motor lifeboat house, we really, really should have a motor lifeboat. And in the end, a friend of the organization,

[00:23:21] a gentleman by the name of Jeff Shook alerted us to the presence of a type TR motor lifeboat. There was only 10 hall numbers away from the original that we had at Whitefish Point at a place, um, not Curtis Bay, but there's a boat yard in tall timbers, Maryland. And this thing was languishing. If I could use that word, it was pretty much disintegrating, uh, filling with leaves just out there in the open, uh, in the end through the generosity of a few donors, one in particular,

[00:23:50] and then also a company that transported it for us that donated their services services. We were able to get it back to the upper peninsula of Michigan, where the restoration work started. It became a long-term project for us. We are a 501 C three nonprofit. So we raise money as we go, uh, to, to do these, uh, you know, various historic preservation projects and restorations on something

[00:24:15] like a type TR motor lifeboat. So after a number of years, we, the restoration and only a cosmetic, I should say that too, this thing is never, never going to go back into the water, uh, but cosmetic restoration. And then October of 2023. So last fall, uh, we were able to get it up to Whitefish Point. This boat literally flew over the buildings at Whitefish Point in order to get into the motor

[00:24:39] light boat house. And I say that I'm not joking when I say that a massive crane had to be brought in to lift this boat off of the semi tractor trailer off of that, that trailer and get it into the motor light boat house. So I have pictures of it and we were all there. Although we kept this pretty quiet, this project, we did not want a big crowd there. I was envisioning all of the horrible things that

[00:25:05] could happen when this boat was being lifted over the, there's a countless list of horrible things that can happen. Exactly. I mean, I didn't want to crowd there if somehow this thing fell off of its, uh, you know, the harness, I guess, if you want to call it that, that was holding it above the buildings. But in the end, honestly, you would have thought that the crew from Murtaugh boatworks and the crane crew, uh, you would have thought they did this every day, uh, because it went off without a hitch.

[00:25:32] And honestly, that is not how things always work for us at Whitefish Point. We're up there in the middle of nowhere. Um, and bizarre things happen sometimes that you just have to scratch your head. And this one, I thought there's a million things that could go wrong with this, but in the end it went perfectly. And, uh, we rolled it right inside the building. We winched it inside. Uh, it's on the original, well, not original, partially original rails. You know,

[00:25:59] these boats rode on a carriage, they were on rails. They would launch them down into the water, fire that motor up and go to the rescue of some ship that might be in distress or some fishermen that got caught on an ice flow that ended up out in the middle of Whitefish Bay. Uh, but it's on the rails. It's inside the building now. And we're very proud of it. It's really cool. Our, um, gosh, like five or six years ago, East Passage put in a bid to do a

[00:26:25] restoration on a boat like this for a different organization. So I can appreciate the fact that you have donors, um, who can reach deep in their pockets to get a project like this done because it's not, it's not a simple project. And it really kudos to you for, uh, garnering that crowd that is, is so supportive of the, of the museum. Well, you know what, we have a development officer here. He does a, he does a really good job and we just have a great team of people, but I think

[00:26:52] in a lot of ways, the, the site, the history, the exhibits, the stories that, and let alone our, our offshore, you know, Marine operations, they just, they fascinate people and, uh, and people who really get into it, want to be a part of it. So we're, we're very lucky people get excited about our mission and what we do. And we just have a great donor base. No question. I think our listeners

[00:27:18] are more knowledgeable than your average boater, but most of our downloads are favored on the Atlantic coast. Unless you've stood on the beaches, sailed across them or flown over the great lakes, it's really hard to understand their size. Can you kind of help us understand the scale of these lakes? Absolutely. Yeah. We have a lot of people that'll visit that are coming from the East coast, West coast. And when I was in grad school, also it's as an example, I used to work for a tour operator, a company that would bring motor coach loads of people. And it typically they were not

[00:27:48] from the Midwest. There would be people from the East coast, West coast, and I would be able to witness their reactions when they looked at the great lakes. Cause we would see pretty well, not all of them. We would see the upper great lakes. So Lake Huron, Lake Michigan, Lake Superior, when they would come in, Lake Superior is the largest. And to give you a perspective, I mean, it's at its deepest point, 1300 odd feet. You know, I see some statistics that say 1333 feet deep. I think it depends on the water levels because

[00:28:17] they change, you know, we don't have a tide like the ocean does, but there will be subtle changes in the lake levels. And then of course there's, and I'm going to get into the weeds on some of this, there's what's called a Seiche, S E I C H E. It's a French word, but what it really is indicating is a lake level change that can be kind of dramatic sometimes and can cause cause damage. It's not predictable completely, but Lake Superior is an example. When people, when those groups that I

[00:28:46] would bring up would walk out on the observation deck at Whitefish Point, they could look off to their left. They could see the opening of Lake Superior. And you're looking at a couple hundred miles miles of open water. It takes a ship two days to go from one end to the other. And that ship, you know, I think maybe a day, day and a half, they could be out of sight of land completely. And as they look, you know, really from that observation deck, and they're looking off towards

[00:29:13] Canada. And again, if you look at a map of Whitefish Point, you know, you can be looking east from the point and you're looking over at Canada and you know, that could be 40 miles away, but you can see hills in the distance. They're just enormous, you know, to call them lakes almost is, it kind of undermines a little bit how dramatic and how large and how amazing the weather can be and how much

[00:29:38] energy can build up in these lakes and microclimates can form. And it could really play havoc with small boat traffic. You know, even commercial freighters, which some of them operating today, if you were coming through and visiting the Sioux locks, these navigational locks, it would be pretty common to see a 1000 foot freighter lock, you know, upbound or downbound, as people will say here, upbound, meaning

[00:30:04] they're going from the Lake Huron level up to the Lake Superior level, and then downbound, vice versa. But yeah, massive ships. And a lot of them over the years have gotten into trouble. And there's just some astonishing stories. But the huge part of this is, it's just how enormous these lakes truly are, how dramatic the weather can get, and how how maybe easy it is for people at times to underestimate

[00:30:29] both, really. I was looking at the just the square mileage of Lake Superior and something like 37,000 square miles. And us and Little Rhode Island, we're just like just over 1000 square miles. So you could fit 37 Rhode Islands. And that's just that's an incomprehensible, like open body of water. That's not that's not the ocean. Exactly. That's right. That's right. And you know, the,

[00:30:59] if we look at the lakes, and I'm sure your listeners are aware that, you know, again, it's freshwater, it's not saltwater. So the density of the waves completely different. So you don't have that those swells, maybe the same way you would have with the ocean, it tends to be choppier. I have read stories, I've never seen it myself. But I've read stories of saltwater sailors getting into the Great Lakes and getting seasick, they've been sailing their whole lives. And they get seasick because the wave action is so different. And those waves, they can they can be choppier,

[00:31:27] the action of the waves is different. You know, the distance between the waves can be shorter. And, you know, there can be hurricane like conditions that can descend very quickly on these lakes and catch out a lot of these ships. In 1913, there was a storm that I it was the Great Storm of 1913. I think it sank over a dozen ships. I'm trying to remember that statistic. And these were not small

[00:31:53] ships we're talking about. These were big 400 500 foot steel steam ships at the time. So it, it, it can be very, very dramatic up here. And it's probably not to everybody's taste to live up here. But I know where you're located there. New England, the East Coast, you obviously have your weather that's in some cases can be even more dramatic yet. I just think it surprises people

[00:32:19] here with the lakes. Yeah, there's, there's been an estimated anywhere from 6000 to 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes region. And alone, there's about 550 in Lake Superior. I think it makes sense to talk about why the wrecks happened before the shipwrecks themselves. What, what makes these bodies of water so dangerous throughout history? And do, does each lake kind of have a different personality?

[00:32:46] You know, those are great questions. And to a certain degree, each of the lakes do have their own personalities. And I'll give you an example of Lake Erie, Lake Erie. I grew up closer to the shores of Lake Erie, but spent a lot of my summers on the shores of Lake Superior. Lake Erie is, is, is the smallest of the Great Lakes. It's also the most shallow, if I'm remembering my lakes correctly,

[00:33:10] most shallow. So your, your storms can get, they can generate more quickly in that more shallow water. Lake Superior, the biggest, the deepest, maybe takes slightly longer for that storm to brew up. Lake Superior would give you more maneuvering room, but that's a, that's a big difference between, say, being out in the ocean and being in the Great Lakes. There's not as much maneuvering room for these ships. So often they had to sail right through the teeth of a terrible storm because they

[00:33:39] just really had nowhere else to go. Lake Superior is where we're located. We're kind of on the southeastern end of the lake. So that's, that's the lake that we know the best and talk about the most at the shipwreck museum. And if we, if we want to talk for, let's look at Lake Superior as the example, why so many shipwrecks? And again, that's a great question, Carter. And that's a question we get from a lot of our visitors that come to the museum. What's, what's the deal here? You know,

[00:34:04] why, why so many wrecks in this area as an example? Well, there's a lot of factors that play into that. The weather is always going to be central in it. Almost always anyways. And if you look at Lake Superior as an example, there's really nothing to stop as a ship is coming across the lake. And let's say they're getting to that southeastern end. They're maybe closing in on getting into Whitefish Bay. They have pretty much the whole link because the prevailing winds, and it's not always the wind

[00:34:33] coming out of the Northwest, but the prevailing winds are going to be coming in out of the Northwest on Lake Superior that allows a storm to build up a lot of energy. And the lakes, the, the, the temperatures of the lakes affect this weather, obviously. But, but just, if we want to look at the expanse of Lake Superior, there's plenty of, plenty of open space there for the storm to build up energy. And it just hammers the shoreline that I was mentioning a little bit earlier that,

[00:34:59] you know, 60 to 80 mile stretch between the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and Whitefish Point and getting into Whitefish Bay. So it pounds that shoreline. These ships could often get caught out. They'd get driven ashore. There's another aspect of that story that there's no real harbors of refuge. Um, not really to speak of if we looked at that stretch of shoreline. So the ships really didn't have any place to go. And so they'd get caught out, they'd get driven ashore. Uh, the weather

[00:35:28] can change very, very quickly. Think of the technology being used by these ships back in the day. You know, they just didn't have the ability to predict the weather and, and there were also were not the same, um, influences as, as far as what they could do and maybe what they would want to do. So meaning the regulations were different back then too. They didn't have the weather reporting

[00:35:53] and they didn't take the weather reporting seriously, even when they did get it. Uh, you could have a ship. There's one example that we have a ship called the SR Kirby that left Ashland, Wisconsin, fully loaded. The guy had a, uh, he was a heavy weather sailor too. They had one foot of free board when they departed, uh, to tell you how heavily laden the ship was. And they ended up getting into a storm as well. And the storm just overwhelmed the vessel. They were so deep in the water anyways.

[00:36:21] Um, so the regulations may be a little different, but, but the weather clearly central, big storms smashing that shoreline that really goes for the, you know, the lakes in general, uh, human error. We can't discount the idea of human error. The ship traffic in relatively confined spaces would often result in collision. You know, there were, uh, if we put fog in the middle of that, again, a weather

[00:36:46] related event and not having the technology that we take for, uh, granted today, uh, you know, ships collision was a big issue. Um, these ships would be smashing into each other. Again, I'll go back to that human error part. Um, some of the shipwreck stories we tell in our main gallery, the museum, there's one of them where it was broad daylight. These ships could see each other coming from miles, but a misinterpreted signal suddenly had one trip or one ship rather turning in front of the other one.

[00:37:16] They smash into each other and here we go. Uh, so rules of the road people, exactly. And the rules of the road being ignored. There's, there's a whale back sinking. We'll talk about a whale back here today. These were kind of unique vessels to the great lakes, although they did make their way out to the East coast, West coast and later years. But there was one where in dense fog, there was one ship called the Northern queen who was just getting into whitefish Bay. Uh, they dense fog, but you

[00:37:45] know, enough that there were many, many other ships out there that had dropped anchor. They didn't feel safe to be operating in those conditions. Oh, here comes this vessel, the Northern queen full speed ahead through the fog. Talk about ignoring the rules of the road. And, um, the captain of that ship ended up seeing these two whale backs. There were two of them involved in this accident. Uh, but the one sank, he saw them when it was just too late signaled full reverse. There was a

[00:38:13] misinterpretation. I don't know how that happens, but there was a misinterpretation down in the engine room. They didn't change course. They didn't change speed and they just plowed in to these other two and practically cut this whale back barge called the Sagamore in half. And one report has it sinking at all, you know, not much more than 90 seconds. Imagine that for a second, but, but yeah, the rules of the road, human error, weather fog, uh, forest fires up here combining with fog. Uh, one sailor,

[00:38:41] there was a quote where it was said that it was like trying to sail through a wool blanket. It was that thick, but yet they would keep sailing. So, so many, many reasons for these shipwrecks, but, but one point we have to look at is that there were so many ships operating on the lakes at that point that there was a constant flow of traffic coming through the locks. We have some photographs for these ships that'd be caught in the ice. Uh, that's another thing, you know, we have the winter

[00:39:06] can not often, but can freeze up Lake Superior completely. And depending on when the shipping season started and ended, you'd have some of these ships getting caught in the ice and you could look at an expanse with 40 or 50 ships out there stuck in the ice, but it speaks to the number of ships that were out there. And, uh, and those, those numbers invariably, you're going to have more shipwrecks for all those other reasons. Well, something that makes your organization stand out is the research

[00:39:35] arm of the museum. You don't just study previously found artifacts, but you have the ability to go out on the lake with technology and equipment to examine wrecks and to search for those still missing. What tools does the museum have to push the discover part of your mission? That's a great question too. And that's, that's something that many of our visitors, even though we have interpretive panels and displays that will speak to that aspect, it's what people are never going to see because it's offshore. So we have a former U S army Corps of

[00:40:05] engineers research vessel, uh, that we use. That's just under 50 feet long. We have a Marine sonic technology. That's kind of out there in your corner of the world, Yorktown, Virginia, anyways, East coast. They, uh, they build these side scan sonar systems and it's really a state of the art system that we use. Um, and we tow that behind this research vessel. And so using that side scan

[00:40:28] sonar and, uh, really setting up a grid. And this is where I'm going to go back. I'll, I'll sidebar for a minute to the great team that we have at the shipwreck society. We have our director of Marine operations man by the name of Daryl or tell junior and his brother, Dan or tell, uh, spend a lot of time in the summer out on the lake. And Daryl in the winter does a lot of research. We use a lot of

[00:40:53] primary source materials to find areas, um, maybe close to us, maybe not so close to us at whitefish point where we can set up grids where, where certain ships were reported to have disappeared, or maybe if there's survivor accounts, you know, not everybody's sitting down and taking a location fix when their ship is sinking, you know, underneath them. Uh, but, but you get general ideas of where

[00:41:19] these ships might be located and reports, uh, where they might be located. And we can set up those grids, uh, and we can tow that sonar and people will jokingly call it mowing the lawn because you're going back and forth, back and forth, using that sonar, studying the bottom of the lake. And a lot of times that can be, that could be a day where you get up, you're out on the water at five or 6am, uh, get out there and 10, 12 hours later, you, you've been searching all day, uh, and you don't see

[00:41:46] anything on the bottom of the lake. So it can be kind of boring. Sometimes a lot of donuts get eaten, a lot of coffee consumed, um, a lot of junk food, uh, you know, just, just passing the day, watching what's on the bottom of the lake. For me, when I'm able to get out there, which is not all the time, but typically I'm in an office, I'm operating a museum, um, which is a great thing, but it is so much fun for me to actually be able to get out there. Even if it is a boring day,

[00:42:14] you're out on the water and we really have to have good weather to do this. Uh, this is something that is pretty impressive about Daryl. He, he has so many different apps that he's able to tune into to see what the weather is going to do and by and large, and maybe this is a big difference, uh, that maybe a ship captain from, you know, 1903, uh, as an example, didn't have that same ability to know what the weather might do. We have a better idea and we really have to have calm conditions to

[00:42:42] tow that sonar. Uh, and then if we want to, let's say if we are fortunate enough to find a shipwreck and we have been very fortunate in the last three years, we found 13 shipwrecks, which is kind of unheard of, certainly unheard of for us. Um, but as far as organizations here in the Great Lakes looking for shipwrecks, uh, you could say that we came across a target rich environment, no question, and have been fortunate with this marine sonic technology side scan sonar to find

[00:43:09] 13 shipwrecks. Uh, but if we find one, we have to be able to document it. We want to know what wreck we're seeing. So with the various settings on this sonar, we can get closer, uh, get a closer look at whatever wreck we're seeing. Uh, there are tools that can allow us to measure it. Uh, sometimes the image from the sonar rarely, but sometimes can tell us what we're seeing, but ultimately what we have

[00:43:33] to do is put our ROV down on the wreck itself. So, uh, a remotely operated vehicle ROV, it's like a small robot, uh, high intensity lighting, high definition cameras on it. The one we're using now is about 30 years old. We're getting a new one next year, finally. Um, but this, this old deep ocean engineering phantom S4 ROV that we have is a workhorse. It's just a tough, tough unit, but the

[00:43:59] technology is really, really outdated on it at this point. So we do need a new one. We're working with that company, deep ocean engineering to develop a new one, or they're building one for us right now, but that little ROV, uh, we can put it down on the wreck and through those cameras, we can see, we can see a shipwreck. We can see what we've discovered. And sometimes like the case of the

[00:44:26] Atlanta, which we're going to be talking about here a little bit, the Atlanta was a schooner barge, uh, that, that sank off of this coastline that I've been telling you about. The Atlanta was a little different, um, because the Atlanta actually had a name board on it. That was one of the most ornate that I've ever seen on these shipwrecks. Now I'm, I'm relatively new to this. Daryl Ertel, our director of Marine operations has been doing this work for 35 years. And there's a lot of people

[00:44:50] on the lakes that have been doing this for decades. You know, I started in 2011. Um, so I'm not, I, I'm not, I haven't been out there as much as a lot of these people, but I've had some other people who've looked at some of the video footage that we have of the Atlanta. And when you look at that name board, it just screams what shipwreck it is. And this is cold, fresh water without the problems. And I say problems that some of the lower lakes have in the sense that they have zebra mussels,

[00:45:18] they have quagga mussels on these wrecks. And so you really can't see what we see up on Lake Superior. We can see paint on the decks. And as the example of the Atlanta, we could see this ornate, which almost appears to have gold leaf on it, which is still there. One of the, the, one of the things that is so phenomenal. And so Tyler and I are both involved in the wooden boat world and we see boats that are, you know, in land on land and then, you know,

[00:45:45] not recently restored, but relatively recently restored, just be outside for a couple of years and they're totally shot. And we were always kind of told that fresh water is the enemy to wooden boats, but here you are diving down on these boats and they're, you know, in these conditions, you think they would just rot away overnight. What, what keeps them, I mean, so outside of just not having the, the, the muscles and the life growing on what else keeps them in such phenomenal

[00:46:14] condition where you can have that aha moment, like you did with the Atlanta. Sure. Yeah. Well, it's just that cold water. It's cold, fresh water. It's funny that Carter, you said that the freshwater, the enemy, which, you know, I always think of salt water being the enemy because salt water pickles the boats. Well, you know, the, well, the funny thing is with it, it is, you know, it's, it's like popping something in the freezer. Almost these lakes are so cold.

[00:46:39] I forget what the average temperatures are at the bottom. They're not that much above freezing. Really. Um, there are some quotes about Lake Superior. It's either solid or slightly thawed ice that you're in. Uh, and you know, I'll swim. I jumped in early November was the last time. Well, early this month was the last time that went in and that will be the last time until probably June or

[00:47:05] July. That water is so, so cold. So that water does preserve those wrecks. Um, the science into that, I don't know that I can speak to that quite as much, but it does act almost like a, I guess, kind of a deep freeze of sorts. And there's not much of that, you know, in the oceans, you're going to have more of the sea life, uh, that might be able to affect those, those vessels. You don't really have that in the great lakes quite as much. So we just had the discovery of

[00:47:34] Shackleton's the endeavor. And that was in just off the coast of the, uh, Antarctica, same thing in freezing cold water, like frigid, frigid water. And she was in perfect condition. So I, again, I'm not necessarily know the science of it, but you're right. I think that one of the big things is the, is the temperature of the water being so cold, um, way like at, at depth at 1300 feet. Well, the, uh, Atlanta, how deep was she? She's 600 feet deep. Yeah. A little over 600. What's the temperature of that water there? Oh, you know, and that's, that's a good question.

[00:48:04] I mean, it's probably right above freezing at that point. I think it is. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's probably under 40 degrees, um, you know, but certainly above the freezing point, but, but it's just at that exact temperature that needs to preserve. And again, let's go back to the second, this idea that we have no quagga muscles, we have no zebra muscles down there. Um, and so they're not encrusting these vessels. So we can see that name board. We can see that green paint on the hall. We can

[00:48:32] see that red paint that might be on the deck, you know, what have you. So we're very fortunate in that sense. And so when our ROV is down there, sometimes these wrecks are pretty well bashed up the Kirby, the SR Kirby, I mentioned a few minutes ago, that one looks like someone filled it with dynamite and blew it up on the bottom of the lake. But if you look at a vessel like the Atlanta, um, you know, it's reasonably intact. Um, but, but again, you're looking at it through these cameras.

[00:48:59] So you have a relatively narrow image. Uh, the one thing you can say about the zebra mussels, they clear, they make the water very clean and clear. Um, but Lake Superior is, you know, pretty clean and clear to start with it's it's, uh, so we don't, we don't really have that impact of the zebra mussels in that sense, but we can still see these wrecks, um, very closely. And so you get a snapshot of these wrecks. Um, and it's just, it's just an amazing thing to see. It's exciting because

[00:49:27] in very many cases, you know, the Atlanta sank in 1891, we were the first human eyes to look at this thing. Granted, it wasn't like we were in a submersible. We're looking through the cameras on board the ROV, but it's pretty exciting all the same. But when you, the, when the museum shared the video of finding the wreck and it's such a impactful image as the ROV comes up, the silk clears,

[00:49:51] and there's the name. I mean, that's, we've seen that over and over again with images of the Titanic and recently with Shackleton's endurance. Um, but it having that technology to be able to 100% ID, this is what it is, is, is really incredible. It really is. It is. And not all of them are like that. There's some of them that we have a lot of researchers that help the museum, just a great, great group of people that assist us

[00:50:19] in gathering information, uh, and getting that information into files. So we can, we can better understand the story, what was happening before it sank. Um, we can better understand the architecture of the ship itself because many times we have to look at a lot of the features. And again, I'll go back to Daryl Artel and his brother, Dan, a lot of the work that they do to help identify these wrecks, not every one of these wrecks. And most of them don't beat you over the head like the Atlanta did telling us what it was. That was just off the charts, exciting moment.

[00:50:49] Uh, for the Atlanta, there's another wreck. We recently spoke with, we recently spoke with a wreck diver who has done a lot of deep ocean wrecks and he spent years, if not decades diving on individual wrecks and still doesn't know exactly. He's got a pretty good idea, but you know, there's world war two, world war one. There's a lot of U-boat wrecks, a lot of U-boats that caused wrecks

[00:51:14] off the East coast and it could be one of five or 10 ships. Um, and you know, unless you get lucky and you come down on top of a boiler with a serial number, it's a little difficult to pinpoint one riveted ship from another at, you know, 600 feet. It's, it's absolutely true. One thing that we have going for us in that sense, we, we're,

[00:51:38] we're talking about the lakes are, as we just mentioned, expansive. They're huge, but it's not the ocean we're talking about. So we have more confined spaces here. That's part of a reason there were wrecks too, because again, they just didn't have that maneuvering room to go around the storm, but we have often general ideas of what ships should be in certain areas. Um, that doesn't mean that's, you know, it might be reported being 20 miles Northwest of Whitefish Point when it sank,

[00:52:07] and it could be 30 miles away from that in the other direction. So that kind of thing happens too. And there are times where we're searching for one wreck. There are a number of wrecks that are still out there that, uh, quite a few actually that we're looking for as an organization and a lot of other organizations are looking for as well. Um, but we may be looking for one and suddenly we come across something else and then the research starts and then you get the ROV down on it. If you don't find a name on the hall somewhere, um, then you start looking at the architecture of the vessel.

[00:52:37] You look at other vessels that might've been reported in that general area. So certainly the research going into it. And that's why I said a minute ago, the researchers we have working on our behalf and a lot of the files we have in the organization anyways can help us to determine what wreck we're seeing. And I think when we, as we kind of start to get into the wrecks a little bit, I, I don't think any discussion of lost ships on the lakes could be complete without a little bit of time dedicated

[00:53:02] to the Edmund Fitzgerald, um, a wreck so much a part of our Marine history that it's really only overshadowed by the loss of the Titanic. Tell us a little bit about the Fitzgerald and why was her loss so impactful? Yes. The Edmund Fitzgerald. So that's, that's a whole story unto itself that, um, although I will say this too, and we, we do well, before I go off on kind of a tangent here within the story,

[00:53:31] uh, the Edmund Fitzgerald 729 foot steam ship that sank, uh, 17 miles Northwest of Whitefish point in Canadian waters. Um, this ship was a record setting ship. Uh, it really wasn't that old at that point, believe it or not. We've had ships sailing on the lakes, steam ships that there's one in particular that was over a hundred years old that was still sailing on the lakes. Again, think

[00:53:55] freshwater versus saltwater. So if the Fitzgerald and it was built and launched in 1958, it sank on November the 10th, 1975. It was a relatively young ship. And it was when it was launched the largest ship on the great lakes. Um, it's interesting. There are a few wrecks on the lakes that these vessels, when they were launched, they were the largest, they were the latest technology. And then X number of years later, they come to grief, uh, somewhere on the lakes, but the Fitzgerald,

[00:54:24] it was a storied vessel. It was the largest, it was a record setting ship. It was fast. It had the most modern appointments. It was the ship. Uh, it was operated by the Columbia transportation division of the Oglebay Norton company. Uh, it was owned by the Northwestern mutual life insurance company kind of sounds kind of strange, but, um, not completely unheard of. But in the end, uh, this

[00:54:51] ship had sailed from superior, Wisconsin. Think of Duluth superior, uh, the opposite end of Lake superior, uh, November 9th, 1975. It left superior fully loaded with iron ore. It was headed down to the Detroit area, a place called Zug Island in Detroit. And, uh, they knew they were getting into some rough weather. November is typically the month where these ships are going to get beat up, uh, with storms. Not, you know, that's not to say that the storms don't come in other months. As a

[00:55:19] matter of fact, you can get storms anytime of the year up here, um, and dramatic ones at that, but this, the Fitzgerald crossed the Lake. They, and I say, they, you'll hear me referencing. They, there was another ship out there that same night called the Arthur M. Anderson. There were a few other ships out on the Lake that night too. Many of them found cover where they could. And this storm system grew more and more dramatic by the hour. And when the Fitzgerald was closing in

[00:55:46] on Whitefish Bay, and if they would have made it to Whitefish Bay, chances are they would have been okay. Cause there would have been relatively calm waters inside the bay at that point. But, uh, they were about 17 miles Northwest of Whitefish point. Uh, the Arthur M. Anderson was behind them. The Fitzgerald had, uh, indicated in communications with the Anderson that they had had some difficulties. They had some damage. Their radars were down. They had, uh, lost a couple of vents. Uh, you know,

[00:56:16] a few other things that they had mentioned that, which is kind of unusual for a captain to get on the, the air, get on the radio and indicate that he has that trouble. They're usually pretty tight lipped about stuff like that fence rail being down, things like that. Uh, but the bottom line was, uh, 17 miles Northwest of Whitefish point about 7, 10 PM on November the 10th, 1975. Uh, the Anderson, uh, had been keeping an eye on the Fitzgerald. They have their lights of the Fitzgerald in front of

[00:56:43] them. They had them on their radar. The, the weather at that point was getting severely dramatic, 90 mile per hour winds being indicated at the Sioux locks at that point. And in the space of a couple minutes, a snow squall covered the whole area to the point where they couldn't see anything. And in those few minutes, when that snow squall cleared, suddenly the crew up in the pilot house of the Anderson couldn't see those lights anymore. The Fitzgerald, they didn't have it on radar.

[00:57:13] They thought maybe there was some power failure on board the Fitzgerald. No one could imagine that this 729 foot ship could just disappear that quickly. Um, well, the bottom line was it did. It, it, it absolutely disappeared that quickly. The waves were as much as 35 feet out there, uh, that night. Um, there are any number of theories as to why the Fitzgerald sank. Um, there have been a number

[00:57:39] of government to non-governmental expeditions that have gone down to, to study the wreck site. They found the wreckage pretty much within days. They didn't positively identify until the following spring, early 1976 into the shipping season. Um, they were able to put a, uh, an ROV, uh, down on that

[00:58:02] wreck site and identify the Fitzgerald. But the Fitzgerald is a story, uh, that has, is really kind of amazing because of the, I hesitate to use the word popularity, but it's one that, that really many, many people who would have no understanding of shipwrecks on the great lakes might know something about because of Gordon Lightfoot, uh, the Canadian folk singer, the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,

[00:58:28] which some people didn't even realize it was actually a true story, um, about the shipwreck. Uh, I think there's people out there today that don't realize it's about a real shipwreck. And there was a crew of 29 men on board that ship. And that ship disappeared that quickly, 17 miles Northwest of Whitefish Point. It is a mystery. We don't really know. There's many, many theories as to why that ship might've gone down and people are still theorizing today. It is a shipwreck that absolutely commands

[00:58:55] interest and fascination on the part of the public that visits the museum. Um, we have people, uh, that will be reaching out to us all year long with questions about this shipwreck, people visiting the museum. Uh, it is a story that keeps, uh, how can I put it? It's a story that doesn't really end because there are aspects of the story that are new as the years go on as well from these expeditions

[00:59:21] have gone down to try to better understand Jacques Cousteau. I know you're all familiar with that man. Uh, the Calypso came into the great lakes and they, it wasn't their primary purpose, but part of what they ended up doing on the lakes was they did send their submersible down to the Fitzgerald to get a look at it. They theorized that it broke up on the surface. Um, investigations had taken place. Many, many of the theories say there's no way this ship broke up on the surface. If it did, it would have

[00:59:50] had the technology at least to get a, uh, a distress signal out. They didn't have time. They just couldn't do it. Uh, they didn't have time to get a distress signal out. It sank that quickly. Uh, so a lot of, a lot of different theories. No one really knows why this ship sang, but if we add Gordon Lightfoot and his, his wonderful song, which does a one, a great job of telling the story. Um, it was not headed to Wisconsin. I have to say it was headed.

[01:00:16] It was not here to fact check Gordon. He can't, he can't, uh, debate us anymore. So no, he can't, he can't. And he was such a great guy too. He visited the museum multiple times, but I have to always chuckle a little bit about the lyrics because he did such a wonderful job of telling the story and really, uh, for the most part, a very accurate job, but, but you can't fit Zug Island into a song like that. And that's where the Fitzgerald was headed. You know, we talk about

[01:00:44] fact-checking. There have been a few people out there that particularly when he passed away that wanted to point out that there were some inaccuracies in the song and it's like, give me a break. That's not, the song was not meant to be like an audio documentary about the shipwreck. And the, the, I'll tell you how, how really good of a person Gordon Lightfoot, I only met him twice. Um, but he,

[01:01:09] he really, really was a good person and he formed a connection and a bond, you could say with a number of the surviving Fitzgerald family members to the point where some of those family members maybe gently suggested that parts of the song bothered them a little bit. And he actually went and changed the lyrics of the song to, um, was that over the deck hatches, the, the, the clamps on the hatches?

[01:01:39] Exactly. Exactly. So there, there was one crewman by the name of Bruce Hudson, uh, that was on board and he, he was, uh, he was a crewman that worked on the deck and he would have been one of the ones, uh, deckhand, he would have been one of the ones that would have been, you know, uh, fixing those hatch clamps, you know, onto the hatches. And if you look at the investigations that followed, um, one of the reasons that was put forward as to why it sank was maybe they were improperly, uh, you know, the hatch

[01:02:07] covers were not put on properly and they weren't, uh, fixed with those hatch clamps properly. And if you're a family member and your loved one died on that ship and that was their job to, to, you know, work those hatch clamps and get those things on there. Well, that that's going to probably bother you a little bit. Um, and, and so going back to the song, uh, there was, uh, Bruce Hudson's mother actually, uh, and this is the story that's told to me actually did speak to Gordon Lightfoot about that

[01:02:35] aspect of the song at one point. And to his credit, he actually did change those lyrics. Those lyrics of the song, as you hear it on the radio wouldn't change, but when he's out, when he was out touring, which he did up until he died, um, you know, he, he did have a different version of that song. And that, that really speaks to how he looked at this story. I think that's, that's an important aspect of this because it's not a shipwreck from antiquity.

[01:03:04] There's family members that are still with us today that this had a huge impact on their life. And so it, I think it's a little different when you talk about something like the Lusitania or the Titanic, where there's really no firsthand effects, you know, people lost great grandparents and things like that. But, um, there are still sons and daughters and, and, and people of the lost crew.

[01:03:32] And I think that nice to see that there's so much honor given to those that have been lost. I think you hold, uh, the great lakes historical society holds a memorial ceremony every year. Um, and that's in, in, in, in large part for the families, right? That's exactly right. We, we host a ceremony every November the 10th. We started at 7 PM

[01:03:56] on November the 10th. This last year, it was on a Sunday night. Um, and I will, I will add this there, there is almost, you could almost describe it as a strange fascination surrounding the Fitzgerald. Um, I'm not sure that I always understand it. And there's a number of family members that we keep close contact with that come up not every year, but almost every year. In some cases, there are some of them that do come up every year on November the 10th and join us for this event to remember their

[01:04:22] lost loved ones on board the Fitzgerald. But, but there has been kind of a strange fascination for people, uh, who really don't have what you would call a real connection to the story. In other words, they didn't have that uncle. They didn't have that father. They didn't have that husband that, that died on the Fitzgerald, which many of these Fitzgerald family members that join us obviously have that connection. But I think they even scratch their heads sometimes when they see

[01:04:49] this level of, um, again, fascination and interest that some people have surrounding the shipwreck. It's almost kind of the story, the legend, if you want to put it that way, is kind of taking on a life of its own. And for us at the museum, and one thing that I do, I end up, I'm kind of the MC, I guess, if you'd want to say for that event each year. Um, I like to speak to the Fitzgerald as coming to represent shipwrecks on the Great Lakes period. And I kind of stole that concept to a

[01:05:19] degree from a gentleman by the name of Fred Stonehouse. Uh, Fred is, how do I describe Fred? I mean, he's written probably close to 30 books on Great Lakes shipwreck and maritime history. Um, he is such a knowledgeable individual about this history. And he came and spoke at one of these Fitzgerald memorials one year. And he used that kind of analogy that the Fitzgerald has come to represent shipwrecks on the Great Lakes, because it is the one that people know about. But for us at

[01:05:45] the museum, you know, there's, uh, Carter, I think you mentioned, or maybe it was Tyler, that some statistics tell us there's 6,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. Some will say there's 10,000 shipwrecks in the Great Lakes. There's a lot of other stories out there that, that seemingly, you know, people that you're not going to have that same awareness because someone like Gordon Lightfoot didn't write a song and it didn't become the number two on the Hot 100 in 1976, uh, to the

[01:06:14] point where it's such a, a story that even people that won't know about Rex somehow seem to know about the Fitzgerald. But it's taken on a life of its own, that story, um, partly because it was such a massive ship, partly because it's a mystery, certainly Gordon Lightfoot's aspect to it. Um, you know, and the fact that there are ships sailing out there now that are older, uh, they're smaller than the Fitzgerald was, uh, when it was launched. Um, so that mystery is a big part of it. But the

[01:06:44] point I'm trying to make is with all these other stories out there in every November the 10th, I try to, to get everybody to remember when we think of that crew of 29 on the, the Edmund Fitzgerald, we have to think about ships like the Atlanta ships, like the Kirby. There was a ship called the Eastland that capsized in Chicago at the dock with over 800 people perishing on this ship. Um, you

[01:07:08] know, there are so many other stories we have to bear these in mind. Um, in other words, there are other shipwrecks out there and there was loss of life on these shipwrecks too. And we, we don't want to forget that, I guess. And, and we kind of touched on that a little bit earlier, you know, that the loss of, of ships in the lakes is, is in the thousands and each story is worth discovering and the history is, is, is worth learning about. And, and you, you had mentioned that the museums found

[01:07:36] 13 ships in, in the recent, in the recent past. And in 2001, you found eight separate wrecks, um, just in that year alone. And let's talk about one of those notable finds. Barge 129 was one of the first barges built in the 1880s of a, of a new type named the whaleback. You'd mentioned it earlier. Tell us about these whaleback barges and the story behind 129. Sure. Yeah. Well, the whalebacks,

[01:08:03] you know, they were really for, for a long time, they were very unique to the Great Lakes, uh, kind of an unusual style of vessel. They were, they were designed, uh, by a man by the name and they were kind of the brainchild of a man by the name of Alexander McDougal. Um, you could probably imagine with a name like that, the man came from Scotland. Uh, he, uh, he settled in Canada or at least his family did for a while before he became a United States citizen. But, um, this man was a mover and

[01:08:30] a shaker. And, uh, he, he had a lot of ideas that he patented. Um, he wasn't an engineer. He's not, he wasn't a Marine architect or anything like that, but he had people working with him to help, uh, make into reality this vision that he had of these whaleback ships and these things, you know, they were these long steel ships. They were all steel construction, which that wasn't completely new, uh, when these whalebacks were coming out. Uh, but the way they were designed,

[01:09:00] uh, originally he thought of these being, he visualized these being barges that would be towed by other steam ships. And the idea was somehow that these whalebacks with these, the weather deck would kind of slope gently down on each side to allow the water to kind of almost, I hate to say flow over these, the halls of these ships, but they were meant to work in the water a different way that may be a standard ship, which would slice through the water because there were whaleback steam ships

[01:09:27] too. But, uh, these things, they look like big cigars out on the water. They were called whalebacks because if you've ever seen a whale out on the water and that water kind of rolling over the, over the body of the whale, um, that is to a certain degree what these, uh, these whaleback ships look like. They were called pig boats as, as well. They were not pretty vessels. They were called pig boats because of the way the bow was shaped on them. You know, if you think about a,

[01:09:54] think of a tall ship and think of the graceful lines of some of these schooners and tall ships where they just sliced through the water really wasn't the case with the whalebacks. And again, they were called pig boats because the way the, the, uh, the bow and the stern kind of tapered up, but in the bow, it almost tapered up into what would be almost like a snout it would look like. And it, some of the earlier ones, I think barge 101, if I'm remembering correctly, was the very first one that McDougal

[01:10:22] built out there in Superior, Wisconsin. Um, the anchor chains, uh, or pockets, if you want to call them that were right up into that snout area, it looked like a pig's nose and they were considered really, really ugly vessels when they came out. So they were called pig boats. I don't know what McDougal thought about that. I'm not sure anybody recorded his. I saw them described as innovative, but unpopular. I mean, it, it sounds the whole, the whole, the kind of the aura around these boats is

[01:10:50] really, and truly is that the Oscar Meyer Wienermobile of great, like shipping. I mean, it's I don't know if I've ever heard it that way, but that's probably not a bad analogy there. Um, you know, you know, Carter, you mentioned that they were maybe unpopular. Um, I don't know about the public, you know, watching ships is nothing new. And I think, I think really those things came to, uh, represent shipping on the great lakes. I think people for a while, cause the media,

[01:11:17] I think even had fun with these ships. And I think people that maybe weren't from the great lakes kind of thought these are the only kind of ships that are operating in the lakes for a while, even though there were only 44 of them ever built, but unpopular. I don't know that they would have been very comfortable as far as being a crewman on board. Uh, they, if you're, if you had a cabin below deck, you're in this steel, big, long, I mean, I not a whole lot of natural light coming

[01:11:45] into these things. Sure. They had portholes and things like that, but the other thing that marked the characteristics of these ships is they had turrets built up onto the decks. So you'd have a front turret that maybe would have a pilot house, but typically not, but you might have, um, a cap stand built up on that turret. You might have, uh, tow bits, uh, you might have other things that then if it was a whaleback steamship, that turret aft turret near the stern would have cabins built up onto

[01:12:13] it as well. So, so they really were unique designs. Um, some of them sailed, you know, right up through world war two. Um, so they were, they were pretty stoutly built vessels. It took a while, some teething problems early on before McDougal got these things to where he wanted them. Um, but in the end, they were kind of unique ship, definitely unique, uh, but definitely prevalent on the great lakes for a number of decades. Uh, but barge one 29 was just an example of one of them,

[01:12:42] not a very, you know, you think about a ship, maybe having a romantic name to it, like the Zephyr or something like that. Uh, barge one 29, not a whole lot of romance in that. Um, but it was, these were working vessels and this was a barge. Uh, there were many, many other barges, meaning it was meant to be towed by a steamship. Uh, and, and in the case of barge one 29, and there were a lot of

[01:13:07] vessels that were towed on the great lakes. It was a commercially viable way to tow additional cargo with maybe a smaller crew on board the barge, a lot of schooners, a lot of lovely schooners that operated on the great lakes eventually had their masts cut down and they would be turned into schooner barges to be towed by a steamship. Again, a more commercially viable way to move cargo. That cargo could be anyway, anything from, you know, coal, limestone, wheat, iron ore being the big

[01:13:35] one. Um, and barge one 29 is an interesting story because it's a story of collision and that is a pretty common story of shipwrecks, you know, at least in our area of the great lakes for sure. So one 29 is an interesting story. Um, you know, I, I mentioned that, you know, a lot of the old schooners got their masks cut down and they would be turned into schooner barges. There's a difference between the whale back barges and the schooner barges. The schooner barges did have masts

[01:14:02] that they could raise sail and, uh, they could set sail if they had, if they got separated somehow from the tow ship, those schooner barges at least have the ability to put up a couple of sails and try to control their own fate. That really wasn't the case with the whale back barges. They didn't have anything like that. So if they got separated in a storm and that was pretty common. And for the

[01:14:25] story of, of barge one 29, this was an October storm. It was 1902. It was being, uh, towed by another steamship, uh, or by a steamship called the Mauna Loa. Uh, they were making their way across Lake Superior. They were headed West. They were down bound. Um, and what ended up happening, uh, was the storm was getting just dramatic enough that their tow line parted again, pretty common in these

[01:14:50] big storms. The tow line parted the captain on board, the Mauna Loa had a decision to make at that point. And if the weather is bad enough, you could have 15, 20 foot waves out there, high, high winds to, to execute a maneuver, to turn around on a storm like that. You're going to put yourself in a couple of dangerous positions. One of which is getting into the trough of the waves and the ship could possibly get turned over, get rolled in the process that would have had to have been going through

[01:15:18] the mind of the captain of the Mauna Loa when he, when that tow line snapped, uh, the weather was just bad enough that they couldn't always see barge 129 anyways, massive snow storms, uh, in October. Again, not that uncommon, but, uh, to the credit of the captain and crew of the Mauna Loa after that tow line snapped again, they couldn't see the barge. They couldn't see barge 129 the whole time, but he had to make that decision to turn around and he, he, he kind of took a long turn.

[01:15:47] Some of the accounts said it took about an hour for him to get that vessel turned around. He wanted to do it in such a way that he put that his own ship in the least amount of danger in the process, but they did finally get turned around. They came back, uh, and tried to get themselves into a position. So they went to the North, came back and headed West, and then they were going to turn to the South again and then start heading in the, to the East and to try to get alongside barge 129.

[01:16:14] Um, and what ended up happening is pretty amazing, but maybe not surprising as they were closing in and think about the crew on board barge 129. You've got a crew up near the bow there. Uh, they're, they're trying to get ready to hook that tow line up again. You've got a crew on the stern of Mauna Loa to again, reconnect to that, that tow line in these conditions, in this terrible storm,

[01:16:41] where someone could get swept overboard, probably in a heartbeat. Uh, but what ended up happening as the Mauna Loa started creeping up next to the barge 129 was the waves pushed both vessels together to where the port side anchor up, up near the bow of Mauna Loa smashed into the side of barge 129, smashing in the hull plates, uh, pretty much ripping a hole in the side of barge 129.

[01:17:10] They kind of knew at that point, the jig was up. The game was up. Uh, we're not going to save this ship. The crew on barge 129 reacted very, very quickly. They knew that their ship was in trouble. Both of these vessels were, were fully loaded with iron ore. So that barge 129 taking on water very quickly was going to sink like a rock in a second. They had to get off the ship really, really fast. Uh, I mentioned a couple of minutes ago that these ships had turrets pretty high up above the water,

[01:17:38] but again, they were fully loaded. So that, that y'all, that lifeboat that they had on the stern turret, uh, of the, the barge itself, uh, the captain got up there, started lowering that. Everybody got on board. The, the hall of the y'all got smashed up against barge 129, the, the hall of the ship itself. They had water coming into it. They were stuffing their coats and jackets. Again, this is a terrible storm and you're trying to get into this open boat,

[01:18:05] your lifeboat. Then you have to get through these waves and wind without your boat turning over to try to get to the Mauna Loa itself. I believe, I think I read one account where the captain of the Mauna Loa was able to maybe give them a little cover and maybe the hall of barge 129, gave them a little bit of a break from those waves, but ultimately, and even one crewman fell in the water. They, uh, they pull him out. Fortunately, they were able to get close enough

[01:18:31] to Mauna Loa where the crew of the Mauna Loa was able to pull them back. And right as that was happening, barge 129 just vanished. Uh, it just went straight to the bottom. So they very close run thing for them. I mean, it's one thing for all of us to sit here. I'm in a nice heated building looking out over the park. It's, it's a lovely day here in the upper peninsula. Uh, it's not the winds up a little bit, but nothing like the conditions, the cold, the wet, you would be

[01:18:58] freezing your hands that have difficulties trying to hold onto a rope or anything else. It's just hard to imagine what that crew went through, but Hey, their story was a happy ending. They were all saved. No doubt. Once they got on the Mauna Loa, they got them probably back, back in the aft section where the galley was located, got them some hot coffee, some dry clothing, and they lived to sail another day. That was a very, very happy ending. But that boat

[01:19:23] went to the bottom about 40 miles Northwest of a place called Vermillion, where there was an old life-saving station, uh, remnants of it still there, but that was way out in the middle of the lake. And one little sidebar I'd add to the story was this was the very first shipwreck since I came on board the organization that I was actually on board the David Boyd, our research vessel. When we found it, it was the tail end of 2021 Fred Stonehouse, the gentleman that I told you that's written all those

[01:19:52] books and really the master historian of shipwreck history on the great lakes. He was on board as well when we found it. So for me, there's special meaning in this shipwreck because I was on board when we located it. And for our director of Marine operations, who'd been looking for barge 129, which is, uh, we believe to be the last whale back to be found of all these whale backs that sank on the great lakes. It was the last one yet to be found. Daryl looked up for it for over 30 years. So there

[01:20:18] was a lot of excitement on board the David Boyd when we actually found this ship. And it's just an amazing story at the same time. The, the seamanship of the captain of the Mauna Loa to turn around in those conditions to come back alongside a, you know, a barge, not under control just to the wind and the waves is that, I mean, you, everyone talks about, you know, the, the old ships of, of like the, the,

[01:20:46] the square riggers, the ships were wood and the men were steel, but that that's the pure definition of, uh, of phenomenal seamanship and just being so frigging brave to go back and do that. It's incredible. It's true. It's true. He really, that was a tough decision to make because he was putting his own, this was a, the Mauna Loa was, if I remember about a 400 foot steel steamship and,

[01:21:12] but he was putting his own ship and crew in danger. But I think they all thought about this, that if they, if they didn't do this, the headlines within a week would be crew lost on barge 129, you know, and they, they knew that crew, uh, you know, those two ships were often in tandem seen, you know, traveling past places like Whitefish Point or locking through the Sioux locks. Those guys knew each other. They were probably good friends. And so they knew that what they had to do. And, uh,

[01:21:42] Carter, that's a good point to bring up the seamanship to do that pretty, pretty incredible. And he was being, I'm sure as absolutely as careful as he could be to try to get his stern close to the bow of barge 129 to where they could get that tow line hooked up again and get back underway. So it's incredible stories. When you found the barge, was it, was that the target where you were looking for? Or was that, were you looking for something else? And how were you able to, to ID it?

[01:22:11] So that is a good question. It was not, if I remember correctly, what we were looking for. And I'm, I'm trying to remember exactly what ship there's, there's a ship called the Western Reserve that we had been looking for, for years, which has a great story, uh, that goes along with it as well. But we, we had been looking for the Western Reserve, but out in this location, and it really, it was kind of at the end of the day, this had been a long day out on the water. And here's

[01:22:37] this target that really probably looked like a shipwreck, but we needed to market. And we had to actually wait a whole, you know, off season because keeping in mind, you know, when the, when the snow descends, uh, and the lake parts of it will freeze up, uh, we pretty much by late September, early October are putting our research vessels, pulling it out of the water. Uh, and we were to that point. So we needed to pull our boat out of the water the following year, we would

[01:23:05] come back and try to identify it. And that's exactly what we ended up doing. And, uh, we were able to get the ROV down on it, but Daryl Ortel, our director of marine operations was studying the sonar imagery. Um, we were able to make another pass before we put the, the void, uh, to, you know, to bed, so to speak for the winter, uh, in looking at some of these sonar images at first, there was an idea that maybe this was actually the Western

[01:23:31] reserve that we had found, but then looking at more closely at some of the other sonar images, we started to make out some characteristics, particularly for Daryl that made him believe that, Hey, this, this is barge 129 because look at, look at this image in the sonar imagery. And that sure looks like that tapered bow area with part of a turret on it. It did take putting the ROV down on it for a hundred percent. It was probably 95% certainty that we knew what

[01:24:01] we had. Um, and again, these whalebacks for your listeners, if you just Google whaleback ships, great lakes, um, you know, you'll see all kinds of images, very unique looking vessels. You're not going to confuse it. It was all steel. For anything. Exactly. That's right. That's right. Except for a submarine, you know, some people have made that analogy that they kind of look like submarines. Uh, but, uh, yeah, looking at it, you boats made it to Lake superior. That's that's a little known fact.

[01:24:31] You know, it's funny. Um, I believe that there was one way, one, one U boat that did get into the great lakes. I believe it might actually be the same one that's in the, uh, what is it? The museum of science in Chicago. I forget what you bought that was 505, 505. There you go. Yeah. Yeah. Which I still haven't seen that yet, which is ridiculous. I've got to get down there at some points. Um, but, but no, once, once we put the ROV down on barge

[01:24:59] 129, we knew exactly what it was. And it's interesting when you're looking at these steel ships versus looking at the graceful lines of the schooners. Um, it, it's just not the same thing. I mean, the, the, these were, this was certainly function over form with these whale backs. Uh, they were designed for a purpose and that was to haul bulk cargoes.

[01:25:26] You know, they were interesting in that their hatches were kind of flush with the, uh, you know, the weather deck of the ship itself. Um, but they weren't pretty vessels as we've established. Um, and there was no question once the ROV was on it, we knew exactly what we were looking at and just looking over the rec site itself. You have to, you have to keep in mind, we're looking at through a very narrow kind of window of the camera and cameras, I guess we could say, or primarily the one primary camera on board are ROV. So you're getting a

[01:25:55] narrow view, but you know, we could see those turrets very clearly. You could see that this massive hauser, this tow line that snapped, which was such an, such a big part of the story. Um, and it's just this kind of quiet, uh, you know, this, uh, and it's, it's also in over 600 feet of water. So it's a, it's a reasonably deep rec. Um, and it's broken up pretty dramatically when it hit the bottom again, loaded with iron ore, it hit the bottom hard, smashed it up,

[01:26:23] but you can make out those characteristics. No question. Unmistakably the whale back. So, uh, Tyler and I, as, as you mentioned before, we've, we've talked to historians and wreck divers and, um, we're obviously fascinated by their discoveries, but even after all of their successes, there's always something else that you you're shooting for. What's the next wreck? I mean, do you guys plan out or what's the next wreck that you guys are? Are you at

[01:26:50] liberty to talk about the next wreck you're looking for? Oh, absolutely. Sure. I didn't know if it was hush, hush, who shoes, very secret. You know, you know, what's hush, hush typically what's hush, hush are the wrecks we found that we just haven't put out the press release. Yeah. Because, because, you know, I'm always going to be vague about where these ships are located. Um, you know, there are other groups that are out there that are searching for them, but I'll give you an example of the wrecks I'd like to find there's, and it's,

[01:27:15] it's, I'll try to keep this short because these stories are amazing and there's so much more to learn about them as we go, but, uh, I'll go to world war one, uh, on the great lakes, believe it or not the French Navy towards the end of world war one, we're seeking out shipyards to build mine sweepers for the French Navy on the great lakes. A lot of people find that very surprising.

[01:27:40] The, the shipyards in France throughout Europe, they were all, they couldn't keep up with the demand. Uh, the government of France starts looking around. They start talking to shipyards in the U S but, you know, uh, and we're talking 1918 at this point, you know, the United States, we were in this war at that point as well. Obviously we were, we were late comers to the war, but we were building up our own Navy at the same time. Shipyards, yards were busy.

[01:28:05] The French government connects with a box car rail car company, uh, in what we call Thunder Bay, Ontario today, uh, Port Arthur, Fort William. It was known back then. And they built a dozen, I believe it was a dozen mine sweepers for the French Navy on that far end of the Western into the Lake Superior. And I said, there were dozens of them built. These were mine sweepers that would make their way back to France. And if you think in the war, think of all the mines

[01:28:32] that would have been placed in these shipping lanes and near, you know, harbors and places like that, they needed to sweep these shipping lanes of the mines, get, get those mines out of there. So, uh, of these dozen ships, the last three late November, 1918, were making their way across Lake Superior, uh, a man by the name of Leclerc, who was in charge of this little mini flotilla of mine sweepers, the three mine sweepers that were making their way across Lake Superior.

[01:29:01] Um, he was a smart guy. He said, you know, we're, we're sailing in a rough time of year. If we get separated for whatever reason, here's a couple of areas that we can all meet up. Well, storm did build up, which so often happens. Uh, they left that area of Thunder Bay, Ontario, they're crossing the lake. Uh, there's a place called the Keweenaw Peninsula and Michigan's kind of Western upper peninsula that, uh, they kind of made their way South to link up, get closer to the shoreline, uh, of Michigan's

[01:29:30] upper peninsula. Um, bottom line was of those last three mine sweepers, uh, right around the area of Copper Harbor on that Northern tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, Leclerc was having some problems. His, his, his own mine sweeper, um, and there were, the names were the Cirrusole, Incerman and Sebastopol, these three ships. His almost sank at one point, a couple of times, it almost rolled over in the waves. These things were a little top heavy. They had some pretty good

[01:29:57] sized, uh, you know, cannons, uh, on board, uh, sitting up a little high, making them a little bit top heavy maybe. Um, and they, uh, they got separated near Copper Harbor in that area. That was the last time, uh, he ended up seeing the increment in Cirrusole and that was the last time anybody saw them and they disappeared. There's somewhere still out there, these French

[01:30:24] vessels, French naval vessels with about 30 French crewmen on board each. This has been a mystery through the decades. They searched and searched and searched for these vessels. Again, it was late November, terrible, terrible time of year to be out in Lake Superior, but they searched and searched, uh, Leclerc hired, uh, different, some pretty tough tugboats to go out there and search for these wrecks.

[01:30:49] Initially, the only clues as to maybe what happened to these, there was one of the smaller lifeboats, uh, from, I think the Cirrusole, I want to say, was found at a place called, uh, Deer Park, one of the life's early life-saving stations along this area that's come to be known as the Shipwreck Coast. You know, I mentioned earlier that, that shoreline going from Whitefish Point going west. I mentioned there were no harbors there. One of the life-saving stations there, they found one of

[01:31:17] the lifeboats. That was one of the very first clues that there was, you know, these things were gone. Uh, and then in later years, there were remains of crewmen found, uh, in the southeastern section of Lake Superior near a place called Mitchapacotton Island, uh, with remnants, tattered remnants picture. I mean, imagine kind of a scary scene that you, you come across the remains of a crewman in a tattered

[01:31:46] French naval uniform that might be, you know, on the shoreline or somewhere near the shoreline of this little island, or good sized island, I should say in Lake Superior. So that gave us a little bit of more of an idea that how far east that they would have gotten. But the bottom line is we've looked for these wrecks, uh, Michigan Technological University is also searching for them. There's other groups that are out there looking for these, but, but, but these, this is,

[01:32:12] this is an amazing story. And again, you know, roughly 60 odd crewmen perished in these two vessels, uh, along with Canadian and American pilots that would have been on board. So it's a, it's a very, very tragic story. Those ships are still out there, but it's just, it's just a, it's just a fascinating story. So those are wrecks we've looked for. Uh, everybody kind of has their own wreck that they're interested in. There's some big steel steamships, one called the Clemson that's

[01:32:39] still out there somewhere. Um, so there's a lot of them out there, but for me, those French mine sweepers would just be, it would just be amazing. It would be an international story literally to find these wrecks. And that's not really the reason why they're, they're just an interesting, I've always been interested in maritime military history too. And it kind of is an interesting marriage of that military world war one history, but you had a shipwreck on the great lakes.

[01:33:03] How much of the lake hasn't been scanned? I mean, you've got to be running out of, of out of sea bottom that you haven't already gone over. Uh, you know, they're huge lakes. I'll put it that way. They're massive. Seven Rhode Island's Tyler. It's huge out there. Yeah. It's a good question. It's a good question. Um, and for us that when we're towing sonar,

[01:33:29] I mean the David Boyd, our research vessel is slow no matter what, but it's, it's just a huge lake and it's very deep and there are areas where these shipwrecks can hide. There are some of these areas where even our sonar might have trouble trying to see into this crevice. If you want to put it that way at the bottom of the lake. Um, so I know, I know budgets are different and the scale

[01:33:55] of the searches are different, but I think of something like the image three 70, where I don't know the exact number of square miles, but it's nearly an unfathomable amount, unfathomable amount of seabed that they scanned. Um, and they found all, you know, all kinds of things, but they never found the plane. And I just sooner or later, you're going to get to the point where you've, you've measured every square inch of that lake. Um, but I guess you're not there yet.

[01:34:21] You still got some time. We, we certainly aren't. We're a very small 501 C3 nonprofit with, with limited, uh, funding, I guess, to put it that way. I mean, no, uh, you know, is out there. There's a couple of, you know, uh, national Marine sanctuaries on the great lakes. I think there's only two at this point. Um, they, they obviously have quite a bit of a bigger budget, but I mean, it really honestly depends. Uh, you know, maybe their budget isn't as great as we think sometimes

[01:34:49] just depending on either what administration or, or how funding is allocated and things like that. There's a lot of other small groups that are out there that are searching using, you know, maybe technology that isn't quite as advanced as what we're using, but there's also universities that are out there searching too. NOAA is kind of mapping the bottom of the lakes. This is something that I've become aware of here in recent months. Um, and so we're, you know, kind of trying to reach out to them to kind of see, you know, the technology they're using,

[01:35:17] I think is very impressive. I think they're using auto, you know, autonomous vehicles as well, which for us, you know, we have to get a crew. The weather has to be just right. If you have an autonomous underwater vehicle and AUV, it can just go out there and you can program it and you can study the bottom of the lake. I think that's kind of some of the technology that they're using. Um, NOAA, uh, I, I'm not exactly sure on all that, but, but they're, they're going to be speeding up the mapping of the bottom of the lakes. We've got a good

[01:35:45] section of Southeastern Lake Superior, uh, that's covered, but that's not to say that there haven't been things that we might've missed as well. I mean, Daryl's gotten so good. There's a science and an art behind, uh, interpreting the data and the imagery that this, you get with these sonars, but it's entirely possible that maybe in some of the earlier versions, sonar systems we've used that have already been blanketed. We may have missed some things in there. There are things, there are areas

[01:36:12] that, that the organization back in the day had scanned that we go back using the, you know, more modern technology and suddenly we're seeing something that they didn't see before. So there's some holes probably in some of the areas that have been scanned in the past that we may have missed something. Um, but it's a huge lake. It's a great question and maybe someday the whole thing will be mapped, but I think it's going to take the ever increasing tide, I guess, if you want to put it that

[01:36:38] way of, of improve technology to do it. So where can listeners go to find out more about the museum? I know you're closed for the season now, but how can they go about planning their visit next year? Certainly. Yes. So we're open May 1st through October 31st, nine to five daily. If people want to visit our website as a starting point, it's shipwreckmuseum.com. So www.shipwreckmuseum.com.

[01:37:06] Or if you just Google great lake shipwreck museum, it's going to pop up. A lot of times you could just Google Edmund Fitzgerald and shipwreck museum, and that's going to pop it up as well. Bruce, I will tell you that's how I found you. Is that right? I don't doubt it. I don't doubt it. So, uh, but, but yeah, you know, we're, we're open May through October, the upper peninsula until the snowmobile season, if we get enough snow until the snowmobile season kicks in, UP kind of gets a

[01:37:33] little sleepy in the fall. Uh, and so we closed down at the end of October, but the weather also gets pretty lousy as we've talked about, but yeah, take a look at our website. You'll, you'll be able to see, and we have in Facebook, you know, Instagram, things like that. Uh, we also have a presence there. And one cool thing that's pretty new, uh, we have a gentleman who works for us. His name is Corey Adkins. He worked with the CBS affiliate, uh, television station up here in Northern Michigan

[01:38:01] for 23 years. He's working for us now, and he's really helped to kind of expand our reach as far as media goes. Uh, but one thing that he helped facilitate was a, uh, we have a webcam, a weather camp now up at Whitefish point. So if your listeners are curious about what our lighthouse, our civil war era lighthouse looks like, they can go on to shipwreck museum.com, look at that weather cam, and you can see that lighthouse up there that was built in 1861. Think about that.

[01:38:29] Abraham Lincoln was president when that lighthouse was being built. I know you've got older lights there on the East coast as well. Um, but you can see that lighthouse and you can also really interestingly see what's happening with the weather up there. You could see ships passing in the distance. So it's just kind of a cool window to what's happening up there at that, our little corner up there at Whitefish point. Well, Bruce, uh, I cannot thank you enough for your

[01:38:52] time. Uh, this has been a fascinating discussion and we only hit even there's only 6,000. We, we got 5,995 to go. So we'll have you on back again. You know, Corey said you wanted to talk about all 6,000. So I've got all my notes here. I'm kidding, but it was an honor to be on the, uh, on the show here on the program. Thanks for

[01:39:17] having us. Thank you, sir. This is great. Welcome back to around the buoy. Uh, Tyler,

[01:39:41] that, that certainly didn't disappoint. No, that was incredible. And we've, we talked to a lot of people that are very knowledgeable on a certain topic, but the level of knowledge that this guy has on the great lakes is unfathomable. It is really impressive. I know we, we talked a little bit about, it seems like at some point we're going to have mapped everything. We're going to have

[01:40:08] found all the wrecks. We're going to have solved all the mysteries, but we are far from it. And the, the work that they're doing in these lakes still is just fascinating. It is fascinating. Um, and, and Bruce said it off air multiple times. Well, in preparation for all this, he kind of sent a list of the, Hey, these are, you know, some more of them more notable shipwrecks. It's not just the, the Edmund Fitzgerald, but it's also these other ones. And there were like three or

[01:40:36] four boats we didn't even touch on. And the one that I'm disappointed, we didn't get to talk to or talk about only because there was a schooner named the Atlanta that went down and in doing research on it, it was launched during the prohibition and the, uh, the owners of the companies were teetotalers and they christened the ship with a bottle of water. And that just seems to be like

[01:41:04] there. Jim Croce says, you don't tug on Superman's cape. You don't spit into the wind. And you certainly don't Kristen about with water. That's just slapping Poseidon right in the face. Totally. Totally. How did that, how did it not sink? Like immediately when it rolled right into the water, I don't, yeah, I'm not superstitious, but I am a little stitious. And especially when I get on a

[01:41:30] boat for some reason, for some reason, once I get 20, 30, 40 miles offshore, my level of superstition increases with every mile further. Yeah. Uh, one of the things that I, and I'm, I'm remiss that we didn't, I didn't get time. And we, I want to know, and if I've hit, I think I know the answer. The Edmund Fitzgerald seems to be the last

[01:41:54] great wreck in the great lakes. And certainly there's going to be more, certainly there's going to be an accident and something's going to go down, but so many of these were weather related. And I wonder if that's going to be, is that that off the board because our weather, our weather mapping on our weather predicting skills are so much better. Yes. And no, I mean, I think that they still, they knew that weather was coming and they made

[01:42:21] the decision to go out anyway. They have the chance to stop when the weather got bad, they kept going. So there's going to be, and it's, it's the same today. We're still losing ships offshore in the weather constantly. I mean, we lose because we just because we know how bad the weather is going to be and how severe it is. There's still a financial timeline and people are still going to push it.

[01:42:46] And it's not that necessary. It's not that it's just necessarily the weather that does it, but the weather compounds the thing that's going to go wrong anyway. So if you lose, you lose power offshore on a calm day, the severity of that consequence is much less than when you lose it in rough weather. Right. So it's not necessarily the storm that's doing it. It's not just the rogue

[01:43:14] wave. It's that something went wrong at a bad time. It's only a year or two ago that there was a, a bolt carrier in the great lakes that skimmed over the bottom and peel open some stuff. And they were concerned that they were going to lose it before they got it into Duluth or wherever it was going. So, I mean, it happens. It's going to continue to happen. Anytime we go, anytime you go on a boat, there's a chance of something bad happening. That's true. And I was, especially being on the

[01:43:44] cruise ship over the break. Um, what was the cruise ship in Italy? It was coming home and ran to the corn. Costa Concordia. I knew it was Costa something. The Costa Concordia was a little too close and scraped the bottom and went down. That was a lot too close. That was basically in traffic on the Island. Um, but again, you know, that wasn't weather related. That was just

[01:44:10] hubris. And, uh, so, I mean, it's, it's going to happen. Bad decision-making. I've started to recently, I've started recently to pay attention to maritime executive online, which lists, you know, maritime news stories and there is stuff sinking left and right. I mean, the Russians lose stuff constantly, but it doesn't seem to keep them from going offshore anymore. Yeah, that's true. But

[01:44:35] you're right. It's, there's still a human factor of making bad decisions, compounding bad decisions and the weather plays a part, even though we know it's coming, but it still comes down to making bad decisions. And I think you probably could go through every, just about every single shipwreck in threat in throughout time and history and say, at some point they made the wrong call, go no go call. And then that was there was the decision was, should we go any further?

[01:45:05] Or was she coming to port? And a lot of times they didn't go into port. So, but it was fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. The, the whole lore of it and the great lakes, although they are massive, they're great. They are, they are, they are great. They're not the massive lakes. They're the great lakes. Um, they're small in comparison to being out in the ocean, but to think of the thousands of

[01:45:32] wrecks that have happened in those waters is truly impressive. Well, as we, we get into 2025, there's, I foresee a number of stories coming down the pipe that we've, we've been hesitant to talk about in the past for any number of reasons. Um, you mentioned being somewhat apolitical on the show. And I think we'll stick to that, to that line of being apolitical, but there are certain topics

[01:46:01] that are going to affect us, especially locally. One of them is going to be offshore wind. We have been, and not with all of our attention, looking for a guest to come on the show, to be able to talk to us about offshore wind in some sort of fair way, right? Not on one side or the other, but be able to talk at the basic facts of the pros and cons of offshore wind. If you've been to the shore in the last few

[01:46:29] years, especially if you go into Newport or to new Bedford, it's hard not to see the offshore wind. Industry, you know, New Bedford has put over a hundred million dollars into their port facilities where they're kind of staging and pre-assembling the turbines. Um, Narragansett Bay. Every time I go over

[01:46:55] the bridge, there's three, four, five large, either transportation vessels or supply vessels or whatever, um, heavy lift vessels anchored up in Narragansett Bay waiting for weather or waiting for, for whatever it is. Um, it's a lot of money to the local economy. And in the last few years, Southern New England and Rhode Island especially has started making goals and passing legislation

[01:47:24] in that in a very short amount of time, a large chunk of our energy needs to be produced by clean means. And they've learned, leaned really hard into offshore wind. And just about a week ago, President-elect Trump gave a speech where he basically said that no new wind turbines will be

[01:47:46] built during his administration. Um, that is going to put a pretty heavy impact on not only the New England, Southern New England's power generation and, you know, whether they attain their goals or not, but just on the local economy alone is going to have a huge, a huge impact. It's like when we talk

[01:48:11] about the lobster fishery in Maine, if you slow down, stop or prohibit that industry, it's not just the lobster, man, it's the, the boat shops, the fuel, the bait shops, the outfitters, everything, it's everything down the line and the billions and billions of dollars that is going into this industry,

[01:48:35] the hundreds of millions of dollars in local and federal funding that can have a huge impact here in Rhode Island. We touched on this before Tyler, and both of us came to the table. We are very clear. We don't know the answer. We don't know if wind is the right thing to do. We don't know if, um, solar is the right thing to do, but what we do know is that something has to happen there that we

[01:49:02] can't that, I mean, I, I look at my kids and you look at your, your child as well and say, you know, we're at that point of, we were, we need to leave the earth a better place than, than what we found it. And there's no doubt again, as wildfires rage through Los Angeles right now, that climate change has taken, uh, is, is affecting how we are dealing with our, with nature and, and this world.

[01:49:30] This isn't a political fight at this point. This is just, this is what it is, whether it's man made change or not, something has changed and this is what we're facing. Even in August of this year, the federal government, the department of energy granted almost $400 million to Southern New England

[01:49:55] for offshore wind, for green energy to promote that industry and, and to, to upgrade the grid system between Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Maine, all the way through to not only just help the offshore construction, but once that power gets back to shore, how it's maneuvered, how it's stored,

[01:50:20] how it gets from A to B, is that grant going to continue? Are we going to lose the, the offshore leases that are not only that are approved and it's not necessarily that those are going to be taken down, but they're not going to approve any future projects. And there are thousands of turbines that are in the approval process for waters throughout New England that are now up in the air.

[01:50:48] And when you think about New Bedford that, you know, just spent $130 million on their waterfront facilities to take on this industry, what are they going to do with that now? It's a really, it's a, I would imagine, especially Rhode Island. I mean, we are a tiny little state, but we have said, and the governor and even Raimondo before Dan McKee said, we are a blue economy.

[01:51:13] We have to be an ocean centric economy. And, you know, with the boat building that goes on here with the, the tourism that comes in because of our coastline, that is a massive part of our economy. And you're right. The, the, the thought of all of a sudden whole wind industry shutting down or taking

[01:51:38] a hiatus is really scary because you're right. I mean, you're every time that I go over the bridge and there's weather offshore, we, we do have those, those ships anchored out in Newport, uh, in, um, Narragansett Bay, right underneath the bridge, uh, it'd have a massive impact on our economy. McKee signed legislation in 2022 that Rhode Island would be a hundred percent green energy by 2033.

[01:52:08] Uh, that's less than 10 years from now. Um, and we are, we are nowhere, nowhere close. Now we're close to that. There were been projects that have fallen through because of inflation, the, the COVID supply chain issues that they're still fighting, um, and rising interest rates. The way that the power is purchased,

[01:52:32] it's, it's a guaranteed price beforehand instead of a varied rate like it is in traditional, um, fossil fuel power plants. You know, the, the rate goes up and the rate goes down. The offshore wind is a set price and contracts are signed for a set price. And with the inflation interest rates, all that, all of these projects are getting more and more expensive. They are backing

[01:53:00] out of projects because they're not financially stable without the government subsidies to make all of this work. It's not going to happen. So if the federal government dries up and this just shuts down for the next four years or more, um, you know, I don't, I don't quite know how that's going to affect. I mean, it's hundreds, if not thousands of jobs here in new England that have

[01:53:25] been created by not only the, the people building the turbines on the beach in new Bedford, but it's the supply boats. It's the local fishermen that aren't fishermen anymore because they're running survey boats and safety crews offshore. Um, and that's, you know, good and bad. The local fishing economy is definitely taking a hit and vineyard wind also has set up a, a program to pay damages

[01:53:53] to boat owners who have been negatively affected by these projects. But you know, that's tens of millions of dollars for a one time only settlement that doesn't cover the rest of their life moving forward. So there's, there's trouble at, at really at every term, but the uncertainty of it is, is certainly getting worse, uh, the closer and closer we get to January 20th.

[01:54:23] Well, I think uncertainty, Tyler, what we've learned in, we haven't said it in a long time, but in these unprecedented times, Tyler, uncertainty is the new normal. Normal. Okay. Yeah. I think that makes them precedented. I don't think that we are now precedented times. I think if aliens climb out of those drones in New Jersey, we can call these times unprecedented,

[01:54:48] but until then they are just, we are, we are, we are, we are, we are, we are, we are, we are, indeed. All right. Well, um, we'll have to see what happens. It's, um, this is a resilient state and this is a resilient area. Everyone thought Rhode Island was going to dry up when the Navy left in the seventies, uh, when the Navy moved out of Newport, but then we turned into, uh, a tourist town

[01:55:13] and, uh, a tourist state. So, uh, there'll be something else we'll come in and fill in. Hopefully it'll be people buying wooden boats, Tyler. It's possible. It's possible. It's possible. It's possible. It's a, it's environmental. Um, all right, so we can move on to our next, um, topic and going back to our Clancy-esque spy novel. Um, recently there's been a couple instances,

[01:55:40] uh, throughout the oceans, uh, of Chinese bulk carriers and Chinese, uh, cargo ships, allegedly severing cables, severing cables, uh, communication cables between, uh, different, different, you know, different countries, different, uh, the mainland and islands offshore. Um, and another incident just

[01:56:04] happened off the coast of Taiwan. And obviously Taiwan is, you know, I think it's 60 miles, a hundred miles off the coast of mainland China. It's highly disputed. And, um, on January 3rd, the Trans-Pacific Express, which is a cable line that serves, let's see, serves mainland China,

[01:56:29] Korea, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and also the United States. So it allows communications through all the, all those countries. Um, it was severed. And, um, right at the time, right around the time that it was severed, there was a Chinese cargo ship that was motoring just above it. And the Taiwanese coast guard traveled out to the ship to go kind of question it. They stopped the ship. They unfortunately

[01:56:58] couldn't board it because the conditions at the time were not, um, they were not favorable to do a, uh, a boarding. Um, so the, the Taiwanese coast guard couldn't really do anything that the ship just continued on. It eventually went over to, uh, it came into port into South Korea, but it was interesting as they were kind of investigating this, um, all ships nowadays, as Tyler pointed out

[01:57:23] earlier in our intro, have an AIS or an automatic identification system on board. And as the incident happened and the cable was severed, the Taiwanese coast guard noticed that the Chinese ship that just happened to be over the cable turned on a separate transponder on their AIS, which certainly raises some eyebrows about what's going on. Um, they, they, they, again, the ship

[01:57:52] moved on past Taiwanese waters and went into, into, uh, South Korea to, uh, Busan, South Korea. And they've asked for help from the Korean government to, you know, investigate this, but we don't really know this happened, uh, just about a week ago now. But if you remember, uh, it was November of last

[01:58:15] year, there was another case. Um, this time it was in the Baltic sea. Um, there was a Chinese carrier or Chinese cargo ship that was traveling over a communication cable. That was, let's see, I think it was Germany and Finland. There were two of them that were actually got cut. One was between Sweden and Lithuania. And then shortly after that, there was another cable that was cut that was

[01:58:40] connecting Germany and Finland. And so we're registering these outages, these communication outages, and the ship just happened to be passing over them at that time. Uh, and then again, earlier, a year before this, a Chinese ship, and I, this is the article I read. It was just great. It was a

[01:59:01] quote unquote, accidentally dragged its anchor for hundreds of miles and severed a, uh, some communication cables and gas cables or gas lines, uh, connecting. Um, again, I think this was in Europe, Europe as well, trying to admit it that they did the damage, but they said it was unintentional when it's an accident. Tyler, I've never dragged an anchor for, I mean, I've dragged an anchor, of course,

[01:59:29] at, at anchor, but for hundreds of miles, seems like it'd be pretty hard to not realize what's going on. I have so many questions. And the first one is what could Sweden and Lithuania really need to talk about that badly? Nothing. So this, I don't understand why the Taiwanese government attempted to board the

[01:59:53] ship, couldn't do it because of the weather and then just let it go. And then, so that doesn't make any sense. They could follow it. I mean, it's a bulk ship. It's not going that fast. Yeah. And then I was under the impression that it went to mainland China and that was it, but it went to South Korea. Last time I checked, we were still on pretty good terms with South Korea.

[02:00:18] Yeah. Doesn't that, doesn't it seem like they could have just called them up and said, Hey, can we get a little bit of help? Like why? Yeah. That one didn't make any sense to me. Well, and this was another, this was another thing that they're, they're alleging that it drug its anchor for five miles. Yeah, exactly. Seems like in that five miles, they could have taken

[02:00:42] a picture of it. Someone on that boat had to have an iPhone. So my, my thought is about all of this is I'm there, you know, there's a saying, there's no such thing as a coincidence. And especially when you have seven or eight or four or five coincidences, all back to back to back of all the same thing, clearly something's going on. I don't think these are all isolated incidents, but are we like,

[02:01:12] is this, are we on the verge of the beginning of what we are basically on the verge of beginning on a, in a world war? But is this, are we, is this like the, the first four or five pages of a Clancy novel of Red Storm Rising? I don't know. It's, it's weird, but it's also interesting to consider that we take for granted that we can just use the internet and I can email whoever I want,

[02:01:39] wherever I want in the world. But we are somewhat reliant upon pieces of wire, fiber optic wire at the bottom of the ocean. Those are vulnerable. You know, we're, we're, we're not immune to neglect or sabotage in that certain way. And luckily we have people that think about these things and pay attention to it. Well, you know, a lot of us just take for granted that we press power,

[02:02:04] we press send and things just happen, but there it is. Well, I, I will say from again, living the experience on the cruise ship of seven days at sea, not being connected to your phone or to the outside world was kind of absolutely glorious outside of the panic that you were in that the three days where you thought I was the one that went overboard. It was really nice not being connected to the outside world. But that was a choice. You could have had internet on board. True.

[02:02:32] Yeah. True. Very true. Or were you dragging your anchor off the coast of Mazatlon? Cozumel. Yeah. I guess I'd, after like three days of not doing the New York times mini crossword and the, um, and connections, I'd start getting like the, the DTs get the itches. Oh man. From the electric heat. Back when I was on my Wordle binge, like I wouldn't have done, I would,

[02:02:59] I would have had to buy the internet package to keep my street going. That's true. That's very true. Um, but again, this, this whole thing is very interesting and I do, I'm very interested in all the, as we see all the tumblers kind of falling into place and the history that's going on right now in this, in the world, in the country, all around us. Um, it's not, it's not a very uplifting news and notes, uh, episode Tyler.

[02:03:30] All right. Well, that is going to be about it. I think for this episode, unless, uh, I don't know, we have some breaking news. Maybe we'll change the name of a large body of water. We'll try to find some more uplifting, uplifting, uh, news, news and notes topics for, for the next episode. But until then, the Gulf of Maine is going to be the, the Gulf of Sitco field.

[02:03:56] Well, Carter, I think that about wraps up episode 91. Uh, glad we're leaving this one on a, on a happy note. We'll try harder next time to come up with some, some, uh, more jaunty news articles. We'll be doing, we'll, we'll definitely like some clothing optional cruises next time. No, this is it. Moratorium, no more cruise stories from here on out.

[02:04:23] Well, as always, thank you to our listeners for the support of the show. Please subscribe to Around the Bowie on iTunes and Spotify. It's free and who doesn't love free stuff? Also, if you like what you hear, please rate the show and leave us a review for extra content on our episodes. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook by searching Around the Bowie on either one of those sites. And of course, don't forget to look up Tyler Fields Photography and East Passage Boatwrights

[02:04:49] on the inswebs as well. Uh, they are both great follows. That's it for episode 91. For Tyler Fields, I'm Carter Richardson, and this is Around the Bowie.