The sinking of the Carl D. Bradley: Search and rescue, Part II

By Jim Bloch

Only four sailors were alive in the tumultuous aftermath of the sinking of the freighter Carl D. Bradley on Nov. 18, 1958.

Frank Mays, Elmer Fleming, Gary Strzelecki and Dennis Meredith clung to a life raft in the pounding storm, hoping to be rescued. Thirty-one men had already met their deaths; Strzelecki and Meredith would soon join them.

Twenty-five members of the Bradley crew hailed from Rogers City and when word reached town, scores of friends and relatives jumped into their cars and sped across the tip of the Michigan’s mitt in the dead of night to Charlevoix. They parked on the beach with their headlights pointing out toward Beaver Island, 32 miles northwest into the lake, hoping survivors could somehow spot them and make their ways ashore.

The German freighter Christian Sartori was the first ship to respond to the mayday call from the Bradley. 

Mays and his mates watched the ship’s searchlight sweep over the huge swells. Their last flare failed to light and the men hollered helplessly into the wind. The freighter was within 50 yards from them when it turned and motored away.

“I believe all hands are lost,” the captain radioed.

“We knew they hadn’t seen us,” Mays said in his 2003 oral history of the disaster “If We Make It ’til Daylight.” “We were too far away, and her searchlights could only penetrate a short distance through the heavy spray.”

Coast Guard vessels out of Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin and Charlevoix and two freighters made their ways to the scene. One of the freighters, the Robert C. Stanley, had been sheltering north of Garden Island, the same general vicinity that the Bradley had been heading for when it foundered.

The men on the raft suffered.

“(I) endured uncontrollable shivering accompanied by knife-like piercing pain from my cramping muscles,” Mays said.

Over the course of the long night, the giant waves flipped over the raft again and again, dumping the men into the lake. After the third flip, Meredith was too cold and tired to climb back aboard the raft. Mays and Fleming hung onto him as long as they could, hoping he could stay alive until help arrived.

“One time I looked back, and Dennis’s head was face down in the water,” recalled Mays. “I reached over and raised his head. His eyes were totally white. There was nothing we could do for him now.”

By dawn, three Coast Guard helicopters and an Army search plane joined the rescue effort.

On the raft, Strzelecki was acting strangely. “Without warning, Gary made his way on his hands and knees to the edge of the raft…,” wrote Andrew Kantar in his 2006 book about the tragedy “Black November.” “Elmer and Frank acted quickly holding Gary as firmly as they could but it was no use. Gary ripped himself from them, rolled into the water and swam away.”

There was nowhere to swim to except his death.

At 8:25 a.m., a sailor aboard the Coast Guard cutter Sundew, out of Charlevoix, spotted the raft and hauled aboard Mays and Fleming, covered in ice.

Their urine was black, according to research by Andy Stempki, who made a 43-minute movie about the disaster — “The Men Long Forgotten” — that he showed at the Beaver Island Historical Museum in July. They’re bodies were shutting down, Stempki said. Their skin, soaked for hours in the cold lake, looked like someone had taken a cheese grater to it.

Stempki’s cousin, second mate John Fogelsonger, went down with the ship.

Around 9:30 a.m., the Sundew came upon one of the Bradley’s two life boats, upside down and apparently never used; one of the boats is now in the Beaver Island Marine Museum.

The story of the sinking of the Bradley made headlines around the state and appeared in newspapers around the country.

Over the course of the day, 18 bodies, all wearing life jackets, were recovered.

Life jackets were among the most common flotsam in the wake of the sinking, peeled off of sailors as they hit the frigid water after jumping from the decks of the Bradley, sometimes 30 feet above the water, said Stempki.

Fifteen crew members were never found.

Charlevoix City Hall was transformed into a temporary morgue until the victims could be transported home.

By Friday, the 15 bodies of men from Rogers City were in coffins in the high school gym. Funerals started the next day. The central aisle of the Catholic Church was lined with nine coffins.

Twenty-three Rogers City women had become widows. Fifty-two kids lost their fathers.

Jim Bloch is a freelance writer based in St. Clair, Michigan. Contact him at bloch.jim@gmail.com.