Ep. 790: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Steven Rinella https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella/?hl=en talks with best selling author John U. Bacon https://johnubacon.com/the-gales-of-november/ about his new book, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324094647. Joined by Brody Henderson https://www.instagram.com/brodyjhenderson/?hl=en, Randall Williams https://www.instagram.com/randall__williams/, Phil Taylor https://www.instagram.com/philtaylor25/?hl=en, and Corinne Schneider https://www.instagram.com/corinnesschneider/. Topics: A room full of hockey lovers; the 50th anniversary of the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald; how and why The Great Lakes are so much more dangerous than the ocean; a thin, long ship; the waves of Lake Superior; unloading, reloading, and sailing; the best captain and the best crew; Whitefish Bay; what made the ship break apart?; the people, their stories, and the voices of their families; and more. Connect with Steve https://www.themeateater.com/authors/steven-rinella and The MeatEater Podcast Network https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork Steve on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/stevenrinella and Twitter https://twitter.com/stevenrinella?lang=en MeatEater on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meateater, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/StevenRinellaMeatEater/, Twitter https://twitter.com/MeatEaterTV?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor, and YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@MeatEaterPodcastNetwork See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:16Steven Rinella?

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• 2:01Steven Rinella?

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• 2:36Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I got, I got two competing ways I want to start the show. One, I just have to admit that I'm so excited, I already wet my pants.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  There's one.

• 2:43Steven Rinella?

  Like, this is, this is the one, this is one of the most exciting, um, conversations for me, because this is something that I like, I'll just come out and say it. We're here, we're here to talk about the, the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is like weirdly, I was one year old, but when it happened, but it's, it's sort of, I don't know, man, has haunted and inspired, um, my whole life, being from that neck of the woods.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:10Steven Rinella?

  Uh, the second opening I was going to use is how I've never done this before, but I want to dedicate this episode to Droste, Fitz, Poop McGoo, my brother Danny, this one's for you, and everyone at the porthole in Sioux St. Marie, Michigan side.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Been there.

• 3:30Speaker 02

  You guys probably don't know this, there are two towns called Sioux St. Marie right across the river from each other, because why wouldn't you do that, right? Uh, one's US, one's Canada. Canada produces NHL Hall of Famers, the Esposito brothers, Tony and Phil, et cetera, et cetera. Gretzky played there for a while. Uh, the American side produces guys like us.

• 3:49Steven Rinella?

  When I went to, one of the times I saw Uncle Gord was at the hockey arena in Sioux, Ontario.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Oh, wow. I've been to that. It's where the Greyhounds play.

• 3:59Steven Rinella?

  He, uh, I'll introduce you in a minute. Don't worry.

• 4:03Speaker 02

  We'll get to that.

• 4:05Steven Rinella?

  I tell the story every other episode. We're sitting there and we're watching Uncle Gord. You know, I'm talking about Gordon Lightfoot.

• 4:13Steven Rinella?

  And he's doing his show. He's got a lot of hits. People don't realize how many hits.

• 4:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. They're in the book.

• 4:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. But then, uh, later in the app, later, not, not the episode, later in the concert, this will kind of date it because the, your book, The Gales of November, The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon, should you want to find out what the U stands for, good luck.

• 4:40Steven Rinella?

  Not Ulysses.

• 4:41Speaker 02

  He's very tight lipped about it.

• 4:47Steven Rinella?

  At that, the 50th, we're, we're at the 50th anniversary of the sinking or the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Um, and your book's perfectly timed. I read that you, that you wrote a proposal for this book decades ago or something.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  I did. 20 years ago, pitched it to my agent. He said, no. So I got a new agent.

• 5:07Steven Rinella?

  As one does. You don't get the answer you want?

• 5:11Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 5:11Steven Rinella?

  I was struggling with that professionally this morning.

• 5:15Speaker 02

  Just this very morning.

• 5:18Steven Rinella?

  Anyhow, at that time, I can't remember what year it was. It would have been around 94, 95.

• 5:27Speaker 02

  Okay. You're by 20.

• 5:28Steven Rinella?

  And I think, and I remember it gets quiet. Gord comes out, the lights are down and Gord says, uh, it'll be, he says something to the effect of like, it'll be 20 years this November.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 5:43Steven Rinella?

  Or it'll be blank and the place just, I mean, erupts.

• 5:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah, not, no, it erupts.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 5:52Steven Rinella?

  But that's home turf.

• 5:54Speaker 02

  That's very much home turf.

• 5:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. I mean, you're looking out. You know, you're looking out on what we we used to fish in Whitefish Bay and like.

• 6:01Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 6:01Steven Rinella?

  And when we were out there spearing spearing whiting or sorry spearing, uh, whitefish. We'd always be talking about, yeah, man. And telling people like, that's where.

• 6:12Speaker 02

  If you're fishing in Whitefish Bay, Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior is 160 miles by 350 miles. It's as big as the state of Virginia. It's bigger than Ireland. People don't realize this unless you get up there. If you're up there, of course, you can't see across any of the Great Lakes. If you're in the middle of Lake Superior, you can't see either side. It's not because of the mist or the fog. It's because of the curvature of the earth. It's just too damn big.

• 6:33Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  So there you go. So if you're out there, by the way, you know what you're doing, obviously. Um, and Sault Ste. Marie is where the Sioux locks are. That's the bottleneck of US industry. So all the iron ore, the copper, I know you guys got it here in Butte. Uh, copper, the iron ore, limestone, all comes from the northern part of the Great Lakes. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula. It's got to go through this one spigot, this very tight widget, uh, at Sioux, at the Sioux locks.

• 6:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, because Lake Superior Falls 23 feet to Lake Huron or something.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Well done, young man. This guy, this guy passes.

• 7:04Steven Rinella?

  Caught many, uh, caught many a fish out of those falls.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  There you go. Exactly. It's a good place to catch them, actually. So during World War II, um, they built a new lock because they had to get all the iron and all the steel from up there down to build at Willa Run where Ford Motor Company was. If you've seen Ferrari versus Ford, that's what it's all about. Um, they're, uh, cranking out one B-24 bomber an hour, every hour for three years during World War II. So they build a new.

• 7:29Steven Rinella?

  Say that again.

• 7:30Speaker 02

  One B-24 bomber, which has 1.5 million parts. I looked it up. Uh, they're creating out one per hour, every hour for three years. Nonstop, there's Rosie the Riveter, all this stuff.

• 7:42Steven Rinella?

  Almost as fast as they're shooting them down.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  Almost as fast, but not quite as fast. And that's how you win the war.

• 7:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  So FDR during World War II stationed 7,000 soldiers where you were at, uh, at the Sioux locks. It was the most guarded position in North America during World War II.

• 7:57Steven Rinella?

  Seriously?

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 7:59Steven Rinella?

  Because they were worried about saboteurs?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  If they bombed that, there's no steel for the planes, no steel for the planes and the tanks and the shells, we lose the war. And FDR knew that.

• 8:08Steven Rinella?

  But who, like, who were they thinking would have been? They didn't mean like an aerial bombardment from enemy aircraft.

• 8:16Speaker 02

  It's the only way you can get there.

• 8:17Steven Rinella?

  But I would picture like, like, like I said, saboteurs, like someone planting explosives or something.

• 8:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess that's possible too. Look, the odds aren't very good. Obviously, they didn't do it, right?

• 8:26Steven Rinella?

  But they recognized that it was like.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  But if it happens, it's over. We're gonna lose.

• 8:29Steven Rinella?

  Sort of like the perineum of the world, man.

• 8:32Speaker 02

  Perineum?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  See, these are the things I don't get normally.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  That's the name of the episode right there.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I gotta stay loose for this one, people. I've done about thirty, forty interviews. We've done NPR, CBS and everything else. Yeah, I gotta, I gotta widen my strike zone here a little bit, I think.

• 8:55Steven Rinella?

  We should just have a, a list of words when they're used for the first time in here.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Ding ding ding ding ding.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  I think Istanbul probably is a good, is another candidate.

• 9:04Steven Rinella?

  Here's, here's a word that has been used on this show. Hampton Sides. Hampton Side's been on the show a couple of times. Here's what Hampton Side says about the Gales of November.

• 9:14Steven Rinella?

  Here is a work of spectral beauty destined to be a classic. Readers of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm. He's been on the show. Eric Larson's Dead Wake. We should put that on our list of people to get on the show. And Nathaniel Philbrick's In the Heart of the Sea will love this deeply reported tale from our vast inland ocean. With John U. Bacon's graceful and poignant retelling, the saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald now takes its rightful place among the world's greatest legends of shipwrecks and tempestuous.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  Tempestuous? Tempestuous? You got it.

• 9:54Steven Rinella?

  Who got it?

• 9:54Speaker 02

  You got it. Tempestuous.

• 9:57Steven Rinella?

  Seas.

• 10:00Steven Rinella?

  It's from Hampton Sides. There's a bunch of good quotes on the back here. Ken Burns. He's been on the show. John U. Bacon has done it again. This is another riveting narrative that puts facts on a still memorizing legend. But this is more than getting the details right. Bacon has distilled the essence of the story and rendered a huge monument to those lost, to those lost and a great gift to the rest of us. Ken Burns, filmmaker.

• 10:30Steven Rinella?

  I'm excited to talk in. I haven't read it. I'll tell you what I did do is I looked at some of the pictures. It's just heartbreaking to see the pictures of the guys.

• 10:36Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 10:37Steven Rinella?

  I had weirdly in my life, I realized I've never looked at a picture of anyone that died on that boat.

• 10:41Speaker 02

  Stephen, that's exactly why I wrote the book. Wrote the boat book. I can't get that word right. And people ask me, what drove me? I, yes, I want to find out what happened and that's always part of the mystery here, of course. And we advanced certain theories and we probably diminish other theories, but I'm not here to close that loop because you really can't. There are no witnesses. All 29 men went down with the ship. Aunt Ruth, who is the mother of Bruce Hudson, Ohio State student who takes a couple of summers to get in the lakes. He's a 22 year old deckhand who goes down with the ship. And that's her only child, which I can't fathom. She had a great line. She said, only 30 know 29 men in God and no one's talking. So we're all trying to guess. So what did drive me? And that's what it was. Who were these 29 men? All right, what were their jobs like? What were their lives like? What were their families like at home?

• 11:26Speaker 02

  I interviewed half the families. They talked for the first time. This, I got six crewmen who'd been on the ship, obviously before it went down. And those are not easy to find. There's no list anywhere. And I got them all to talk and it's just fascinating how it all works. And I learned the process. Here's a fun fact for your listeners who'd be into this for sure. You talk to Great Lakes sailors. By that, I don't mean the guys with the sails, of course. These are commercial shippers, copper, like I said, copper, iron, all this stuff. They tell me consistently that sailing on the Great Lakes is more dangerous than sailing on the ocean. And that blew my mind. I grew up in the Great Lakes, so did you. How can that possibly be? And it's a few reasons. One is saltwater. Saltwater in the ocean, on the Great Lakes.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  And by the way, do hand gestures work really well on radio? I bet they do.

• 12:14Steven Rinella?

  For some people they do. It depends on how you're listening.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Well, if you got the premium package, you'll get this one.

• 12:21Speaker 02

  The, on the Great Lakes, you've got these sharp, pointy waves at the top, like mountain ranges, basically. On the, on the ocean, the salt smashes those down. So they're nice and smooth.

• 12:31Steven Rinella?

  Was that right?

• 12:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you get smooth roller coasters and they're twice as far apart. It spreads them out and on the ocean you get these storms from 500 miles away, 1,000 miles away. So by the time the waves get to you, again, you have this general roller coaster, still no fun. And you've seen perfect storm. But it's manageable. On the Great Lakes, they're sharp and pointy like mountain ranges. They're twice as close together. On the ocean, they're 10 to 16 seconds apart. On the Great Lakes, they're four to eight seconds apart. What does that mean? That means you can have the bow of your ship in one 30-foot wave, nothing in the middle, and your stern in another 30-foot wave. These ships are 700 feet long. And in between, you have 26,000 tons of iron. That's 4,200 adult elephants. It's enough steel, enough iron, sorry, to make 7,000 cars. What happens?

• 13:16Speaker 02

  It bends down, it sags, and you go over the next wave, and it hogs, and it sags, and it hogs, and it sags and hugs. Bend a paperclip back and forth 10,000 times. That's how many waves you get in a day. What's gonna happen? The paperclip's gonna snap sooner or later. The Bradley in 1958, I got a chapter on that, we have witnesses. It actually snaps in half between two waves.

• 13:36Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 13:36Speaker 02

  The Morrel.

• 13:37Steven Rinella?

  I don't even, I would picture that the bow and stern would... I just imagine the bow and stern would cut in.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  Into the water.

• 13:44Steven Rinella?

  And it would never have enough to lift it like a...

• 13:47Speaker 02

  It does. These waves are...

• 13:48Steven Rinella?

  Lifts the center.

• 13:49Speaker 02

  These waves are, don't mess with one of the waves, man. One of these waves is the same weight as two locomotive engines, one wave. And these guys get these waves every four to eight seconds. And the night of this November 10th, 1975, it's the storm of a century. They got 100 mile per hour winds, that's hurricane force at that point. The waves were 30 feet regularly, which is still pretty intense. This ship only has 11 feet out of the water. So 30 feet means you're underwater 20 feet. Every time this happens, every four to eight seconds, that takes a toll. But then we now know from computer models that if you saw that many 30-footers, you saw 10 40-footers, you saw three or four 50-footers, and you saw one or two 60-footers. And as one of the experts told me,

• 14:32Speaker 02

  this ship ended up in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. And it was the only ship in that one-hour area, basically. So there's part of your answer.

• 14:43Steven Rinella?

  We started out talking about.

• 14:45Speaker 02

  Sorry, sorry about that tangent.

• 14:46Steven Rinella?

  No, no, that's all, no dude, you do that all day long, bro, I care. We started out talking about, uh, Gordon Lightfoot as kind of like a touch point where many, many people, like undeniably, many people. When they hear the Edmund Fitzgerald, they know what that means because of the song.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  Entirely.

• 15:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 15:04Speaker 02

  No question.

• 15:05Steven Rinella?

  Do you?

• 15:07Steven Rinella?

  You know, I, I'm always interested in this concept of like, there's like a, there's like an object, right? And then a, a, the object has a shadow. Do you know what I mean? Like if the object.

• 15:17Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 15:17Steven Rinella?

  Like the object is the, the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald and it's like shadow is like.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  That's perfect.

• 15:24Steven Rinella?

  Gordon Lightfoot was the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Would, like, in all honesty, would we be sitting here right now if it wasn't for that song?

• 15:30Speaker 02

  I will say it from the, from the mountaintops, absolutely not.

• 15:33Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 15:34Speaker 02

  From eighteen seventy-five to nineteen seventy-five, there are six thousand commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. That's one per week, every week for a century.

• 15:40Steven Rinella?

  Oh man, really?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  Thirty thousand men went down. That's one a day, every day for a century.

• 15:45Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Uh, and how many do we know? We know one. We know the Edmund Fitzgerald for exactly the reason you say.

• 15:51Steven Rinella?

  And La Salle's the Griffin.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  Hey, by the way, you, you not, you non Michiganders don't know what he's talking about, but I do.

• 15:59Steven Rinella?

  Well, that was the first ship.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  That was the first ship.

• 16:01Steven Rinella?

  The Griffin was the first ship on the Great Lakes and the Edmund Fitzgerald's the biggest ship to ever sink.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. And at the time, the biggest ship, period, on the lakes. Um, but yeah, without that, there's no way. There's six thousand, we know one. Without the song, there is no book. It's just that simple.

• 16:15Steven Rinella?

  Really? Yeah. What, uh, um, can you explain, you kind of did a little bit, but can you explain that? That, uh, oh, first I got another thing to mention. You, you're a sports writer.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Yes, what am I doing here?

• 16:27Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, so like you've written books on hockey, football.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 16:31Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Had you, um. Is this your first like foray into kind of like deep history where you're not able to meet the people involved and?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  It's my second. Uh, the previous one was called the Great Halifax Explosion.

• 16:43Steven Rinella?

  Oh, that's right.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  From nineteen seventeen.

• 16:46Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, okay.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, from twenty seventeen is when the book came out. Nineteen seventeen, this ship called the Mont Blanc, World War One, uh, is leaving Gravesend Bay, New York. That's a pretty good name, with six million pounds.

• 16:57Steven Rinella?

  Gravesend.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Gravesend. How about, how prophetic, right? Um, it's leaving Gravesend Bay, New York, um, basically New York, with six million pounds of high explosives. That's TNT, not gasoline.

• 17:09Steven Rinella?

  Like hauling high explosives.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Hauling high explosives. High explosives don't need oxygen to blow up.

• 17:13Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 17:13Speaker 02

  One good bump and it happens. And it's in Halifax, harboring the way to World War One to blow up Germans is the idea, I'm sure. Um, and instead it bumps into another ship, a fire starts. Well, the guys in the Mont Blanc, they know what the hell's gonna happen. So they get in the rowboats and get out of there, French crew. Uh, the ship slips at eight forty-five in the morning, ghost ship, slips perfectly into Pier Six at the base of Halifax. The timing's cruel because the kids are walking to school, everyone's walking to work, and it's burning, so they're all gonna come down to watch the burning ship. They have no idea what's on it.

• 17:45Steven Rinella?

  And how long is this after everybody bailed off?

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Uh, about fifteen minutes.

• 17:49Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay, very fast.

• 17:50Speaker 02

  So, pretty fast, yeah. And then at nine oh four point thirty-five, we know exactly when, because all clocks stopped. A two million high, uh, two million, two mile high, uh, mushroom cloud, the first in the world's history, one-fifth the power of the atomic bomb, blows half the city away of fifty thousand people.

• 18:05Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 18:06Speaker 02

  And Oppenheimer, of course, who built the A-bomb, you see the movie Oppenheimer, he talks about this. He's the one who did the math. The only model they had for Hiroshima was this. So this is one-fifth the power of the A-bomb, but people in Boston sent two ships, two trains, hundred doctors, three hundred nurses, and a million bucks, which back then's a lot of money. And they, of the nine thousand wounded, they saved like ninety-five percent, uh, which should not have happened with the medicine at the time. That's what made the US and Ca- and Canada allies. Um, and I know this because my mom's Canadian, so trust me. If you want a different version of the World War of eighteen twelve, give a Canadian two beers.

• 18:43Speaker 02

  And you're gonna hear a whole different version of how all that went down. So I'm a hockey guy. I speak from experience here. That was my first foray. There's a long answer. That was my first foray into that. That allowed me to write this book. Without that book, the publishers never would have given me money for this book.

• 18:59Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 19:00Speaker 02

  So that proved I could get out.

• 19:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh, man. I think if you sent, well, whatever, you got it published. I was gonna tell you how you would have got it published anyways. Explain that. Explain that. Explain the industry that the admin Fitzgerald was involved in.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Great question. That's another thing. Dude, again, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and not too far from Muskegon. We go up to Traverse City and so on. I've swam in all these lakes. I've sailed on two or three of them. I thought I knew them. I didn't know anything. Ninety-five percent of the stuff in that book I had no idea about. And one thing is how incredibly important Great Lakes shipping is. The French voyagers, here's your predecessors here on the Meat Eater Podcast. These guys are badasses. I can say that on your show and I can't say that normally, so I'm taking advantage.

• 19:41Steven Rinella?

  No, we might bleep it out.

• 19:42Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Captain Buzzkill from my right over here.

• 19:48Speaker 02

  Here's my one chance, finally. Those voyagers had thirty, forty foot canoes carved out of one tree. They got four hundred. They got four hundred million beaver pelts in two centuries. Almost made beaver extinct. But they're wearing those hats in Europe, so that's billions of dollars of that. And you got lumber. More money is made by lumber than the gold rush. You got grain. The Great Lakes supplies the world with food, basically. And a lot of your food comes. All the cereal companies are based in Battle Creek, Michigan, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a reason. But then you got, like I said, copper, which now you mine here. Limestone, you need to make, turn iron into steel and iron. It was, and probably still is, the biggest producer of iron in the United States.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Here's a fun fact for you. Nineteen. So this is Silicon Valley, before Silicon Valley, after World War II.

• 20:40Speaker 02

  The Great Lakes states, five of the top seven were all around the Great Lakes. Only California and Texas were in that pile. Here's a fun fact for you. Nineteen sixty census. What Great Lakes city was bigger than Miami, Tampa, Jacksonville, Nashville, and San Jose, California?

• 20:59Steven Rinella?

  Cleveland.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Toledo.

• 21:01Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Oh. Toledo, Ohio was bigger than all those. That's how big it all was. So Detroit was the epicenter of all this stuff and I grew up in the shadow of that one. There you go.

• 21:10Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  At the tail end of that. Um, but this is what they did. Um, thirty seven of the top hundred companies were all based around Detroit.

• 21:18Speaker 02

  Tire makers, oil make, you know, oil companies, steel companies, car companies. GM's number one, Ford's number three, Chrysler's number seven. That's, I mean, they, they had no competition after World War Two. So this, this place is humming, they're making a lot of money. Uh, and these guys, the guys, twenty nine guys on the ship, the old guys, they grew up in the Great Depression, they grew up in the World War Two. Why do you have, these, these, these jobs are hard, no question about it. But man, compared to being a miner, or a farmer, or a factory worker, you'd take it. Uh, good union contracts, these guys are making good money. A deckhand in seventy five, Bruce Hudson, the guy I mentioned. He gets out of Ohio State.

• 21:54Steven Rinella?

  Is he, is he the kid with no shirt on in the picture?

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's a badass. He, he's, he's one of yours.

• 21:58Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 21:58Speaker 02

  And he's got the long, the mutton chops, the long hair.

• 22:00Steven Rinella?

  Looks like Randall.

• 22:01Speaker 02

  Looks like Randall.

• 22:03Steven Rinella?

  If he was on.

• 22:03Speaker 02

  I like him already. There you go. I'll show you. There you go. Go to the picture section, you'll know exactly what we're talking about. That's what I do anyway, when I pick up a book. Perfect. You're my guy.

• 22:15Speaker 02

  So this guy leaves Ohio State to be a deckhand, that's the lowest guy on the ship, basically.

• 22:18Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 22:19Speaker 02

  He's making in today's dollars, a hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year. Even back then, he's making three times what a teacher makes, four times.

• 22:25Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 22:25Speaker 02

  And he's salting the money away, except for one indulgence. He's got a nineteen seventy two Dodge Challenger badass muscle car. Beautiful burgundy, we found the car, it's still in mint, mint condition, it's still fantastic. Still has a sticker of Columbia Transportation, which leased the Emmett's Herald. I'm looking at it right now. There's the sticker, right there.

• 22:44Steven Rinella?

  No shit, really?

• 22:44Speaker 02

  And that, that car, we, that was last year, we took that photo.

• 22:48Steven Rinella?

  I looked through these pictures of my ten year old this morning. Then I, then I kinda choked up because we were listening to, you know.

• 22:54Speaker 02

  The song will get you. Once you know the story, the song kills you. So, he gets on the ship. He's one of these guys and he's making good money. He's saving it pretty well. So, he and his buddy Mark Thomas in that photo, they're gonna, when the season ends in three days, this was the last run of the season.

• 23:09Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 23:10Speaker 02

  No matter what happened, they're gonna finish the season. That car is waiting for him on the dock in Toledo, three days later. The captain, McSorley, I'll get to him in a bit, he's gonna retire after this run, after uh, thirty some years, forty years in the Great Lakes, promising his wife. Um, all these guys, so, they're gonna get in that car and bomb across out west where you guys are, to go to Colorado to get some Coors beer, because in nineteen seventy-five, that was exotic. And you gotta be old enough to remember that one, by the way.

• 23:36Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah, because they used to make all those, all those movies.

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Smoking the bandit. You got it.

• 23:40Steven Rinella?

  Like Burt Reynolds built his career on that movie.

• 23:42Speaker 03

  This story and that photo really is speaking to me.

• 23:45Speaker 02

  There we go.

• 23:45Steven Rinella?

  Although I think. He's an Ohio man.

• 23:47Speaker 03

  If I did a couple of cycles on a GLP-1, I think would be, would be looking quite similar.

• 23:52Speaker 02

  Well, Ohio man, one-third of the crew comes from Duluth, one-third from Toledo, one-third from Cleveland.

• 23:56Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  So, a lot of Buckeyes. This guy was a Buckeye also. But then he finds out in September, phone call back to the, uh, the port bar in Silver Bay, Minnesota, beautiful spot, the Silver Bay Municipal Bar. And I've been there, of course, for hard-hitting investigative journalism people, that's all I, that's all I'm doing here. Gotta, gotta go to all the bars, Stephen. Uh, and the bartender who served him, Stephen Burns, is still, he was eighteen at the time, he's sixty-eight now, he's still there.

• 24:20Steven Rinella?

  You're kidding me.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Dude, I got so lucky on research.

• 24:22Steven Rinella?

  That's great.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  Again, and again, and again. The guy at the President's Lounge in Superior, Wisconsin, he's still there. He served him the night before they left. So, I'm getting all these guys. So, Hudson finds out by payphone that his girlfriend in Toledo, who's a waitress, Cindy Reynolds, vivacious blonde and all that, she says, "Surprise, I'm pregnant." Uh, and, okay, you got that phone call, you're not ready for that. So, I'm, I'm not gonna ask for personal experience here, who's gotten that phone call and who hasn't. Uh, but you can imagine, if you haven't, that, uh, you pause, you go, "Oh, my gosh." And he says the right stuff. He says, "Don't worry, we're gonna move in together and we'll raise a child ourselves." And when she hears that, she goes, "Okay, go ahead and go on that trip, because that's November, the kids are not due till June." Uh, so now he thinks

• 25:03Speaker 02

  he's gonna marry this girl, of course. But these are the stories that happened before November tenth, nineteen seventy-five. And you gotta care about the guys before they get in the ship. That's kinda my rule.

• 25:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 02

  So, these are real guys. I mean, these are guys, these are your neighbors. Um, they had plans, they had futures, and of course, no one thinks this is gonna happen.

• 25:20Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 25:23Speaker 04

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• 25:53Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have in my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. That way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off, and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. I travel quite a bit, and when I'm home, it's very easy to stay on a rigid food routine

• 26:38Steven Rinella?

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• 27:18Steven Rinella?

  the morning covers more than your current routine might for less than a dollar more per serving. AG1 Pro supports protein synthesis, helps reduce protein

• 27:30Steven Rinella?

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• 27:52Steven Rinella?

  That iron ore would come out of the iron ranges like in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, out of the, the iron mountains here on range.

• 28:00Speaker 02

  Exactly right. It's called the iron range. Bob Dylan is from there. He even talks about that in the book. I'm from a place called the iron range. That's where my feelings and my songs come from, he says. So, iron range is the northern part of Minnesota, northern part of Wisconsin and the UP, Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Here's a fun fact for you, a few football fans, Wisconsin Badgers are called the Badgers, not because of the animal, because of the miners. Because in the winter, they'd live in the caves in the winter and their nicknames were the Badgers. So, those are miners they're talking about, actually. So, yeah, hard life to say the least, but all that stuff goes to Duluth, Superior, Silver Bay, Two Harbors, you put it on the ships and all the factories are Gary, Indiana, Chicago.

• 28:38Steven Rinella?

  Cause they're smelting it down there.

• 28:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. They smelt it right on the dock, man. It's a very efficient process. Uh, these pellets called taconite, should have brought some, little rusty pebbles. Guy figured out how to do that. You know, fracking, reinvigorated, obviously drilling here in the United States, we're out of the easy stuff, so we start fracking. All the easy iron ore is gone after World War II, we used it up for World War II, so what do we do? We're screwed. Well, this one professor in Minnesota figures out how to pelletize this iron ore, the scrap heap called taconite, you can actually use it if you process it and so on. We've been using taconite now for 80 years, uh, that's what we're on. So, this guy figures it out. 500 million pebbles of this stuff go on a ship. Uh, it's dirty, it's rusty, it's heavy. I've been on, they tell you to wear a hat, I've been on two of these ships, by the way,

• 29:24Speaker 02

  the Arthur Andersen, I was out with them that night. And I've been on the Wilfred Sykes also out with them that night. And they give you a helmet, you know, when you, that stupid writer guy, right? Okay, landlubber with the soft hands, here's a helmet, don't do anything stupid. Uh, so you put the helmet on and you realize very quickly, there are pellets of this stuff nailing your head right now as you walk to the ship, because they're loading.

• 29:44Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  And if you spill, they don't care. Trust me, from 30 or 40 feet down from those chutes, uh, it'll crack your head open. So, yeah, wear the damn helmet, that's my advice.

• 29:54Steven Rinella?

  And what, like, that was, how much could you fit on that?

• 30:00Steven Rinella?

  Oh yeah, we'll get you some. How much could they, how much of that stuff, how much weight could they fit on the Admiral Fitzgerald?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  You're not gonna believe it. It's 26,000 long tons. It's a British measurement, which is actually bigger than US tons. Why they do that, who knows, but it's equivalent of 4,200 adult elephants. Enough iron on that ship to build by itself 7,000 cars. And they make 50 runs a year. So one ship, Admiral Fitzgerald, per year gives you enough iron to build 350,000 cars. And the course was 18 years, enough iron to build 6 million cars. That's one ship. That's what, the sheer scale of all this is just mind blowing.

• 30:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, and that thing, I didn't know that thing was making 40 some trips per year?

• 30:40Speaker 02

  50, yeah. And I mean, it's nonstop. It's nine months out of the year. And trust me, you're either loading, or you're sailing, or you're unloading. I took a Skip Barber race car class years ago for the Detroit Grand Prix. He said, you either put your foot on the gas, your foot on the brake. If you do anything else, you're losing. So you're either going as fast as you can or as slow as you can. These guys, same thing. If your ship gets into Zug Island, Detroit, a nasty little spit of land. At 3 o'clock in the morning, they're unloading. And then at 7 o'clock in the morning, they're loading. And then, then they're sailing. And they don't wait for anybody or anything. You're constantly moving. And I was kind of wondering, if shipping's as big, it was a great line from William Sutton, if this is dangerous, why do it? William Sutton, the old gangster, said, someone once asked him, why do you rob banks?

• 31:25Speaker 02

  And he said, because that's where the money is.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  He's got a point. Why, if it's this dangerous, 6,000 shipwrecks, why do it? Because it's where the money is. Like I said, Detroit was that big a deal. Then I also wonder, okay, you know, I live in Michigan, you live in Muskegon. Muskegon is one of the best natural ports on the Great Lakes. And that's in the book several times. It's a very important port. And that's lumber in the old days. The lumber from Muskegon built the first Chicago that burned down in 1871. So that's your town. I was wondering, why have I never met these guys? I mean, I know factory workers, miners, farmers, et cetera. I don't know any sailors. Because there are only 9,000 of them. 30 guys per ship, 300 ships in the heyday. So 9,000 guys, spread out over eight states. And also-

• 32:11Steven Rinella?

  But they all passed through the porthole.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  They all passed through the porthole. Yeah. Yeah. And the second thing is, even if they live next to you, you still don't meet them. They're on a ship back then, nine months out of the year. No vacations, no weddings, no graduations, no birthdays, no nothing. I talked to one of these guys, and he said, "I'm a good family man, happily married, you know, 40 some years, I got three great kids. I didn't teach any of them how to ride a bike or throw a baseball, or hunt or fish." You're not home, and it's heartbreaking. So it's a hard life.

• 32:40Steven Rinella?

  He was just on the ships.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Nine months out of the year, you're home for three months. And he said, "There's nothing better than coming home in January with a big old bonus check that pays for everything." These guys were paid well. There's no question about that. These guys, you know, they weren't even all high school graduates, but they were self-educated. They're very good at that. Had to pass all these tests. Come home with a nice big bonus check, and my kids run up to me, and they give me a big hug, and I'm home for three months, and my kids say, "Daddy, you smell like a truck." And I say, "No, daddy smells like a paycheck." That's the life.

• 33:12Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. You know, there, when they launched that ship, there was like some weird stuff happened. Or like later seemed weird. Later seemed weird.

• 33:23Speaker 02

  Even at the time, some of it seemed weird. And by the way-

• 33:25Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, talk about the, there was kind of like three sort of, I don't know, man.

• 33:30Speaker 03

  When you say "launched," do you mean that night, or when the ship was christened?

• 33:34Steven Rinella?

  When they christened it, yeah. Like the, the gal-

• 33:37Speaker 02

  First photo.

• 33:37Steven Rinella?

  Edmund Fitzgerald's wife goes to smack a bottle, champagne bottle, takes three hits to break it. A guy dies of a heart attack, right? And then they have like a North Korean-esque launch.

• 33:51Speaker 02

  With the guy underneath it? Yeah. It's about right. By the way, you podcast listeners, media podcast listeners, this man has range. Hampton Sides is a Yale-educated hotshot writer, one of my heroes. You've done your homework on this one as well, so you got it down. June 23, 1958, 15,000 people show up in Detroit to see this ship get launched. That's more than the Detroit Tigers averaged the entire year.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Now, okay.

• 34:19Steven Rinella?

  That's Tigers baseball.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  They sucked. Okay, I'll grant you that simple point, but it was a huge deal. And people came in their Sunday best to see this and they had a launch pad and she was up there with the bunting and all that in her Sunday best. Three whacks to break the champagne bottle. Sailors are notoriously superstitious and they're already getting the bad voodoo on that one. So that's not good. Took them about a half an hour to get that ship into the water because guess what? It weighs, the number's in there, some ridiculous number of tons, crazy. It's the same height as the Detroit Renaissance Center, the tallest one. Seven hundred and thirty feet, seven hundred and twenty-nine feet. But it's no wider than the run from home plate to first base. It's seventy-five feet. It's.

• 35:03Steven Rinella?

  Because of the locks?

• 35:04Speaker 02

  Because of the locks.

• 35:05Steven Rinella?

  Is it really that narrow?

• 35:06Speaker 02

  It's, these things are nuts and no ships like this are built anywhere else in the world. And if you're.

• 35:12Steven Rinella?

  That thing is twenty-five yards wide, seventy-five feet wide?

• 35:16Speaker 02

  Exactly. It's nothing.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  Your old ruler at school, that's about the dimensions, it's ten to one. They don't, I mean, in the ocean, they make them shorter and fatter, like you should, basically, like you would normally.

• 35:28Steven Rinella?

  Man, I gotta just tell you a little deal about that. When we, we used to hunt ducks right at like Sugar Island, Neveish Island, St. Mary's River. You have your ducks out, you have your decoys out, eighteen inches of water. One of them sons of bitches would come by.

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Whoosh.

• 35:42Steven Rinella?

  First off, all of a sudden your ducks are in thirty-six inches of water. When that passes and the water comes in, your decoys are laying in the mud.

• 35:51Steven Rinella?

  When it fills back in.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  And that's just when those, these big old ships is putzing through.

• 35:54Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. Your decoys are in the mud and all of a sudden, they come, they come right back up.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  If you were hunting.

• 36:00Steven Rinella?

  It's like, but I would never guess that's only seventy-five feet wide.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 36:04Steven Rinella?

  They look like bigger than God.

• 36:05Speaker 03

  But it's.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  They are.

• 36:06Speaker 03

  It's seven hundred feet tall, you said?

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Well, it's seven hundred and twenty-nine feet long.

• 36:10Speaker 03

  Oh, long, long. Got you.

• 36:12Speaker 02

  The Detroit Renaissance Center, if you know where that is, they got the four shorter buildings and the tall one. It's the tallest building between Toronto and Chicago. It is seven hundred and thirty feet. So there's a seventy-three story skyscraper on its side.

• 36:23Steven Rinella?

  End of nose, yeah, yeah.

• 36:24Speaker 02

  End of nose, thank you. That's the phrase I need, Stephen, thank you. But only seventy-five feet wide. And again, if you're a shipbuilder and these guys were great shipbuilders, you got three criteria. One, haul as much cargo as you can because that's how you make money. Two, fit the damn thing through the suellocks, because they're only seventy-five feet wide is is that's the limit, right there.

• 36:43Steven Rinella?

  Like, that sets the ship's design.

• 36:45Speaker 02

  And that's exactly what they did. They were doing one foot of one and no inches on the other. I mean, this is maxed out. And then, of course, the third thing is handle rough seas. Well, if you're a shipping company, what, you can't do all three. Guess which two you're picking?

• 36:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  So these things are very ported designed for rough seas. Like I said, you can snap it between two waves. They roll back and forth, which is left and right. Hey, your, your, your podcast is awesome, because your guys have been in boats. All right, they've been out fishing and so on. When you're facing waves, you think smashing into waves is, you know, bad with a V hull. No, it's not. It's broadside that'll screw you up. All right.

• 37:22Speaker 05

  In the trough.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  In the trough, baby. Exactly. Exactly, Brody. It's exactly what happens with these ships. Where do you not want to be? In the trough. And that's what's gonna happen later on. So smashing into waves sucks. And one of the guys, I got one guy, Rick Bartholdy. You guys would love this guy. He's got, looks a bit like my buddy Randall over here. Um, he's got-

• 37:42Steven Rinella?

  Good people.

• 37:42Speaker 02

  The good people. A self-educated guy, very smart.

• 37:46Steven Rinella?

  Likes hot dogs.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  Likes hot? Oh, hell yeah. So, he does not own a computer. He has not got the internet. All he has is a cellphone. He's off the grid, basically, except for the cellphone. So, took me a year to find this guy, another year to convince him to talk to me. He's the last guy left, to my knowledge, of anybody on the Arthur Andersen that night, which is one hour behind the Fitz, taking the same route.

• 38:05Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 38:06Speaker 02

  And they're the ones communicating back and forth. He's as close as we can get to what's it like to be on this thing. And he says, you know, you think you're smashing this wave, unless you've been on one of these ships, you have no idea what this is like. Every wave is a train wreck. It goes bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, as it kind of crunches down. And then it stretches out again. Then it goes bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

• 38:25Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 38:26Speaker 02

  And that's forty-eight seconds. Twenty-foot waves, you ain't sleeping. Uh, there's no way. And they got thirty and forty-foot waves. So, that's how they designed them, and it's ten by one. It's crazy.

• 38:35Speaker 05

  Has that design changed since then?

• 38:37Speaker 02

  Not, no. No, because the suellocks haven't changed. Um, and they're finishing another one, the first one since nineteen sixty-eight. They're doing that one right now, and trust me, they're gonna get bigger. Uh, now you got thousand footers that are still seventy-five foot wide.

• 38:50Steven Rinella?

  You're kidding me.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  It's nuts.

• 38:51Speaker 03

  How deep are they sitting in the water?

• 38:53Speaker 02

  That is a brilliant question. How deep are they supposed to sit? Or how deep do they sit?

• 38:57Steven Rinella?

  Loaded, unloaded.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  So, uh, originally the plan was 14 feet of what's called freeboard. You guys know what that is. Again, dude, this is my first podcast, my first interview. I've done 30 or 40 by now.

• 39:09Steven Rinella?

  With big mariners.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, people actually know what the hell I'm talking about.

• 39:11Steven Rinella?

  I have an expired captain's license.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  You're as close as I get, Randall. I'll take your expired captain's license. Um, yeah, you guys know what it's all about. So freeboard is the distance between the water and the top of your deck. And the US Coast Guard and others, ABS, have got regulations on this.

• 39:29Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 39:29Speaker 02

  When the ship was built, 1958, it was allowed 14 feet of freeboard. And then therefore about 25 feet below the water.

• 39:36Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, on these things, you see those markers.

• 39:39Speaker 02

  That is the plimsaw line. I got a chapter on it. You're on top of it. The plimsaw line, a British politician from the 1840s, uh, who, plimsaw, uh, who made this line and everyone ignored it, except Lloyds of London, the insurance company.

• 39:52Steven Rinella?

  Well, they care.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  You're right, you know where I'm going with this one.

• 39:56Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  If you break that law, we're not paying you a dime. So now all of a sudden, the equation shift shifted. In the old days, the guys in, uh, England in the 1850s, 1860s, they would, uh, overload their ships, take out a ton of insurance, sink it almost intentionally with crew on board that didn't care, uh, and collect the money. Uh, so this changed all that. So this is how evil it was. So they were allowed 14 feet. And then who knows why, in 1969, 71 and 73, the regulations changed and allowed it to go bit by bit from 14 feet above the water to only 11 feet above the water. In the engineer's defense, they didn't design it for that. And by the way, one inch of tachinide, by the way, is tons, one inch. Cheating on this thing, one inch is millions of dollars of tachinide, one inch.

• 40:42Speaker 05

  Is that thing just a big tub in the bottom or is it divided in compartments?

• 40:46Speaker 02

  It's divided into three main cargo holds. Uh, and I've heard stories about guys who fell into those. Back then you could drink onboard and things like this and drugs were prevalent. You could, guys who fell in and died, uh, while trying to hose it down. So don't, don't drink and hose is my advice on that one. Uh, but yes, there's three gigantic holds. It's most of the 700 feet.

• 41:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Uh, and I mean, I'm standing there. Two feet away from these things and it's only like two feet. I mean, I could easily fall in. Uh, it's one of those things where they tell you, don't be an idiot. Uh, so, but yes, that's a very good question. Uh, and they unload it. Now they've got self unloaders, but back then they scooped it out.

• 41:23Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 41:23Speaker 02

  Um, so, yeah, so it's a, it's a crazy setup to say the least.

• 41:27Steven Rinella?

  Um. Let, let's jump to that night a little bit. They, they're.

• 41:32Steven Rinella?

  We've kind of established this run they're making. Oh, I got it. Before we jump to that night, I got one more. What are they coming? Are they coming back empty?

• 41:39Speaker 02

  Yes, every time.

• 41:40Steven Rinella?

  There's nothing to bring up there.

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Nothing to bring up. Well, here's a fun fact for you. Uh, trains are twice as efficient as trucks and, uh, ships are three times more efficient than trains. So ships are 600% more efficient than trucks. It ain't even close. So you carry so much on these ships, you can afford to spend three days going to Toledo and come back empty because it doesn't matter.

• 42:00Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Uh, anything you put on a ship, you put on a ship. Um, it's just far more efficient.

• 42:05Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  So you're right. And also when you're coming back, you're riding high. That's when you fill the ball, ballast tanks with water. To give us some, if you don't fill them with water, the, the screws, the propellers.

• 42:15Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 02

  Which are 30 feet high, uh, they won't even touch the water. So you gotta weigh it down.

• 42:18Steven Rinella?

  Oh, no kidding?

• 42:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. You'll just, you'll just grind it to death.

• 42:21Steven Rinella?

  Huh. Alright.

• 42:22Speaker 02

  So, so you gotta do that, but when it's riding and when I'm looking at a photo, even landlubber me, I can tell you when the Fitz is loaded and when it's not. And these guys can tell immediately.

• 42:32Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Uh, so you lose 10, you know, five, 10 feet or something.

• 42:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  So.

• 42:36Steven Rinella?

  So that night, or I don't know what time they take off. Presumably they don't take off at night, but they take off.

• 42:42Speaker 02

  They take them whenever they take off, trust me.

• 42:43Steven Rinella?

  They take off knowing there's like, like what is their awareness of the weather? Like what is the, what is the forecast when they take off?

• 42:49Speaker 02

  This guy might be a genius. Exactly right. The two problems they had back then.

• 42:53Steven Rinella?

  That's, that's a stretch, but I know that was bad.

• 42:55Speaker 03

  I actually like the positive vibes in the room right now.

• 42:58Steven Rinella?

  But I just know the wind.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  I assume that's rare, Randy.

• 43:00Steven Rinella?

  I know the wind and the wires made a tattletale sound.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 43:04Steven Rinella?

  Fully loaded.

• 43:05Speaker 05

  He doesn't pay any attention to the weather when we're in Alaska.

• 43:11Speaker 02

  But now, now I get a bit of attention.

• 43:13Steven Rinella?

  Forecast is, I'll say, let's go have a look.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  You'd fit right in on this ship.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  So here's what happens and you guys, your listeners got to know the weather, you got to watch the weather. And one of my guys, his dad was also a Great Lakes captain. He said, when the weather came on and I'm a kid in Cleveland, everyone shut the hell up. And, and because that will determine if your dad and your dad is listening like this. I didn't get that till I got in the ship. And the weather's why you come home or why you don't. Uh, now in this case, um, the gales in November, it's like hurricane season in Florida. When is that in September? Cause the water's warm and the air is cool. The water wants to rise. When you boil boil water on your stove at home, it evaporates, it rises, right? Because, uh, it wants to join the cold air and so on. It happens in November on the Great Lakes. November is notoriously dangerous. November 10th is the most dangerous day on the Great Lakes. Really? Oh, yeah. And they

• 44:05Speaker 02

  And it's, it's really worse than January. It's worse than December, it's worse than January, cause by then, winter has arrived and the water and the air get along. They're not in contrast. So it's when they're fighting, you get waves. So, and on top of that, and you're right about the forecasting.

• 44:22Speaker 02

  So a few things happened. One, it's 70 degrees on November 9th, the day they take off at 2 o'clock in the afternoon. Okay. It's 70 degrees in Duluth. Wow. And it ain't supposed to be 70 degrees in Duluth, alright? You think that's great news. It's bad news. But I learned during this book from the experts, the longer winter takes to arrive, the nastier it shows up. It's like water behind a dam and the more water you get, when that dam finally breaks, the worse it's gonna be. So 70 degrees on Sunday is really bad news. Just too warm, the water's too warm. Water's too, water's too warm and the air's, but the air switches, it's gonna be, it's gonna happen fast and nasty.

• 44:54Speaker 06

  Isn't that like this year, everything's been real hot up there?

• 44:57Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, basically, but exactly right, Corinne. And if it happens suddenly, these guys will know better.

• 45:02Speaker 05

  Yeah, and the, the Great Lakes are big enough, they'll create their own weather.

• 45:06Speaker 02

  They actually do and What the, what these guys told me that uh you have faraway storms in the ocean, as I said earlier, and the Great Lakes are called locally occurring storms, which means the damn thing right over your head.

• 45:17Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  So you're fishing in the morning and you're, you know, rowing for your dear life two hours later.

• 45:23Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 45:23Speaker 02

  Uh, it happens very fast. So winter's gonna come from the Alberta Clipper from obviously Western Canada, across the Dakotas, Minnesota, and that's gonna run all the way across 350 miles of fetch, and you guys know what fetch is, uh, across Lake Superior. That's nasty, cold, dry air. They knew, they expected that, basically. They didn't know how bad. Uh, they did not know about another storm they should have. Some of the guys did know about this in the weather forecasting business. Uh, a hot, wet air coming in from California, Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, straight up to the Great Lakes. These two storms are gonna meet right in front of Whitefish Bay, your old fishing spot.

• 45:58Steven Rinella?

  Sure.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Whitefish Bay is home plate. That's where you're trying to get to after two days getting across Lake Superior. Uh, now you got, it's like a catcher in front of home plate blocking your way home. And this captain does not know that.

• 46:10Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 46:11Speaker 02

  So that's tragic. And then what happens? So he does know it's in for a storm, so he and Bernie Cooper, uh, the Arthur Andersen, um, they're buddies, but they're still competing, of course, to get there first. Um, and why do you compete? If you beat a ship by a minute, you beat them by a couple hours, cause you'll get to the Sulaks first, only one ship at a time, you'll get to the dock first, you unload first, that's four or five hours. A minute is, can be a half a day.

• 46:35Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 46:35Speaker 02

  So these guys are competitive dudes, to say the least. So anyway.

• 46:38Steven Rinella?

  But they still like, but, but they still.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  They still get along.

• 46:41Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, but they still come together, or is it just coincidence that they're sailing together?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  No, it's not.

• 46:46Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 46:47Speaker 02

  Uh, they're talking to each other, and early on, around four or five o'clock on Sunday, they say, you know what, this thing's pretty nasty. Let's, let's take the northern route.

• 46:54Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  And normally he'd never do that, and McSorley was the best captain on the Great Lakes. Captain, he was 31 years old, been the youngest captain of the Great Lakes when he became a captain, 30, at 31. Now he's 63. He's been a captain more than half his life. He's the most aggressive captain. He never turns around, he never takes the northern route, uh, he never weighs anchor, he just goes, goes, goes. So the company likes that. He's the best in rough weather, they all say. Got a witness, Craig Sullivan, who's on the ship in 72, he said, "I saw that man park 729 feet of steel between two other freighters with three feet into their side and not touch a damn thing, like you're parking your, you're parallel parking your Ford F-150." This man was the best and he's also beloved, which those guys were not back then.

• 47:36Speaker 02

  These guys that throw hot coffee at you, yell at cadets and all kinds of other stuff. They're tyrants, basically. This guy was so beloved, his crew would follow him from ship to ship. So you have the best ship in the Great Lakes, the longest, the fastest, the most luxurious. How about that? The best food.

• 47:51Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, they had air conditioning in their bunks.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  They had air conditioning in 1958. Holmes didn't have that where we're from.

• 47:57Steven Rinella?

  Was it like leather furniture or something like that?

• 47:59Speaker 02

  Leather furniture, two VIP quarters for the rich folks. The people who write the checks, the National Steel, US Steel, Ford Motor Company to entertain those guys. Cause you want the best captain of the Great Lakes, you want the best crew in the Great Lakes and you want the most money. That's how you get it. So it was not wasted money. So, uh, McSorley, here's a more heartbreaking stuff. They're supposed to end the season the week before. He tacks on one more trip to get his bonus. Why? His, his wife, Nellie is sick in Toledo. She's got cancer, we think, I'm not entirely sure about that, but I've got some witnesses on that. Uh, so she's already in 24 hour care. Uh, she might be able to pull through. So this trip is for her healthcare. And he's about to retire. So normally he'd never take the northern route, but he's, he's thinking, who the hell's gonna fire me? And go ahead.

• 48:43Speaker 02

  What was the advantage of taking the northern route? Smart man, Brody.

• 48:47Steven Rinella?

  Good job, Brody.

• 48:48Speaker 02

  A few things. One, they normally go straight across, uh, like Superior south as you can. This is straightest line possible. Um, by taking the northern route, you get the lee of the Canadian shore. So, and you guys know what lee is. There are 20 terms I've used tonight that I could not use last night.

• 49:04Steven Rinella?

  The song, "Day of Hell, Fishing Man."

• 49:06Speaker 02

  If you're in a bookstore in Milwaukee, Minnesota, you better explain a lot of stuff. So this is my, this is my gang. Uh, so you get the lee of the, uh, western shore, the northern shore. You're basically hugging Canada across Superior. Now, a few catches to that though. One is the safe, rational thing to do. So I'm not one of those ones that dump in McSorley and say, screw the whole thing up. That's a rational move.

• 49:27Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  All right, but few catches. One, one of yours you already know. It's pay me now or pay me later. So, okay, the first two legs are quieter and softer and not as windy and so on, but that third leg's gonna be hell. Cause now you're exposed. You have three hundred fifty feet, three hundred fifty miles of fetch. And now those waves are hitting you broadside. This is the, you're, you're in your bathtub and this is the drain. And go ahead, make some waves. What's gonna happen at the end? It's gonna be nasty at that end. So, and you're gonna be hitting those broadside. That's not what you want, uh, your last leg. That's gonna be about ten hours.

• 49:57Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  That's one problem. Second problem is it's fourteen hours longer than the straight shot. All right? You just gave that southern storm a fourteen hour head start to get to Whitefish Bay first. And I posit in the book-

• 50:08Steven Rinella?

  This is the captain's call.

• 50:10Speaker 02

  Completely.

• 50:10Steven Rinella?

  Like he's like unilateral, that's what's happening.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Not a democracy.

• 50:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:14Speaker 02

  The votes one, nothing on all decisions.

• 50:16Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  You might consult, and he did, but it's one, nothing, and you are therefore responsible for all decisions. Another guy out that night on the Sykes, he said, this is too nasty and he, this is one of the best captains in the Great Lakes also. They're probably the best at forecasting. Um, and he says, we're, we're tucking in. We're gonna go into the bay. And his crew is warning him-

• 50:32Steven Rinella?

  And ride it out.

• 50:33Speaker 02

  Ride it out.

• 50:34Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 50:34Speaker 02

  And his crew is warning him, sir, if you do, captain, if you do that, and there's no storm, it can be your ass with Cleveland, with the company. So that's, those are the pros and cons you deal with. Now, McSorney no longer cares. This is his last trip. Um, so anyway, so fourteen hours. Here's the third problem. He does not know this route nearly as well. He takes the southern route fifty times a year, really a hundred, back and forth. He's done that his entire career, forty years at least.

• 51:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  He's done this thousands of times. He knows all the islands. He knows all the stuff out there and the currents and everything else. He does not know this. I had two guys on the ship, uh, that year. They said, we didn't take it in the last year and a half, not once, the northern route.

• 51:13Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 51:14Speaker 02

  Why does that matter? It's superior. It's thirteen hundred feet deep. It's gigantic. Not quite. It's a little crappy pile of dirt called Caribou Island in the northeast corner of Lake Superior. Right when you take that final stretch down. It's one mile by three mile. It barely shows up on most maps. Uh, it's called Caribou Island. I have no idea why.

• 51:33Steven Rinella?

  Well, can I interject?

• 51:35Speaker 02

  Yes. And by the way, it's your show.

• 51:37Steven Rinella?

  Historically, here's the crazy part. Like-

• 51:41Steven Rinella?

  Isle Royale?

• 51:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:43Steven Rinella?

  Being a wolf moose island.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:45Steven Rinella?

  Historically was a caribou lynx island.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  I did not know that.

• 51:49Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Uh, Isle Royale is the nation's biggest, I'm sorry, it's the nation's only island national park.

• 51:56Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  Um, and it's 10 times the size of Manhattan, but no one knows that.

• 51:59Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 52:00Speaker 05

  So, there's caribou up there like after 1900.

• 52:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, no, in the mo- yeah, in the modern, like, in like, modern America.

• 52:08Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 52:08Steven Rinella?

  And sorry, during American history, there was a caribou lynx island.

• 52:13Speaker 02

  That was news to me. And by the way, it's the first show also that I learned something.

• 52:16Speaker 03

  Oh, good. You can go there, you can hike up on a mountain on Isle Royale, and you can look at the biggest island and the biggest lake, on the biggest island in the biggest lake.

• 52:25Speaker 02

  That's in the book. It's a, IRO is so big, 10 times the size of Manhattan. It's got a lake in the island with an island with a lake.

• 52:33Steven Rinella?

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  Uh.

• 52:35Steven Rinella?

  Been there.

• 52:36Speaker 02

  There you go. Randall.

• 52:37Steven Rinella?

  Seen it with my own eyes.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  There you go. And they, they use Isle Royale, that's part of the Lee. They go just south of Isle Royale to get that protection.

• 52:44Speaker 03

  The worst, the worst boat ride I've ever been on was getting to Isle Royale.

• 52:47Speaker 02

  On the, on the Ranger III.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  From the, from International Falls side.

• 52:52Speaker 02

  Oh, God, that's brutal.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  And, and yeah, I've, I've never been seasick before. I was seasick on that.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  All right. We're getting pretty serious here. Here's a thing they used to do. The guys on those ships, who work in those ships, I talked to one of those guys. I had to cut the damn thing, but this'll be fun for you guys. I remember Dinty Moore, Hunter Stu and all that stuff.

• 53:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 02

  That one guy would start acting like he's sick with five foot waves. Five foot waves are enough to get these, get these campers to sick. He had some Dinty Moore, and he'd all of a sudden go, blah! And spill the stuff. And his other buddy comes by and goes, oh my God. He'd have a spoon, and he'd start eating it.

• 53:28Speaker 02

  And then, of course, the campers, the poor campers, that they see that, and they're over the side, so.

• 53:33Steven Rinella?

  Okay, so I derailed you at Caribou Island.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  It's quite all right, because we needed that laugh. And I will never get another chance in my life to tell that story, so.

• 53:42Speaker 07

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• 54:10Steven Rinella?

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• 54:55Steven Rinella?

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• 55:34Steven Rinella?

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• 55:53Speaker 02

  Uh, so Caribou Island, it's one mile by three miles called Caribou Island. I have no idea. It's a swamp with, with mosquitoes. It's nasty.

• 56:00Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 56:00Speaker 02

  The caribou left. If they're around there, they swam across to Canada long ago. Uh, it's a, no reason to go there, but in front of it, uh, to the north, it's something called Six Fathoms Shoal. You guys know what a fathom is? My other folks usually don't. It's six feet. Six fathoms is therefore thirty-six feet. If you're drafting twenty-nine feet on a good day, and this is not a good day.

• 56:18Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  You have no reason to be anywhere near this. Nothing to gain. But it's awesome. It's leading. It's not six fathoms. In some places, it's eleven feet. That's no deeper than your backyard pool. So you have no reason to be anywhere near this thing. Why would he come anywhere near it?

• 56:32Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 56:33Speaker 02

  The storm now is seventy mile per hour winds, thirty foot waves. It's pretty nasty. Not quite the worst he's ever seen, but getting there. Uh, his long radar is knocked out. His short radar is knocked out.

• 56:42Steven Rinella?

  By waves.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  By waves. Exactly right. Thank you. And Whitefish Point, and you've seen that lighthouse. It's the one lighthouse on the Great Lakes everyone's dying to see. That light, of course, goes out that night. The radio beacon that signals the ships where you are also goes out.

• 56:56Steven Rinella?

  Cause of why?

• 56:57Speaker 02

  The storm. I mean.

• 56:59Steven Rinella?

  The storm knocked the lighthouse out.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  Well, dominoes start falling.

• 57:04Steven Rinella?

  Power outages.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  And, and, and just dumb luck in some cases. So, uh, so there you are. So now you have truly sailing blind. All you have are what they call charts and we call maps. And it's about as big as this table. These things are like four by five. They're, they're huge. And in these, in the chart room, you've got these organic drawers. One says Lake Huron, one says Lake Ontario. I mean, you pull out six or seven per lake. Now, if you're old enough and you kids have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, but AAA gives them called a triptic. All right. And to put all your maps on a trip all in an order. So if I'm going from Michigan to Montana, I would know how to do it. And it works pretty well. That's how these maps work. But if you skip ahead, you're screwed. Cause now nothing makes sense. So if he does not know where he is, Tom Wyder, a great hunter also, by the way, is also a sea captain in the Great Lakes.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  He said it's entirely possible he would have changed maps too soon. You're in thirty foot waves. You've not slept in thirty-six hours. You get what's called motion fatigue. Um, that is like being drunk after thirty six hours of these, these waves and you've not taken this route in years. Um, he, if he shifted his map too soon, all right, to get Whitefish Bay on the map, because that's where he wants to go. All right, the Caribou area is still there, but it now disappears because the scale has changed. Um, so you might not be, be aware that you're anywhere near this and the Anderson is convinced that they saw them on the radar go right over Six Fathoms Shoal. If they did, it would explain why two hours later, he's talking to Bernie Cooper. Uh, that is the captain of the Memphis Gerald, uh, McSorley.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Saying, you know, my, my fence railing is down. I've got two vent covers blown off by the waves, a few other problems and in kind of in passing. I've got a list. All right, I guess you guys know what that means. That's my thirtieth term. I don't have to define to you guys, but tilting to the right to starboard. All right, not that big a deal at first. Two hours later, it's the first thing that he mentions. And these guys are very reluctant to admit anything is wrong with their ships. For a few reasons, one, they're in competition. You don't put anything on the radio. You don't have to. Second of all, the whole macho aspect, man, we've all been on planes. We're experiencing a little turbulence here, people. Yeah, we're bouncing up and down two hundred feet. We'll be okay here in just a few minutes. That's what these guys are like. Uh, so for him to admit this much is very unusual. So now you got a pretty serious list. What does that mean?

• 59:19Speaker 02

  It means either you're taking water from the bottom or the load has shifted or possibly both. If they bottomed out at Six Fathoms Shoal, that could be the reason. Once you've starboard, all right, you can't steer.

• 59:30Steven Rinella?

  But why wouldn't he have mentioned we hit?

• 59:32Speaker 02

  Here's the bizarre part, and I could not believe this either, but I had ten experts tell me it's true. You might not have known and I thought that's impossible.

• 59:40Steven Rinella?

  Hit something enough to put a hole through that thing and not.

• 59:43Speaker 02

  And it's, and it's sandstone, it's sandstone for crying out loud. This is hard, hard stuff. All right, and you got a hard, hard ship. How could you not know that? And I talked to experienced captains, they, the waves are so nasty, like I said, they're a train wreck. That you can't tell the difference between the train wreck of a good wave. And one guy, the Badger that runs from, uh, Muskegon to, uh.

• 1:00:02Steven Rinella?

  I've been on it.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:00:04Steven Rinella?

  Manitowoc, right?

• 1:00:05Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:00:05Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 02

  Uh, Wiltzy is the captain of that ship. He said, I was leaving the breakwater one time and the waves are so nasty, I thought I hit the breakwater. I had not. And I didn't know this stuff worked like that.

• 1:00:16Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  It does, so even a good captain cannot be aware. So whether tore hole or scraped it or whatever, and we're not quite sure, but anyway. Now you're listing, if you're listing, you can't steer properly. You're much more in danger of capsizing when you're going broadside.

• 1:00:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:30Speaker 02

  And like a three-legged animal in the wild, and you guys know what those are like. All right, one good wave now can take you out. And when it reaches the point that they didn't want to be in, as I said earlier, the worst place, the worst time. Hundred mile per hour winds and up to sixty foot waves.

• 1:00:46Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:00:46Speaker 02

  And at some point, the ship probably didn't come back up. We don't know, but that's the best guess.

• 1:00:54Steven Rinella?

  The best guess right now is that it hit. Did it hit something?

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  That I think if you're asking me.

• 1:01:01Steven Rinella?

  I know, like, I understand that no one really knows, but like, where's sort of the?

• 1:01:05Speaker 02

  All right, let's get, let's get down to it.

• 1:01:07Steven Rinella?

  What's the sort of like academic consensus?

• 1:01:09Speaker 02

  There is none.

• 1:01:10Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:01:10Speaker 02

  Uh, but I can tell you this, uh, some new data in here. Dick Race, there's a name for you. He's the best diver in the Great Lakes. He died in two thousand and two when a seven forty seven went in Lake Michigan in the sixties. He's the guy who found it when no one else could.

• 1:01:25Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:01:25Speaker 02

  The lakes are bigger than you think. Um, he worked at the Chicago Police Department and he did his own work. He's the best in the lakes. Three guys who knew him well, uh, also the same thing. The company asked him to dive down six months later on six fathom shoal.

• 1:01:37Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, look for a strike.

• 1:01:38Speaker 02

  Look for a strike, exactly right, Stephen. Um, and wherever that report is, by the way, I, I found the guy, Peter Groh, was in charge of a thousand boxes, banker's boxes of that company's files when it went bankrupt in two thousand and four. He spent two years going through all these files. He found every box and went through them all except for three. The three involving the Edmund Fitzgerald and no one signed them out, there's no trace. That's where his report is, I'm almost sure of it. And I couldn't find it. Dick Race reported on this, so his, his file is gone. We don't know where it is, and I tried like hell to find it. Uh, but he told three different guys in Chicago, Traverse City, and Muskegon, exact same thing. I saw the Fitzgerald's paint on that bottom.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  I saw a rock nearby with scratches that no animal can make, um, that had to be from the ship. So is that proof?

• 1:02:26Speaker 05

  Well, there wasn't like when they found the wreckage, there was like no like autopsy they could do on the wreckage.

• 1:02:34Speaker 02

  Yes and no, and it gets us closer to it, but it's not definitive.

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:02:37Speaker 02

  Um, but anyway, so at seven o'clock, when Bernie Cooper calls him and he's the captain of the Anderson and he says, how are you making out with your problems? He says, and I quote, "We are holding our own." And that is the ringing line from Captain McSorley. Those are the last words from anybody on board, whatever happened next. One thing we say that people academically even agree on, whatever happened was fast.

• 1:03:01Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:03:02Speaker 02

  And what's our proof on that? This guy is the best captain of the Great Lakes. If he had 10 seconds to get on SOS with coordinates, he sure as hell would have done it. This guy's good. All right. The lifeboats were secured. Um, the life jackets were where they left them. Only one guy we've seen in the bottom is wearing a life jacket.

• 1:03:17Speaker 05

  Hmm.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  Uh, so whatever happened, it happened very fast. They say it went 35 miles per hour down to the bottom.

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  Wow.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  It might've cracked on top.

• 1:03:25Speaker 05

  There's a guy on the bottom wearing a life jacket?

• 1:03:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:03:27Speaker 05

  How come he didn't float?

• 1:03:28Speaker 02

  Uh, cause he's inside the, um, inside the, uh, they're all inside the ship.

• 1:03:34Speaker 05

  Understood. Oh, they are?

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yep. Somewhere in the pilot house and somewhere in the engine room. Uh, but, and no one's in the middle, so.

• 1:03:41Speaker 05

  Is that right?

• 1:03:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't want to be in the middle. Not that, not that it worked out well anyway.

• 1:03:45Speaker 05

  And how deep did it, how deep did it?

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  Here's the weird part. So kind of an academic question, did it crack on the surface as other ships had? Or did it crack after it hit? And a lot of people say it cracked on the surface and again, can't prove it either way. But here's a wild stat for you. It's down 530 feet deep. Now you better, you know, you can't dive down there for the hell of it. You better know what you're doing, special gear.

• 1:04:06Speaker 05

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:04:07Speaker 02

  You know, licensed people, submersibles, all that stuff. So it's 530 feet down, but this ship is 729 feet long. So even if it hit the bow, you have 200 feet out, outside the water.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  That's crazy.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  All right. So that would certainly have cracked it at that point. It's all the weight on it. So it, either one could have happened and I can't say.

• 1:04:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, I never thought of it. It's taller than it is deep.

• 1:04:31Speaker 02

  And it's 530 feet deep.

• 1:04:33Steven Rinella?

  How far are the two pieces apart?

• 1:04:35Speaker 02

  Uh, about a quarter mile. About like that. And in between, it's like one-third the bow upright. So you can see the Emma Fitzgerald on the side. One-third the stern upside down. So we see in the book. Uh, Emma Fitzgerald upside down, which is sad to see. In the middle is about a third and it's just blown apart. Um, and the tachyonyte is still down there.

• 1:04:54Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  So, and, and all 29 men as well. And the line from the, the song. The Chipwad comes from a Newsweek story, but Gordon Lightfoot got. Um, the great lake, the great lake never gives up her dead. What that means is if you-

• 1:05:08Steven Rinella?

  The lake it is said never gives up her dead.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  You'd think by now I'd be an expert on this stuff, but this guy's got the lyrics exactly right. Thank you again, doctor.

• 1:05:15Steven Rinella?

  No problem.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  And he's got it. He's, he's right. The lake it is said never gives up her dead.

• 1:05:19Steven Rinella?

  Honorary doctor.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  I call that a professional courtesy. Thank you very much.

• 1:05:22Steven Rinella?

  Brandon's is real.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  We need, we need a light moments. That's good too. Um, yeah, the author of the book who paid $2,000 for the rights didn't get the lyric right. So thank you for that. Um, why is that? Because if you drown in Michigan, like Michigan, like Erie. Almost anywhere you go in the United States. Bacteria will eventually invade your body.

• 1:05:39Steven Rinella?

  Uh huh.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  And the bacteria do that, they are lighter than water. So your body starts floating up. Um, so that's why they float up within a week or two, usually in drownings, fishermen included. Um, on the great lakes, I'm sorry, on Lake Superior, you're so far down, it's dark all day long. It's pitch black. Uh, it's so cold, bacteria can't live there.

• 1:05:58Steven Rinella?

  It's sterile down there.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  It is sterile. Bacteria do not live down there. Almost nothing lives down there. So bacteria never invade your body. So these bodies, hey, to get grim. They do not decompose in a normal way. Um, they're still largely recognizable.

• 1:06:12Steven Rinella?

  But what, what has been the argument? Why haven't the families wanted to? Um, why haven't the families wanted to bring up the remains of their relatives?

• 1:06:25Speaker 02

  One of them did for a while until she found out her, she's an only child also, Deb Champeau, just started two days ago in Milwaukee. She's a 16-year-old girl when her dad's ship goes down, and they're very close. At first, she wanted to, and his brother was in Vietnam. And here's a little story. He's 13 years old in the Great Depression when his dad dies suddenly. He's the oldest of five kids. What do you do if you're in rural, if you're in rural Wisconsin at that point? You drop out of school and you start working. These guys are tough dudes. So he paid for his kid, you know, brothers to get through school. He joins the military, sends checks back. He was decorated himself. Gets in a ship, makes good money, and gives the money back to his family. But he always promised his brother in Vietnam, if anything ever happens to you, I will go to Vietnam and I'll bring you back. And he said that more than once. So when this ship goes down, his brother wants to do the same thing.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  I want to go down and bring you back. But Deb Champeau realized, A, it's very dangerous. They've made three drives, three dives down there, no accidents. But it's very dangerous to do that stuff. Two, the other people are also on the ship. And she's said, the Marines, you never leave your men.

• 1:07:26Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:07:27Speaker 02

  So that was the ethos of leaving the guys on the ship. So they all agree, they're not going to come up. And they're all basically entombed there, essentially.

• 1:07:34Steven Rinella?

  And how, they're all accounted for?

• 1:07:38Speaker 02

  That I can't say for sure. Well, I can, because by now something would have happened. All 29 men are in one side or the other. You would never be in the middle of that ship, anyway.

• 1:07:47Steven Rinella?

  But I'm just surprised, like, conditions were such that no one could be, no one would be on deck. It'd be like laughable to be on deck.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  No, exactly. And laughable is right. And no, no fence railing even on top of that.

• 1:07:58Steven Rinella?

  And so fast that no one ever attempted to, like, no lifeboats ever washed ashore?

• 1:08:03Speaker 02

  No, lifeboats did, but only if they popped out on their way down.

• 1:08:07Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:08:08Speaker 02

  And these things were destroyed.

• 1:08:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay, but no, no sign that someone had taken any kind of steps to do that?

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  The one life jacket is the only sign we have that anybody felt. That, you know, doom was apparent. These guys usually didn't wear life jackets. Some of these guys couldn't swim. It seems crazy to me, but Coast Guard never tested for it.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  And, uh, Ransom Cundy, there's a name for you. Nickname was Handsome Ransom Cundy. He told his daughter, all it does is prolong the agony. So these guys, and you have 10 minutes in that water anyway.

• 1:08:36Speaker 03

  Kind of a fatal, it's like, why bother?

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  Kind of thing. That's what, that was the, that was the mindset.

• 1:08:41Steven Rinella?

  So it's, it's, it's assumed that the men drowned.

• 1:08:46Speaker 02

  Yes. I think proven, basically. Uh, so 29 men.

• 1:08:50Steven Rinella?

  That thing went down fast.

• 1:08:51Speaker 02

  I, I, to answer your question, I don't think anyone's gone down there and counted the, kind of the, the dead.

• 1:08:57Speaker 03

  What was going on with the other captain?

• 1:09:00Speaker 02

  Uh, he was fighting for his life, of course, 30, 40 footers, but he was not quite in as bad a place. He's an hour behind the MFF.

• 1:09:07Speaker 03

  Did he also ta, he did take the northern route?

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  The northern route? Yeah. And, and he's another aggressive guy. So this is unusual. Uh, but his radar's working. Um, so they certainly avoided, um, Caribou Island. They, we got a map in there showing the two routes they took. Man, they took a wide swing around that whole thing. He told his wheelsman, we ain't coming anywhere near this thing.

• 1:09:27Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:09:27Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I don't want to see it.

• 1:09:29Speaker 03

  And without an.

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  And there's no reason to.

• 1:09:31Steven Rinella?

  Coming near the Six Fathom Shoal.

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's, that's death.

• 1:09:35Speaker 03

  Without an SOS call, he realizes that something's awry when assuming, I mean, he loses contact, he doesn't get any response on the radio or like.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  I mean, Bernie Cooper and the Anderson.

• 1:09:48Speaker 03

  At, at what point, at what point do they realize something's happened?

• 1:09:51Speaker 02

  They come to it slowly because again, he's fighting for his life.

• 1:09:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:09:54Speaker 02

  He's an hour behind. So the worst of it lasts about an hour and that's where the Fitzgerald was. It's still bad when he comes through. Um, 30, 40 footers, whatever. Um, but, uh, so he's keeping a monitor, but you only check it in every half an hour, every hour. But he loses them on the radar. That concerns him, but that's possible. Um, that can happen. Then he tells his guys the power might've gone out on the ship, which does happen.

• 1:10:16Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:10:16Speaker 02

  The electrical systems can pop out. But after an hour, he realized this is not right. So he calls the Coast Guard and I hate to be critical of the Coast Guard. These guys have saved thousands of lives and I got many of them in the book. These guys risked their own lives. They're very, very good. But the Sioux Locks Coast Guard Station did not come through that night. They had two ships that did not go out.

• 1:10:38Steven Rinella?

  It wouldn't have mattered.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  It wouldn't have mattered, but you gotta be ready. But anyway.

• 1:10:43Steven Rinella?

  Yeah. No, I understand the criticism, but I'm saying it wasn't.

• 1:10:46Speaker 02

  No, it was immaterial. You're dead right.

• 1:10:48Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  No pun intended. Sorry. But the Captain Cooper of the Anderson calls the Sioux group in the Sioux Locks. And talking to Petty Officer Branch, this guy's young buck. And he asked Cooper to go from Channel 16 to Channel 12 because Channel 16 is for emergencies. He's reporting that the Fitzgerald being missing. Is there a greater emergency than that?

• 1:11:13Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  I mean, what's even close? This guy's just not getting it. And Cooper's trying to get through him. Hey, I think the ship is missing. When they finally get to Whitefish Bay at nine o'clock at night, he's certain that it's gone.

• 1:11:24Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:25Speaker 02

  There's no reason why we wouldn't pass them. It wouldn't be in.

• 1:11:27Steven Rinella?

  What time did the ship break apart?

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  Uh, seven o'clock, seven 10, somewhere in there. And.

• 1:11:32Steven Rinella?

  That time of year dark?

• 1:11:34Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. It's been dark for a while at that point. It's like 4:30, if you know that area. Um, so the Petty Officer Branch testifies a few days later and has to explain himself, his various responses. And he says, I thought it was important, but at that time not urgent. And I can't explain that answer. So it doesn't, again, it didn't matter as far as what happened.

• 1:11:55Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I understand.

• 1:11:55Speaker 02

  But it's still, that's what Cooper's dealing with.

• 1:11:57Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  When they get to Whitefish Bay, they've not even weighed anchor. And, uh, and Coast Guard says, can you go back out and look for the Fitzgerald?

• 1:12:06Steven Rinella?

  Says to who?

• 1:12:08Speaker 02

  Cooper of the Anderson.

• 1:12:09Steven Rinella?

  Want to take a freight, an iron ore freighter and go look for it?

• 1:12:12Speaker 02

  Yes. And you just got in like this.

• 1:12:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  Skin of your teeth, you're happy to be alive. And so is the crew. It's the worst storm he's ever seen in his entire career. And they ask him before you even drop anchor to go back out. And you're like I said.

• 1:12:24Steven Rinella?

  To take a loaded freighter out and look for a freighter.

• 1:12:27Speaker 02

  Loaded freighter, 600 feet some. Oh, it was actually longer at that point, 700 or some.

• 1:12:30Steven Rinella?

  What the hell is he supposed to do?

• 1:12:33Speaker 02

  It's, I just gave a shrug for the radio. It's a fool's mission. And they know damn well that you don't lose 729 feet of steel. It's a fool's mission. They know that, but in the Bradley in 58 and the Morel in 66, great first-person testimony we've got in the book from the guys. There are three guys on one raft and four guys on the other raft and end up being two and one because the guys died on the raft and stayed on the raft. They didn't have the energy to throw them over at that point at these horrible wrecks. And they said, we're freezing. We have no energy to even grab a rope by the time they get us. What kept us going? You know, we're dying and so on. The only thing that kept us going was the thin thread of hope. That somewhere out there is some guy in the Coast Guard or somewhere else

• 1:13:17Speaker 02

  who's willing to risk his life to save mine because you can't save my life any other way without risking yours.

• 1:13:22Steven Rinella?

  Got it.

• 1:13:22Speaker 02

  And Coast Guard guys die doing this stuff. I mean, other guys die. Too many examples, of course. So Coast Guard does that on a regular basis. That's what these guys did. And I asked Rick Barthouli, who's a 22-year-old guy on that ship. I said, what'd you think at the time? He said, we knew it was a dumb idea. We knew there could be two ships in the bottom before we're done. And that's exactly what Cooper tells the Coast Guard. We could double the accident at this point. He said, but we didn't think twice because we knew they would do it for us. And that is the sailor's code. And there's a chapter called The Sailor's Code. All the American ships went out and all the ocean ships stayed in port. Because once again, the Salties learned that the Great Lakes are scarier than the ocean.

• 1:14:01Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:14:03Speaker 02

  So those guys are heroes to me.

• 1:14:04Steven Rinella?

  When you say that the other, a captain of the other ship, you kind of answered this, but I just want to come back on it. The captain, you use the term, the captain of the other ship was fighting for his life.

• 1:14:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:14:15Steven Rinella?

  Like, did he later describe, describe it like that? I mean, did he feel like he was in a life-death situation?

• 1:14:21Speaker 02

  I should have the thing, uh... I got my PDF in my computer. How about that for a non-fisterial response? I can find the exact quote. When the Coast Guard captain tells him to go out, we have his quotes on what he said. Where is that thing? It's right there. I'll get it in a second. He said, "Do you know what the conditions are like out there?" And the guy doesn't answer. And Cooper says again, "Do you know what the conditions are like out there?" And again, he doesn't answer. And I said, "He didn't answer, but we can." He had no idea. Because even on shore, twenty footers going over your building on shore, if you weren't out there, you'd have no idea. And so Cooper knows this guy's asking a lot and he has no idea what he's asking for.

• 1:15:04Speaker 02

  But they didn't, he didn't even stop and think. I mean, you didn't like it, but you gotta go. And these guys are a different breed.

• 1:15:13Steven Rinella?

  How long were they out there?

• 1:15:15Speaker 02

  About fourteen hours. Because that's how long it takes to go to make a loop.

• 1:15:18Steven Rinella?

  Loaded with all, but that's the thing that I keep, I know I keep coming back to this, but like loaded with all that iron orange shit.

• 1:15:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't drop it first and go back out. That's, that's part of your problem. His, his freeboard is no better than that.

• 1:15:29Steven Rinella?

  You're gonna do, you're gonna...

• 1:15:31Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 1:15:32Steven Rinella?

  You're gonna do what? Like throw some ropes? Like you're gonna try to pull up along, you're gonna try to pull that thing up alongside a life raft?

• 1:15:39Speaker 02

  I guess. And, and they have in the past. They would try. But it also... I mean, I don't know.

• 1:15:45Speaker 05

  It also could be as much about like confirming and recovering bodies and...

• 1:15:50Steven Rinella?

  Or you'd find it adrift, I guess.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And they found debris. They found the lifeboats. Those things were steel, not aluminum. Even Arthur Andersen's lifeboat was destroyed by a wave. And Arthur described it, "It's like taking a pop can, stepping on it and taking a hacksaw through it." That's what our lifeboat looked like. And again, made of steel, not of aluminum. But what they dreaded, they're going back out in the seas and it's still bad. And you're smashing into those waves. That's not the scary part. The scary part is the turnaround. Turn around, you have to pick the right wave to turn around in to go into the trough. Yeah.

• 1:16:24Speaker 05

  Well, probably takes 15 minutes for those things to turn around.

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  Well, exactly. Oh, 15 minutes. Takes an hour.

• 1:16:29Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:16:30Speaker 02

  Uh, these things are not that, they're 60 miles an hour and they're big and slow. Um, so you gotta, and I talked to captains about this. It's dark. You can't pick the right wave. Uh, it's too dark to see, like you're saying earlier. Uh, so just making that turn around. And Bartholi, who's not an emotional guy, he said, trust me, when we got back into Whitefish Bay. The second time. There was a lot of guys that became very religious. Uh, yes, uh, who had their come to Jesus moment on your way back. Um, so they knew how bad it was. So those guys were impressive. The ocean guys did not go out. As I said earlier, John Hayes had sailed on both 23 years, the Great Lakes and 12 on the ocean. He said, the Great Lakes and the ocean, it ain't even close. And anybody who's sailed both will tell you the same thing.

• 1:17:14Speaker 02

  The Salties always laughed at us, uh, until they got in the Great Lakes. Then they shut up pretty damn fast and started looking for safe harbor. And that night, a half dozen Amer- uh, American Canadian ships went out and all the Salties stayed in bay. So that's the difference.

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• 1:18:44Steven Rinella?

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• 1:19:28Steven Rinella?

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• 1:19:52Speaker 05

  Has anything comparable happened since then?

• 1:19:56Speaker 02

  Brody, great question. And by the way, this is the best damn interview I've had.

• 1:20:02Speaker 03

  Just go out to lunch after this.

• 1:20:03Speaker 02

  I admit my ignorance about the Meat Eater Podcast. I'm not kidding you. I'm getting the best questions. That's been very impressive. So 6,000 super X between 1875 and 1975, November 10th, 1975 to the present, almost exactly 50 years, zero, not one. So you go from 6,000 in a century to zero for 50 years. And why is that? Just what you said, Stephen, earlier. Forecasting is better. They also take it more seriously. Communication, don't just know the information, tell the captain and tell the captain on a regular basis what they're in for today. So they had more technology back then. And one of my experts said, when do you fix anything? When it's broken. All right, 9/11, we're complacent. We got smart about certain things.

• 1:20:47Speaker 02

  Well, we could have done things then to be smarter, of course. Same thing here. But the biggest change, I believe, since then is simple common sense. The author photo there in the back is me at Whitefish Point. This is November 11th of last year of 2024, the day after the anniversary. I spoke with the families the night before. I'm looking at about 30, 40 mile per hour winds there. I don't look too happy. About 10 foot waves. Every single ship, that day, and my computer program on my phone shows this. Every single ship was anchored in Whitefish Bay.

• 1:21:18Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  And I guarantee you.

• 1:21:20Steven Rinella?

  In the old days.

• 1:21:21Speaker 02

  Not one. Now, and if you're anchoring, you're fired. You're not gonna make it. Uh, or ridiculed at least, so. Wait a day, wait a day. The next day in the Lake Superior, after the ship went down, it was glass.

• 1:21:34Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  Hmm. You could have gone out one day later and made up all your time. Uh, straight shot. So that's part of the tragedy. I'll add to the tragedy, Eddie Bindon, 47 years old. Uh, first, uh, assistant engineer, high in the pecking order. Handles the engine. Um, been married 25 years to lovely Helen. Her photo's in there. Um, in Cleveland area, more or less. He about to celebrate the 25th anniversary. He's about to retire after this trip as well. He gets from Superior, Wisconsin to Duluth, to the jewelry store, because Superior didn't have one, apparently. Gets a very nice 25-year diamond anniversary ring. And for reasons only he knows, he does not pack it in his duffel bag. He's gonna see her in three days. She's gonna be there on the dock. It lived two hours away.

• 1:22:20Speaker 02

  He gives it to a friend and tells his friend to mail this to my wife and gives the address.

• 1:22:25Steven Rinella?

  That is so wild, though, man.

• 1:22:27Speaker 02

  I cannot explain why he did that, what he thought, any of this. But sure enough, a week later, she gets a ring. Uh, she wore it the rest of her life and never remarried. Uh, but stories like that, those are the stories that no one's got. Gosh. So. It makes them human beings. That's the, that's the most important thing.

• 1:22:48Steven Rinella?

  Man.

• 1:22:50Steven Rinella?

  Did you feel like, when you started working on the book, did you feel it necessary to reach out to the family members?

• 1:22:55Speaker 02

  Oh, essential. And it took me about six months to a year to get to them. I got lucky. The guy who is the director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum in Whitefish Point, Bruce Lynn, true class act, former Army Captain, square jaw guy, all this good stuff. He's a big Ohio State fan, but he got his master's degree at Eastern Michigan University in Ypsilanti, so he's hearing me on the radio for years, talking about this stuff and reading my football books and so on, so I already knew me, thank God. He read the Halifax book, and we got along very well. He had the trust of the families. I did not. He was their gatekeeper. He keeps all the wackos and the grifters away from them. But we got along, and he told them to trust me. And without that, the book barely counts, in my opinion.

• 1:23:39Speaker 02

  So they trusted me, and that one worked out very well. They loved the book, and I'm grateful for that.

• 1:23:43Steven Rinella?

  When we say the, like if I say the families, or if you hear the families, are there, are there still 29 families? There's some like semi cohesive units, or are some of the families sort of dissolved?

• 1:24:00Speaker 02

  Some have dissolved. Well, Eddie Bindon and his wife, Helen, no kids.

• 1:24:04Steven Rinella?

  I see.

• 1:24:05Speaker 02

  So, there you are. Which is why I feel very good about.

• 1:24:08Steven Rinella?

  And she's, and she's.

• 1:24:10Speaker 02

  She's deceased also.

• 1:24:11Steven Rinella?

  Okay, I see.

• 1:24:12Speaker 02

  She was 47 at the time, so add 50.

• 1:24:14Steven Rinella?

  So there's no, there's no, in that case, there's no family spokesman?

• 1:24:17Speaker 02

  And three or four of the cases, they're not.

• 1:24:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:20Speaker 02

  A deckhand who's single, there you go. So in those cases, they ring the bell 29 times every anniversary. My son once rang the bell, he was eight at the time, for Eddie Bindon. And he wore a suit and tie, took it very seriously, he practiced earlier in the day. We have pictures of him walking away, teary-eyed, full of tears, basically. So it's through my son I discovered Eddie Bindon. And then I found a guy, Patrick Devine, who talked to me late in the process. He was very reluctant. Deckhand on the ship two months earlier. He was replaced by Bruce Hudson, and he was mad about it at the time.

• 1:24:53Steven Rinella?

  He was.

• 1:24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it took 10 years to get over survivor's guilt and all this. I mean, he was in a bottle for a while, as he said. He loved Eddie Bindon. Eddie Bindon was his mentor and his boss, and just a great guy, knew his stuff, and was very kind to him and protected him. So now Eddie Bindon, you know, we'll know about Eddie Bindon now at least, so. I gotta give you another one. Bruce Hudson, I told you that his girlfriend is pregnant. Ruth Hudson loses her only child. And I've got, my wife, I'm a late starter, I got a 10 year old kid. My wife has assured me I've got an only child. She's very clear on this.

• 1:25:27Speaker 02

  You've got two and you know who the gatekeeper is.

• 1:25:28Steven Rinella?

  I got three.

• 1:25:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, there you go. Who decided that? Not you.

• 1:25:31Steven Rinella?

  Well, we didn't even intend to do that.

• 1:25:33Speaker 02

  Well, then no one decided that.

• 1:25:37Speaker 02

  Um, there are accidents and there are accidents. We can talk about that another time, but anyway. Uh, so.

• 1:25:42Steven Rinella?

  Well, just to clarify, that was our best accident.

• 1:25:44Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 1:25:46Steven Rinella?

  It was a genius, it was a genius moment.

• 1:25:48Speaker 02

  The third one, by the way, the trailers, we call them. Everyone always says that. Worth the price of admission right there, but uh. So Ruth Hudson, she finds out she's four foot nine and her niece.

• 1:25:58Steven Rinella?

  Hold on, back up. This is not the girlfriend, this is his mother. Bruce Hudson's mother Ruth.

• 1:26:02Speaker 02

  Thank you for the clarity.

• 1:26:03Steven Rinella?

  She has one child.

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  One child, she had one child. Um, her niece saw her every day, Pam Whittington, in the same neighborhood. She's been great to me and thanks for the clarification. So Ruth Hudson, she's four foot nine. But she tells you that she's five foot five and you believed her apparently. She was a little spark plug, just full of energy and all this. She, the company called nobody. She finds out, uh, the next day, driving to her job at the Bonnie Bell Cosmetic Factory in Cleveland. On the radio that, yeah, this is, this is brutal, this is cruel.

• 1:26:32Steven Rinella?

  This is before the time of like contacting next of kin before you announce.

• 1:26:37Speaker 02

  No, it was not. You should have contacted them immediately. This is 1975. Yeah. The company did not do what it's supposed to do. So Dennis Anderson, Channel 10 in Duluth. WTOL, number, Channel 11 in Toledo. That's how these people find out and neighbors find out and they knock on your door 10 o'clock at night. And tell you that your dad's ship is gone. It's just brutal. Um, so. She finds out like that and she thinks I've lost my family. This is, you know, we're a couple with one child. She finds out six months later that she's gonna be a grandmother.

• 1:27:06Steven Rinella?

  Hmm, six months later?

• 1:27:08Speaker 02

  She, the, the.

• 1:27:09Steven Rinella?

  The person never thought to make the connections?

• 1:27:10Speaker 02

  The, no, the 17 year old girl at the time, uh, 20 year old guy, 17 year old girl, which back then was not that uncommon. She didn't tell her parents that she was pregnant. She didn't start showing until like month eight. That's when she calls Ruth Hudson and that's a tough phone call. Um, and Ruth at first thought, you know, why are you telling me? She goes. I'm not asking for anything. I think you should know that you're gonna be a grandmother. Uh, and she has Heather and Ruth and Heather are very close. They went shopping together and so on.

• 1:27:35Steven Rinella?

  What?

• 1:27:36Speaker 02

  Heather has four kids, uh, and the oldest is Austin, now 25, who looks just like Bruce Hudson, apparently. And yes, Aunt Ruth played favorites. Uh, she lost her son and she gains a grandson who looks just like him. Um, it's pretty amazing. So.

• 1:27:51Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  I know these stories go on like this. I gotta tell you one more. Um, that, uh.

• 1:27:56Steven Rinella?

  Yes, it's like just to.

• 1:27:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 1:27:59Steven Rinella?

  You're right. Like putting the names to it, you know what I mean? Like you never think that you'd run into a dude who's like, no, I lost my father on the Edmund Fitzgerald. It's just like, it's just like their, their, their chimes, their church bell chimes.

• 1:28:12Speaker 02

  It's a song to us. It's a song. And I mean, we, we don't know anything else. I didn't know a single name.

• 1:28:16Steven Rinella?

  Church bell chime till it rang 29 times.

• 1:28:19Speaker 02

  That's right. And now they ring it 30 times for all the other accidents as well. And so do the families. But, uh, yeah, I mentioned earlier, uh, uh, maybe I didn't, uh, uh, the last words, of course, McSorley, I did mention that. We are holding our own. So Heidi Wilhelm is a 12 year old girl. At the time, she's the youngest of seven kids and all seven kids depend on one guy on their ship. And cause the mom's raising seven kids, she's working her butt off too. Next door neighbor knocks on the door, says your dad's ship is gone. So her mom's on the phone trying to get anyone to answer. No one does at the company. And they never called. Um.

• 1:28:52Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:28:53Speaker 02

  What do you do? And the insurance companies didn't pay in many cases because it's an act of God. Uh, you got some social security in most cases.

• 1:28:59Steven Rinella?

  Like it's like inherent vice or something. Yeah.

• 1:29:01Speaker 02

  Exactly. Inherent vice. There you go. Uh, your, your legal degree is also paying off today. Um, and the company paid the, the minimum that they had to basically. Um, maybe a year's salary. Well, what does that get you with seven kids?

• 1:29:14Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:14Speaker 02

  Uh, so, and she said, what do you do? You do what we always do in the Midwest. You suck it up. Um, you know, we're gonna, we're all gonna get jobs. We're all gonna start working. They pulled through, they joined the military. They often went to the then very cheap state schools. They're not so cheap anymore. Uh, they raised kids. They often did a combination. Heidi's now, uh, 62. Um, she's got a daughter, Sarah. Uh, she went to the air force. Her daughter Sarah's also in the air force. Um, and Sarah was born on the 23rd anniversary of the, of the sinking, November 10th, 1998. The grandfather she would never meet, obviously, and a really great guy by all accounts. When she turns 21, this is six years ago, on November 10th, uh, 1990, or sorry, 2019, she gets a tattoo.

• 1:29:57Speaker 02

  And we're hanging out at Whitefish Point, a table kinda like this, uh butcher block table in the cruise quarters for where these people stay when they're in town. Having some beers, we're telling some stories. This is where I got to know these people. And this is where I get choked up. And at this point, uh Heidi says, uh Sarah's got a tattoo. Sarah, show John your tattoo. And she pulls up her left sleeve and her hoodie. And it says, we are holding our own.

• 1:30:23Steven Rinella?

  Mm hmm. Oh, man.

• 1:30:25Speaker 02

  And that's what these people do. Um, and it's gotten me too, kind, so.

• 1:30:30Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:30Speaker 02

  Uh, that's how.

• 1:30:31Steven Rinella?

  Well, that's incredible.

• 1:30:32Speaker 02

  That's, that's who these people were. And I guess one of the points is they were heroes before the ship went down. Um, your steel, your food, all this stuff, it's these guys. So.

• 1:30:44Steven Rinella?

  Man, that's incredible.

• 1:30:45Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:30:46Steven Rinella?

  Is it, I was telling my little boy this and I realized maybe it didn't happen, but I think it did. They, they lifted the bell from the, the ship.

• 1:30:55Speaker 02

  They did.

• 1:30:55Steven Rinella?

  And that's in the museum. And then they took another bell and engraved it with the names and put it back. And then when, when Light, Gordon Lightfoot died, did they put his name on the bell?

• 1:31:06Speaker 02

  They didn't put his name on the bell, but they did at Mariners Church.

• 1:31:08Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:31:09Speaker 02

  They added it there. They rang the bell for him when he died. Um, and that's no small trick, by the way. You need special welding tools. You got an underwater welder who knows what he's doing. That bell is heavy. It's, it's brass.

• 1:31:21Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:21Speaker 02

  Uh, so bring that up 530 feet. The family was there the next boat over when they brought the bell up.

• 1:31:27Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:31:27Speaker 02

  That was an emotional moment, July 4th.

• 1:31:29Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, I've seen that stuff from that.

• 1:31:31Speaker 02

  And they put the other bell down there.

• 1:31:33Steven Rinella?

  And there's no, like, from what you know, there's been, like, like you didn't experience any kind of concerted pushback from families not wanting you to, to, to tell this story and investigate individuals. Were some people unhappy?

• 1:31:51Speaker 02

  Uh, not with me.

• 1:31:52Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:31:53Speaker 02

  And so far, knock on wood, this is for Mike or whatever you got.

• 1:31:57Steven Rinella?

  No, I never thought about it. It's, it's, it's a composite.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  No. I think it's bamboo. I involve the families and also do something that most journalists don't. Uh, if I'm talking to Brody or Steven, I say, we're gonna talk freely. I'll send you your quotes. You'll fix them as we need to. Uh, you have, you have a right to, I believe, to be quoted accurately.

• 1:32:15Steven Rinella?

  Yep.

• 1:32:16Speaker 02

  Um, and that way you build trust, certainly.

• 1:32:18Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Speaker 02

  It takes longer, but you always get more than you think that way. Once they realize where you're going, people will usually own their opinions. It's being misquoted that I fear. I get misquoted, you get misquoted. I'm sure of it.

• 1:32:28Steven Rinella?

  Dude, it's to the point where like it's painful to participate.

• 1:32:32Speaker 02

  Why am I doing this?

• 1:32:32Steven Rinella?

  It's painful to participate in anything with journalists.

• 1:32:34Speaker 02

  It's, and.

• 1:32:36Steven Rinella?

  I got friends that just, that don't.

• 1:32:38Speaker 02

  I can't blame you in many cases, and I'm a journalist.

• 1:32:41Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:32:41Speaker 02

  Why? Cause they're 25 year old kids who, I mean, budget cuts.

• 1:32:44Steven Rinella?

  Cause no, they already know, like dude, they already know what they want you to say.

• 1:32:48Speaker 02

  That's the, that's the crap I hate.

• 1:32:50Steven Rinella?

  Like they need the quote, they need a thing and then they call you for the thing. And you say, you know what? There's so much more to it. Let me explain.

• 1:32:58Speaker 02

  They don't want that.

• 1:32:58Steven Rinella?

  And then you're like, you know, here's the thing you want, but you really need to understand. And then it's just the thing they want.

• 1:33:05Speaker 02

  Uh, I've seen it in hockey locker rooms and football locker rooms, exactly. Ask the guy the same question three or four times.

• 1:33:11Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:33:11Speaker 02

  And I hate that kind of journalism. One of my bosses once asked me, I was doing a story on the Potawatomi tribe basketball team in Escanaba, Michigan. They played away games on Beaver Island and Mackinac Island, cause the casinos, they get a little plane. So this is pretty cool. And my, my guy asked me, my editor said, what's your angle? I said, I got no idea. I haven't met anybody. I've not seen the place. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I got a lot of questions. All right, I have no idea. So you go, and that's what you guys did here in this interview. You go where the interview goes. Don't just have your questions and force it.

• 1:33:43Steven Rinella?

  Right.

• 1:33:43Speaker 02

  You get crappy interviews.

• 1:33:45Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:33:45Speaker 02

  Um, you want a conversation. It's exactly what you guys are doing here. Um, and yes, so I get nervous about that. So with these guys, I mean, we talked 10, 15, 20 times.

• 1:33:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:54Speaker 02

  And to make sure that any scene involving them was accurate. And it's also scary how many things I'm talking to you, I'm writing it down. Things I got wrong, or maybe they said them wrong, but I probably got it wrong.

• 1:34:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  I mean, you cover yourself that way. If some jackass in California says your book sucks on Amazon, I'm not happy about it, but it's gonna happen. It already has. We're getting 4.7, but there's always a jackass in California.

• 1:34:15Speaker 03

  He's always out there.

• 1:34:16Speaker 02

  We know that guy. Exactly. Who knows more about the book than I do. So, all right, pal, whatever. Didn't sign his name naturally. He's not, he's pretty tough until it's time to sign your name, but whatever. Keyboard cowards, as we call them. But, uh, but what I can have is somebody who's in the book telling me I got it wrong.

• 1:34:33Speaker 03

  Hmm.

• 1:34:33Speaker 02

  If I did a book on your podcast, right, you know what I can have happen is Corinne says you got it wrong. You say I got it wrong. Then I got it wrong. So I've never in 14 books had anyone say misquoted, out of context, inaccurate, any of that. So these are the people. I'm not trying to pander to them in writing the book. I mean, there are still tough things in the book, no question about it. Uh, but it's accurate and it's fair. Uh, and those people, uh, I mean, they trusted me and I appreciate it. Without them, it's not a book.

• 1:35:02Speaker 03

  Did they feel like they, I mean, I assume that their feelings over time changed, you know, throughout the writing process, but did they feel like they'd never had a voice before? I mean, I sort of-

• 1:35:18Speaker 02

  That's really good.

• 1:35:18Speaker 03

  Because it is, it is one of these things where it's a line in a song to most people.

• 1:35:23Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:35:24Speaker 03

  And I imagine it's tough to open up about tragedy, but at the same time, like this story hasn't been, their story hasn't been told. And so there's, there's sort of a tension there between-

• 1:35:37Speaker 02

  That's well said and good insight. Six crew members who've never been talked to before, who've been in the ship beforehand. Half the families I got to, throughout the 29, 14, have some voice in here. And they did kind of say that, that we've been holding our stories back because we're afraid it'll get screwed up. And this is, I mean, I, I, I interview, you know, rich, famous athletes and coaches. They get quoted all the time. They don't care all that much. And it's irritating to you and me a little bit, but so what? I'll get over it. This is their one chance.

• 1:36:04Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:05Speaker 02

  You know, this is, these are people who are not rich, not famous. And this is their one chance to tell their dad's story in many cases. Um, so yes, there was, and, and the grifters have come and gone. Bruce Lynn again is my key there. And now I got to know them. I've known for three and a half years now.

• 1:36:19Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:36:19Speaker 02

  So now when I see him in Milwaukee or, uh, Grand Rapids, Michigan, or whatever, I get big hugs and they're crying and all this.

• 1:36:25Steven Rinella?

  So.

• 1:36:26Speaker 02

  That's how that one works. So.

• 1:36:28Speaker 05

  You, um, you mentioned, like, we wouldn't be sitting here were it not for the song.

• 1:36:34Speaker 02

  Yes, no question.

• 1:36:35Speaker 05

  And later on, you mentioned there was like some local news coverage.

• 1:36:39Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:36:40Speaker 05

  What was like the national awareness of this thing when it happened?

• 1:36:44Speaker 02

  That surprised me actually. Um, and, uh,

• 1:36:49Speaker 02

  uh, there's far more than I thought.

• 1:36:50Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:36:51Speaker 02

  And here's.

• 1:36:51Steven Rinella?

  It was a national news story.

• 1:36:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I wasn't sure about that when I, when you, when you pitch a book proposal to New York, by the way, I, I spent six months on this one. That's unusually long. Usually about two months. You write about 50 pages. You send it out there. You're kind of like, uh, a geologist telling, show, oh, I swear to God, there's oil in my, in my land. I swear to God. Uh, just give me some money and I'll.

• 1:37:08Steven Rinella?

  You gotta show them what the Times said about it.

• 1:37:10Speaker 02

  Exactly right. Exactly. Uh, so then they call your bluff and say, you know what? Here's some money. Take some, say, go find the oil. And you go, oh crap, there better be oil down there.

• 1:37:19Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  And I kept on getting lucky, more luck. Uh, I'm working out at, and I, not recently, obviously, shame on me, not enough hockey these days. But I'm working out about, about a year and a half ago or so. And a buddy of mine, Larry Lage, who does Associated Press for the state of Michigan, covers all sports. We've been friends forever. Um, and he says, you know, Harry Atkins wrote the first story on the Memphis Herald. Harry Atkins had his job doing sports before him. Thirty years AP sportswriter. I've been sitting next to Harry in the damn press box for decades. I had no idea.

• 1:37:49Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  He goes up that night with a crazy photographer. They get a plane in the wind. They do all this, and he does a wonderful job.

• 1:37:56Steven Rinella?

  My God.

• 1:37:56Speaker 02

  Uh, and he, and he, and he still had a copy. He's still alive. He's 84. He's still sharp. He gave me an original copy, computer printout of that thing from 75. And without a cell phone, without internet, this guy.

• 1:38:08Steven Rinella?

  Picked up on the wires and.

• 1:38:09Speaker 02

  Sixty-five hundred, uh, newspapers around the world.

• 1:38:12Steven Rinella?

  You're shit, man.

• 1:38:13Speaker 02

  Including LA where Emmett, where, uh, life it was that day. Um, or the next day, whatever. He gets that. Newsweek magazine picks it up two weeks later. And he did a beautiful job. His name is Jim Gaines. He went to the University of Michigan. Oh, got mutual friends in common. He's still alive. He's still sharp. Lucky as hell. And his story was so good that five or six lines in the song are from his article, which I lay out in the two articles, two articles, two chapters that are now in the Rolling Stone. Let's do the damn song. We might as well do it now. You gotta ask about the song, people, obviously. So Gordon Leford is an experienced sailor. He did the Port Huron to Mackinac Race. I've done that race. It's like three days. It's brutal. Uh, you think it's, oh, let's go sailing. Nah. It's freezing. You're cold. It's miserable.

• 1:38:58Speaker 02

  Uh, but he's a really good sailor and he's serious about it. On November 10th, 1975, Monday night, he is working on a song in his attic in Toronto. And it's an Irish sea shanty. The earliest song he can remember when he's three and a half years old, and he's obviously changing it. But he's working on this. He goes down to get some coffee. It's 10 o'clock at night and the wind is howling in Toronto also. And he said he had the explicit thought, it must be hell on Superior tonight. He was connected at that moment. I mean, he knew what these guys are going through. That's where the spirit comes from. He starts working on the song. Doesn't play for anybody. He's too self-conscious. The reason I was, you could, a lot of ways to screw this up. Remember Body Heat, by the way, if you've not seen this movie, people, go see it. It's like 40 years old now. It launched Kathleen Turner and Mickey Rourke and William Hurt.

• 1:39:43Speaker 02

  And at some point, William Hurt's character, a lawyer, wants to blow up his girlfriend's husband. Bad idea. And one of his repeat felon bombers, basically, is is teaching him how to do it. And finally Mickey Rourke says, hey, man, do you have any F-ing idea? I can probably swear in your thing, can't I? There you go. You have any F-ing idea what the hell you're doing? Cause if you're a genius, you can think of 50 ways it can go wrong and you ain't an F-ing genius. You can think of 25. And that's how I felt about the book. There are, there are 50 ways to screw this up. And I might be able to think of 25. So, and that's how he felt and I knew exactly how he felt.

• 1:40:18Steven Rinella?

  He made one, he made one mistake.

• 1:40:20Speaker 02

  He made a couple mistakes.

• 1:40:22Steven Rinella?

  Oh, he made a couple mistakes. He, there's some ad, there's some like assumptions about what the cook said. And he says, and he couldn't do Toledo.

• 1:40:30Speaker 02

  Right. Good Toledo.

• 1:40:31Steven Rinella?

  Left fully loaded for Cleveland because he couldn't get it.

• 1:40:33Speaker 02

  Cleveland fits and Toledo doesn't.

• 1:40:34Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, couldn't make Toledo fit.

• 1:40:36Speaker 02

  So that was artistic license on that one. But everything else, I mean, 26,000 tons, all this stuff.

• 1:40:40Steven Rinella?

  The ship was the pride of the American side. I didn't know that was actually, I didn't know that that was actually a nickname for the Edmund.

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And these guys, the guys I talked to, the sailors, they said, this guy nailed it. The families say that he nailed it.

• 1:40:52Steven Rinella?

  And his description of the lakes, like, because I grew up on Lake Michigan, Lake Michigan steams like a young man's dreams. It's islands and bays for sportsmen.

• 1:41:00Speaker 02

  And they are. It's, that's where you learn how to fish, right? I mean, in Muskegon Bay and all that, so.

• 1:41:07Speaker 00

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• 1:42:17Steven Rinella?

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• 1:43:30Speaker 03

  What was the family's reception to the song?

• 1:43:33Speaker 02

  Well, before that, so he's gonna record his new album in March of 76, about five months later. And they got 11 songs lined up, not this one. This one he's convinced is not ready. He's not played it for anybody. But each day after they do their songs, he's screwing around with this on his guitar. They're a tight band after three and a half days. They got five days rented in the studio. Three and a half days, they're done. And that's how tight they are. And he says, okay, you know, gentlemen, good job. Let's go. They're literally packing up their guitars and their instruments. And then the producer on the PA says, why don't you try that song you've been screwing around with? And he says, it's not ready, it's not ready, it's not ready. And he says, look dude, I'm charging you for five days, whether you play a damn thing or not.

• 1:44:16Speaker 02

  So I'm here now, the band is here, why not give it a shot? So he gets talked into it. And he finds, he says, okay. So he asks him to turn the lights down and he's quiet for like a minute. The drummer, Barry Keen, still alive. And so is the bass player, God bless them both. He's there, he says, "What do you want me to do?" He's never heard the song. He says, "When I want you to come in, I'll give you a nod." "Okay." So, he's going a minute and thirty on the song. That's where songs end, in seventy-five, seventy-six. And Barry thinks that, "Okay, you've forgotten all about me." Nope, at one thirty-four, he leans over, he looks over and gives him a nod. That's when he comes in with the thunder and lightning. You know that part. And he just makes it up in the spot. And they just keep going.

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  After six and a half minutes, which is three times longer than a normal song, they finish and they go, "That wasn't half bad." But he's a perfectionist. Life it is, so let's try it again. Not as good. Try it again. Not as good. Three more times, four more times that afternoon. They come back the next day just for this one song. Not as good, not as good, not as good, all day long. And finally, they pick, the song you hear on the radio is not a first take. The song you hear on the radio is the first time the band ever played it. And as Barry Keen-

• 1:45:26Steven Rinella?

  Could never hit that emotion again, man.

• 1:45:28Speaker 02

  That's- You guys are brilliant. That's exactly it.

• 1:45:31Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  Uh, Barry Keen's been on five albums for all kinds of-

• 1:45:34Steven Rinella?

  Did you ever hear the Danny Warhols cover it?

• 1:45:36Speaker 02

  Oh, yes, I have. And Billy Strings, by the way. Billy Strings got a new version out from Traverse City, Michigan. Uh, he does a brilliant job.

• 1:45:43Steven Rinella?

  He does?

• 1:45:43Speaker 02

  Yo-

• 1:45:44Steven Rinella?

  The Danny Warhols kinda phoned it in a little bit.

• 1:45:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:46Steven Rinella?

  They were big drug takers.

• 1:45:49Speaker 02

  All I can say about that was throw a stick. So was Gordon Lightfoot. Yeah, he had a little problem with the bottle. He got clean around nineteen eighty or eighty-one, so that's number two.

• 1:45:58Steven Rinella?

  That's when the Danny Warhols were getting born.

• 1:45:59Speaker 02

  There you go. But, uh, probably true too. We were around then. So Barry Keen tells me, "Look, man, first takes happen once in a blue moon." First, you know, first time he ever played it, he goes, "Never, ever, ever, ever." He said, "I'm willing to bet, never in the history of rock and roll recording." And I asked him, "Why?" And exactly where you're going, Stephen. He said, "This is not a song you think your way through. This is a song you either feel it or you don't. If you feel it, the technical stuff doesn't matter. If you feel it, that's the spirit they gotta hear." So, song comes out, they're on the midnight special, the old Friday night concert show. You're allowed to play six songs. And they don't pick this one, 'cause they think there's no way in hell it's gonna work. And this song ends up being number two in nineteen seventy six behind Rod Stewart's Tonight's Tonight.

• 1:46:42Speaker 02

  With his hot Swedish girlfriend, Britt Eklund cooing in the background. That's the seventies, man. That's the me generation. This song is the opposite. It's got no hook.

• 1:46:50Steven Rinella?

  He's got a couple, he's got a couple of good cuts though, man.

• 1:46:53Speaker 02

  Oh, there's no question.

• 1:46:54Steven Rinella?

  Rod Stewart, uh, Reason to Believe, come on, man.

• 1:46:56Speaker 02

  And then when you get the mandolin and all that, that's good stuff, but the point is this song never shows.

• 1:47:00Steven Rinella?

  You're talking about Mandolin Wind, yeah.

• 1:47:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, he snarled at that one. No, I'm a Maggie May guy. There you go. That's the mandolin, I guess, like that, but anyway. Uh, but the, the families, um, they played at all the reunions. Uh, they played for the grandkids who've never met their grandfathers.

• 1:47:16Steven Rinella?

  Oh, they do.

• 1:47:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:17Steven Rinella?

  Wow.

• 1:47:18Speaker 02

  And, uh, and Cindy Reynolds, the mother of Bruce Hudson's child, she said to this day, if it comes on the radio, I pull off and I cry.

• 1:47:25Steven Rinella?

  Really?

• 1:47:26Speaker 02

  And that's, that's your best review right there. And Life became great friends of the families.

• 1:47:31Steven Rinella?

  Hmm.

• 1:47:31Speaker 02

  Um, he's, he's a, he's a hero in this book. He's given money for scholarships in Traverse City.

• 1:47:35Steven Rinella?

  Huh.

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  For the Great Lakes Maritime Museum.

• 1:47:37Steven Rinella?

  I saw him play in Traverse City once.

• 1:47:38Speaker 02

  There you go. Scholarship's in his name, the Maritime Academy. Ruth Hudson is on her deathbed on November ninth, uh, twenty fifteen.

• 1:47:47Speaker 06

  November ninth?

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  Yes. This is the day before the fortieth anniversary.

• 1:47:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Speaker 02

  And Gordon Life it goes to Whitefish Point, not to play, just to pay his respects to these handful of families. That's what, I mean, way out of the way, obviously. Um, and he asked Pam, where's Aunt Ruth? And she's on her deathbed. Give me a phone. And that picture's in the book of him in the kitchen on the phone, talking to Ruth Hudson under her deathbed. And she said, I promised Bruce I would be in heaven with him for the fortieth anniversary. He's been alone too long. And that was her last phone call.

• 1:48:15Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  And she gets off the phone and tells her, tells, uh, the mom, she's the child, and she said, uh, I was talking to Gordon. That's how close they were. So he's a hero in this book.

• 1:48:27Steven Rinella?

  Man, I gotta just hit you with something totally unrelated, but a little bit kind of similar. You know, Neil Young's Old Man, The Pedal Steel?

• 1:48:34Speaker 02

  Uh, it's in the book. Because because cow David Cowboy Rice Weiss was on a date with another Cindy and they're playing Neil Young's uh one of his albums and that song is on it.

• 1:48:45Steven Rinella?

  Oh.

• 1:48:45Speaker 02

  Old man.

• 1:48:46Steven Rinella?

  So they had a dude come in to they had a studio guy come in to do the pedal steel on Old Man.

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  Which is great.

• 1:48:52Steven Rinella?

  Well, he just was warming up and they had some tracks of him warming up and that's what they plugged into the tune and my understanding, I could be wrong, my understanding, they don't know who the hell it was.

• 1:49:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:49:01Steven Rinella?

  I don't know if that's true.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  But trust me, the stories are about the seventies and rock and roll. Yeah, it was true.

• 1:49:07Steven Rinella?

  What are you gonna write an ax, you know yet?

• 1:49:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't know yet. There's a few good uh options out there.

• 1:49:13Steven Rinella?

  You come work for me and Randall.

• 1:49:15Speaker 02

  Uh. We're in need of a writer. All I can say is careful.

• 1:49:19Steven Rinella?

  Randall's burned out on history.

• 1:49:21Speaker 02

  Careful what you wish for. Um.

• 1:49:23Steven Rinella?

  Randall's got a history project.

• 1:49:25Speaker 02

  As long as you maintain the the compliments, you know. Hey, they're easily easily proffered. Trust me. Look, you know very quickly when people know what they're talking about when they don't, when you do these things. Um, and it's like when people call up you, have you ever heard my podcast or not? You can tell pretty quickly. So you guys, man, I've never had an interview like this. Twenty terms not defined at this table.

• 1:49:47Steven Rinella?

  No.

• 1:49:47Speaker 02

  Uh, that I have to explain everything normally.

• 1:49:49Steven Rinella?

  But what kind of book are you gonna do next? Sports?

• 1:49:51Speaker 02

  Uh, no, not sports. Um, probably do, um, there are a few other Midwestern disasters, sadly, uh, that I know about that I'll probably dive back into those. This one, we're dealing with movie rights now. We'll talk about that.

• 1:50:02Steven Rinella?

  Sure, man. I was gonna ask you that, but then I didn't ask. I get too jealous.

• 1:50:05Speaker 02

  Well, there you go. Well, don't don't get jealous yet. Trust me. And plus.

• 1:50:09Steven Rinella?

  Let me know. Text me when I should get jealous.

• 1:50:11Speaker 02

  I'll let you know.

• 1:50:12Steven Rinella?

  Just just text me a J. I'll know what it means.

• 1:50:16Speaker 02

  Dude, J. Sit with that for a little while. Uh, as they say it in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart, that's gonna be the start of a great franchise.

• 1:50:30Speaker 02

  Classic ending scene. Um, so.

• 1:50:33Steven Rinella?

  A Midwest disaster. You need, because, but you don't want to wind up that they're like, you know, the great Midwestern disaster writer.

• 1:50:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. You don't want to be that guy, right? Oh, no bacon's coming. That's, this is something bad.

• 1:50:45Steven Rinella?

  You don't want to stay away from that guy.

• 1:50:46Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:50:47Steven Rinella?

  You don't want to wind up one of his books.

• 1:50:48Speaker 02

  So that's a possibility. Uh, the great Halifax explosion. Talking to Hollywood about that for a possible five part TV series.

• 1:50:54Steven Rinella?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:50:55Speaker 02

  Uh, previous book, let them lead about coaching. My old high school hockey team in Ann Arbor, the Ann Arbor here on River Rats. I'm not making that up. For some reason, we're the only high school in America. Name their team the River Rats. Go figure on that one.

• 1:51:07Speaker 03

  That's a good one.

• 1:51:07Speaker 02

  So, but, uh, worst team in America. Coached by the worst player in school history, yours truly. Uh, I still hold the record for the most games in here on uniform eighty-six. I played all three years, played every game with the fewest goals, zero.

• 1:51:23Speaker 02

  And I played forward.

• 1:51:25Steven Rinella?

  So you're gonna do, you're gonna do a book like how I did it.

• 1:51:28Speaker 02

  No, if you did that book, uh, it's in this fifth printing, but we're in our third draft with Disney plus.

• 1:51:33Steven Rinella?

  It's another Midwestern disaster story.

• 1:51:35Speaker 02

  And Muskegon's in it. And Muskegon makes an appearance. So, yes, so doing all that stuff first, then I'll get back to a book.

• 1:51:40Steven Rinella?

  So like disasters like the Edmund Fitzgerald or your hockey career.

• 1:51:45Speaker 02

  My worst, my hockey career. It's actually, it's a family record, actually. I hold out with my brother. He was also on the team. He also failed to score. I'm going to throw his ass under the bus right now. Uh, he likes to point out that he played goalie. But hey, we all got problems, you know, so he didn't score a goalie either.

• 1:52:02Speaker 03

  Well, if you have any say, if you have any say in the casting for this and they're looking for a Bruce Hudson type.

• 1:52:08Speaker 02

  You're thinking, uh.

• 1:52:10Speaker 03

  Let me know.

• 1:52:10Speaker 02

  Randall's the guy.

• 1:52:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:52:12Speaker 02

  You can see how buff, uh, Bruce was, by the way.

• 1:52:14Steven Rinella?

  Send Randall, instead of sending me one letter, send him two and it's, uh, no hot dogs. And H, he'll know to get ready.

• 1:52:22Speaker 03

  And H, and H, twelve months.

• 1:52:25Speaker 02

  Good news and bad news. Good news is you got the part.

• 1:52:29Steven Rinella?

  Bad news is.

• 1:52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 1:52:30Steven Rinella?

  Let me remind you what Bruce looked like.

• 1:52:33Speaker 02

  It might, my results have life changed.

• 1:52:34Speaker 03

  Growing the hair out.

• 1:52:35Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, there's more, much to Sydney's dismay. Randall, there's, there's more to it than the hair, buddy.

• 1:52:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't mean to make, like, make a light of Bruce Hudson, obviously, but Pam did say she's about four or five years younger than Bruce, her cousin. And she saw him every day. She said, whenever Bruce came over, all her little 12-year-old girlfriends all came over too, so.

• 1:52:52Steven Rinella?

  Listen, I'm, I'm, I'm very, I'm very comfortable in, um.

• 1:52:56Speaker 02

  With your sexuality, where you going with this one?

• 1:52:58Steven Rinella?

  Where I land, where I land, I'm very comfortable. Um, Bruce, Bruce is a striking man.

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  He is a striking man.

• 1:53:03Steven Rinella?

  He's a striking man.

• 1:53:05Speaker 02

  And, and his old girlfriend took the same thing.

• 1:53:07Steven Rinella?

  That, him, the photo of the guys at the wedding, it's heartbreaking.

• 1:53:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:13Speaker 02

  They're human beings, man.

• 1:53:14Steven Rinella?

  I've never seen the pictures, man. I don't like, I don't, I don't get it. Well, I do get it, but I mean, it's just like, it's like anything, you just put, and you're like, shit, man, these are like guys, like, it looks like pictures of like, just people from around when I was growing up.

• 1:53:27Speaker 03

  I was gonna say, my, my parents were born on either end in 1950. About a couple of years, and this just looks like every photo that they have from their young adults.

• 1:53:36Steven Rinella?

  It's like any wedding photo.

• 1:53:37Speaker 03

  Wedding that they went to.

• 1:53:39Speaker 02

  That's exactly, and they're, they're old Kodak photos, little grainy.

• 1:53:42Steven Rinella?

  It was back in that era, those weddings would have been when you would take

• 1:53:45Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:53:46Steven Rinella?

  those little mints and cocktail peanuts and tie them up in a spawn sack.

• 1:53:49Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:53:50Steven Rinella?

  And had a dollar dance.

• 1:53:52Speaker 02

  There's a classic for you.

• 1:53:53Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:54Speaker 02

  We got a photo of, uh, some of these guys at a wedding, by the second batch of photos. And yeah, the guy's best man went down with the ship, and that's what happened. So as far as Hollywood goes, don't be too jealous yet. So the guy I'm writing the, the hockey story with Jim Bernstein, he did Mighty Ducks, he did Renaissance, Mads and Mothers. And I've done about, I don't know, seven or eight trips now to Hollywood for various books. These Hollywood meetings, have you had, have you had Hollywood meetings yet?

• 1:54:20Steven Rinella?

  Let's, let's have another podcast discussion about this sometime.

• 1:54:24Speaker 02

  But you're not bitter, but anyway.

• 1:54:26Steven Rinella?

  No, no, no. It's like, the first, early on, it would be that, here's people that aren't, they're kinda like, they're coming and mine you for what's going on in your neck of a woods.

• 1:54:37Speaker 02

  They want your knowledge without paying you.

• 1:54:39Steven Rinella?

  Cause they're like, they're not out and about, and they're like, so what kinda things are you in? And you'd be like, oh, you know about this, you know about that, you know about this, you know about that? And then later you learn just to shut up.

• 1:54:48Speaker 02

  Right. You just fork over the store, basically. Uh, so, these meetings in Hollywood are kabuki theater, so, they, they always- Another term that probably has not been used in this studio here before.

• 1:54:59Steven Rinella?

  I got this the first time, I don't know what it meant.

• 1:55:01Speaker 02

  Paronym and kabuki theater.

• 1:55:03Speaker 02

  It's all been rehearsed.

• 1:55:04Steven Rinella?

  Okay.

• 1:55:05Speaker 02

  It's like, you think you're doing a pitch, but you're really not. Uh, so they always, meetings at 10 o'clock, the earliest gonna be is 10:05, maybe 10:10. How late they make you wait is one indicator. Who shows up? Uh, Martin Campbell showed up for one of my meetings. He's the director of Casino Royale and Zorro, okay, that's a big boy meeting. Uh, or the intern, right? And the quality of the water they give you. If they give you the fancy, you know, the best bottle of stuff, that's one thing. If the intern's giving you a styrofoam cup of tap water, you're just practicing. What about a middle ground, like a pint glass?

• 1:55:33Steven Rinella?

  We gave you a nice glass of tap water.

• 1:55:35Speaker 02

  You're not Hollywood, baby, I'm in Montana. I am in Bozeman, Montana. So, Bernstein told me, uh, they said they liked it, they hated it. They say they loved it, they liked it. If they actually paid you, they loved it. There's not one ounce of Hollywood. One ounce of love in Hollywood is the check clears. If you guys say, let's do lunch, we eat. Just actual food. That's just BS in Hollywood. It's how you say goodbye.

• 1:55:56Steven Rinella?

  I believe that, uh, this, I don't even wanna say the name, but I have to, cause he's such a controversial character.

• 1:56:02Speaker 02

  Here we go.

• 1:56:02Steven Rinella?

  The congress, is he, is Schiff a senator or congressman from California? Adam Schiff?

• 1:56:07Speaker 02

  He's a senator now from California, I believe.

• 1:56:09Steven Rinella?

  Okay. He was a screenwriter. Did you know that?

• 1:56:11Speaker 02

  I did not know that.

• 1:56:12Steven Rinella?

  He had written some screenplays. I think that it was Schiff, I'm sure it was Schiff.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  Back it up, back it up. I've written some screenplay. Don't make me a damn screenwriter.

• 1:56:20Steven Rinella?

  I believe, it was, I know it was Schiff. Adam Schiff had a quote from his old days.

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:25Steven Rinella?

  He said-

• 1:56:26Speaker 02

  I had no idea.

• 1:56:26Steven Rinella?

  He said, "There are two answers in Hollywood. Yes, and here's a check."

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  I, how about this? I keep getting yes.

• 1:56:36Steven Rinella?

  You never go to a meeting, and you get done with the meeting, they go, "No."

• 1:56:43Speaker 02

  We love it. This is great. Exactly.

• 1:56:45Steven Rinella?

  Oh, we're gonna get ahold of you.

• 1:56:46Speaker 03

  We'll call you.

• 1:56:47Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, this is the last, we're gonna end the podcast. I'm gonna give this last bit of advice. This is career advice for people. If you get into this world, this business books and all that, and you do these, and you do Hollywood meetings, here's how you end them. Well, let me preface this. Last night, my buddy had to call, my boy had to call my buddy to ask a favor.

• 1:57:07Steven Rinella?

  I said to him, I'm gonna give you a pointer. I want you to ask the favor. I don't want you to push for an answer. I want you to then say,

• 1:57:15Speaker 02

  Think about it.

• 1:57:16Steven Rinella?

  Give it some thought and text me. And I said, that's how I want you to end the call.

• 1:57:21Steven Rinella?

  Okay, you're not after an answer. Give it some thought, text me. When you have a Hollywood meeting,

• 1:57:28Steven Rinella?

  end it by saying, thanks for the time. Here's what I'd like you to do. Get with your guys, think about it, and just give me a shout. And just, that's it.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  You know what?

• 1:57:41Steven Rinella?

  That's it.

• 1:57:41Speaker 02

  I'm,

• 1:57:41Steven Rinella?

  Because it saves them going like, oh, it's fantastic. We're so excited. Do you know what I mean?

• 1:57:47Speaker 02

  Pardon me.

• 1:57:50Speaker 02

  Perhaps you've seen that gesture before.

• 1:57:53Speaker 06

  I did that the other day.

• 1:57:54Speaker 02

  Is that thing on right there?

• 1:57:58Steven Rinella?

  And just leave it, leave it. You think about it, get with your guys, just let me know.

• 1:58:03Speaker 03

  I'll tell you what, I'm gonna end my next performance review here, I think.

• 1:58:08Speaker 02

  This is how I think I've done. You think about that.

• 1:58:12Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what, I'm,

• 1:58:13Speaker 03

  Reach back out when you're ready, you know?

• 1:58:16Speaker 02

  Next year, the year after that. Don't rush yourself.

• 1:58:20Steven Rinella?

  And then you hang up, and it just never happens.

• 1:58:23Speaker 02

  And that way, you maintain your own dignity at least.

• 1:58:25Steven Rinella?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:26Speaker 02

  I'll tell you what, I'm owing 20 my way. I might as well try it your way.

• 1:58:30Steven Rinella?

  Your way is like, sign this, sign this.

• 1:58:36Speaker 02

  Oh, we love it. We love it. Now you don't.

• 1:58:38Steven Rinella?

  All right, ladies and gentlemen, the gales of November, The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon. New York Times bestselling author. Dude, that was a lot of fun. I'm glad you came. It's such a,

• 1:58:53Speaker 02

  Dude.

• 1:58:56Steven Rinella?

  I can't wait to read it. I'm in a little streak where I'm talking to writers that haven't read their damn books yet. I'm a little behind on my.

• 1:59:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you know what you're talking about. That's all I care about. That's big. Like I said earlier, people don't.

• 1:59:06Steven Rinella?

  Think about that ship.

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  You don't have to read my book. You gotta buy it.

• 1:59:08Steven Rinella?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:09Speaker 02

  The buying is the key.

• 1:59:11Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, buy that book.

• 1:59:12Speaker 02

  I'm joking, of course, but it's about the families. Uh, no, this is when, I swear to God, probably the best interview I've done so far.

• 1:59:18Steven Rinella?

  You know, when you feel the book feels good, man.

• 1:59:20Speaker 02

  It's a heavy book. It's, uh.

• 1:59:22Steven Rinella?

  It's like, it feels like.

• 1:59:23Speaker 03

  Much, much like Hampton Side's blurb to your book, you should blurb this podcast.

• 1:59:30Speaker 02

  I'd be happy to give you a shockingly good endorsement from a guy doesn't hunt or fish.

• 1:59:35Steven Rinella?

  No, you just feel that son of a bitch.

• 1:59:37Speaker 02

  I don't know what the hell I'm talking about normally, but when I'm on there, we're great.

• 1:59:42Steven Rinella?

  Thank you so much.

• 1:59:42Speaker 02

  Everyone says they gotta do it and they're right. This has been fantastic.

• 1:59:45Steven Rinella?

  When you get another, uh, you know, whatever you do for your next book, just make, just check me and make sure it fits.

• 1:59:51Speaker 02

  Uh, that's.

• 1:59:52Steven Rinella?

  We can wedge a lot in. There's certain things we're not gonna be able to wedge in, even if I'm interested. Like if you do a book about the mob or something, I'll be like, that's cool, but I can't wedge it in.

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  Right.

• 2:00:00Steven Rinella?

  But this has got like bad weather, ships.

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  Bad weather, ships, sailors, all that good stuff.

• 2:00:04Steven Rinella?

  Yeah, fetch, Lee.

• 2:00:06Speaker 02

  See, free board, things I did not explain. Broadside waves. I mean, I can get 10.

• 2:00:12Steven Rinella?

  I don't even, uh, this book, I don't need to wedge it in. I could put this book in like this. That's how it fits.

• 2:00:16Speaker 02

  Write this thing down.

• 2:00:17Steven Rinella?

  Sideways.

• 2:00:17Speaker 03

  Seventy-five feet wide.

• 2:00:19Speaker 02

  There you go. That's right. And it's johnubacon.com is the website. Book tour is on there, all that stuff.

• 2:00:24Steven Rinella?

  Oh, I got one last tip for you.

• 2:00:25Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:00:26Steven Rinella?

  When you talk to, you know what they should have done? They should have made this book the proportions.

• 2:00:33Steven Rinella?

  So it's like a big, tall, skinny book.

• 2:00:35Speaker 03

  I've heard that's the next, that's the next trend in book publishing.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  It's two feet long and two and a half inches wide.

• 2:00:41Steven Rinella?

  Big, tall, skinny book, man.

• 2:00:42Speaker 02

  Why? It gets your attention, doesn't it, people? Well, let me explain.

• 2:00:46Steven Rinella?

  They ship in the gun, they ship in the gun box?

• 2:00:48Speaker 02

  That's right. Take that book into a bathtub. No, no, follow me here.

• 2:00:55Speaker 03

  Turn that thing around.

• 2:00:56Steven Rinella?

  All right, John U. Bacon, thanks again, man.

• 2:00:58Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:00:59Steven Rinella?

  Appreciate it.

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  A real pleasure, truly.

• 2:01:27Steven Rinella?

  If you spend a lot of time outdoors, you got dogs, you got kids, you know how hard it is to keep the floor of your rig clean. A thing we do in our, in our little fleet of vehicles that I have at my household, if you go look, open the door on any one of them, they all got WeatherTech. We get a car, we throw the mats out and put in WeatherTech. Cause that way, when there's a mess, it's like your kid's fault, your dog's fault, it's the weather's fault, doesn't matter. You take them suckers out and hose them off and you're back to being good as new. I'm telling you, if you've got a vehicle, put WeatherTech in there, you're gonna be happy you did it. And check this out, American-made floor liners and cargo liners, okay? They laugh in the face of all weather. Go take a look for yourself today at weathertech.com. The new dual-threat Pro SD climber is the ultimate companion for both bow and rifle

• 2:02:12Steven Rinella?

  hunters, thanks to its adjustable dual-threat front bar. This innovative feature allows you to tailor the climber based on your preferred hunting method. So you can choose between two climbing modes and two hunting modes. So I like having something that's got this level of versatility. Get 20% off all tree stands by using the code MEATEATER at summitstands.com. That's a phenomenal deal. That's summitstands.com.

• 2:02:37Speaker 08

  This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know those little promises you make to your future self? Tomorrow, I'll put my phone away earlier, or stop rehearsing arguments in the shower. Tomorrow, I'll stop saying yes to everything, or stop overthinking that conversation. Most of us aren't trying to become completely different people. We're just hoping to feel a little better every day. That's what's great about BetterHelp. With them, better is personal. It's matching with a therapist who gets you and having someone in your corner. Better doesn't have to come from major victories. It can be from the small habits you create and how you honor your needs on a daily basis. So many of us are great at prioritizing even the smallest things for our loved ones. But what about

• 2:03:20Speaker 08

  ourselves? With thousands of therapists and millions of members in over 100 countries, BetterHelp is making therapy more accessible so more people can keep moving forward, one conversation at a time. Better is personal. Therapy should be too.

• 2:03:36Speaker 08

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• 2:03:42Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.