By Jim Bloch
Sixty-five years ago, Nov. 18, 1958, the freighter Carl D. Bradley broke in two and sunk in northern Lake Michigan, about 12 miles southwest of Gull Island at the far edge of the Beaver Island archipelago.
Thirty-three of the 35 crew members on the ship died in the sinking. Thirty-one members of the crew perished quickly.
Four men managed to climb aboard a raft made of two pontoons spanned by a wooden deck top and bottom.
“I am fighting for my life, clinging to a tiny raft as it falls between mountainous waves on storm-lashed Lake Michigan,” remembered survivor Frank Mays in his oral memoir of the event, “If We Make It ’til Daylight.” “All I can do is lie on the raft and endure. The November wind cuts through my wet clothing like a knife. Three other Bradley crewmen share the raft, each just as miserable as I am… Our hands grow numb as we grip the small slats of wood that make up the deck. Time has lost all meaning. The night is black as coal and we get little warning before the monster waves hit us.”
The south end of the uninhabited Gull Island as seen from Greene’s Bay on the west coast of Beaver Island.
By the time help arrived at dawn the next day, two of the men, Dennis Meredith and Gary Strzelecki, had died. Mays and first mate Elmer Fleming survived.
Their lives took opposite trajectories. Mays went on to work for a lumber company and then Medusa Cement in Charlevoix, from which he retired at 58 in 1990. Mays came to grips with the accident and led a full life, retiring to Florida, traveling and taking an active part in Bradley-related expeditions and events; he died Jan. 7, 2021. Fleming, plagued by survivor’s guilt and alcoholism, died at 53 in 1969. Both are buried in Rogers City, Michigan.
Over the years, the Bradley had a number of connections to the Blue Water Area, as we’ll see below. In Part IV, we’ll take a look at St. Clair maritime artist Jim Clary’s involvement with the wreck.
Collision on the St. Clair River
Two years before the Bradley went down, an accident on the opposite side of the state, in the Blue Water Area, may have contributed to the freighter’s ultimate fate.
According to the Coast Guard report on the freighter’s sinking, the Bradley “on April 3, 1956 (experienced) a collision with M/V WHITE ROSE at South East Bend, St. Clair River.”
The ship was in dry dock in Chicago, May 9-15, 1957 to repair the damage, which included “inserting one new bilge plate 21 feet long to replace damaged sections … starboard, and minor fairing and riveting … on port side.”
Andrew Kantar in his 2006 book “Black November: The Carl D. Bradley Tragedy,” speculated that the collision, coupled with damage caused by two groundings in Cedarville, Michigan, earlier in 1958, may have structurally weakened the ship, setting it up for disaster.
“A year after the (collision), some hairline cracks on the hull, up to six feet long, suggested that the collision damage may have been more extensive than originally believed,” Kantar wrote. “The cracks were repaired.”
The repairs on the ship scheduled for the end of the 1958 shipping season point to the worsening condition of the Bradley.
“The extensive renewal of cargo hold side slopes, screen bulkheads and tank tops planned by company for the 1958-1959 winter lay-up is in itself indicative of wear and deterioration…,” noted the Marine Board of Investigation after the sinking, according to the Beaver Island Marine Museum.
A girl friend in Port Huron
The declining condition of the Bradley was well known to its crew.
One of the two survivors, Frank Mays said his 2003 oral history of sinking, “If We Make It ’til Daylight,” the sailors would joke that “the old girl was held together by rust.”
Mays noted that the Bradley‘s captain, Roland Bryan, had started sailing “at the age of 14 and had over 38 years on the lakes, the last 11 as a captain. For the last four, he had been the master of Bradley.”
Captain Bryan wrote to his girlfriend in Port Huron, at the north end of the St. Clair River, complaining about the condition of the ship, according to Kantar.
“This boat is getting pretty ripe for too much weather,” Bryan wrote to Florence Herd on Nov. 8, 10 days before its foundering. “I’ll be glad when they get her fixed up.”
“She was older now and much in need of repair,” said Mays. “I was sure that Captain Bryan was looking forward to getting his ship into dry dock at the end of the season.”
Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.
