Sinking of the Carl D. Bradley

November 18, 2016. Sitting here at 5:30 p.m., the wind howls outside, beating on the storm window panes. What started as an unusually warm mid-November day quickly turned cold, with high winds building.  A stark reminder of what often happens on the Great Lakes in mid-November. A time of the year that the Great Lakes sailors fear, and for good reason.
On this day in 1958, at 5:30 p.m., the Carl D. Bradley, affectionately known as The Queen of the Lakes, sunk near Gull Island on Lake Michigan, with a loss of lives greater than the more well-known Edmund Fitzgerald, which sunk in 1975.
From its launch in 1927, the Bradley, at 639 feet, was the longest ship working the Great Lakes until the SS Wilfred Sykes was launched in 1959. The Bradley was one of four ships owned and operated by the Bradley Transportation Company, a subsidiary of the Michigan Limestone Company, whose President was Carl David Bradley. 
The Bradley, like its sister ships, hauled limestone from the world’s largest limestone pit, located on Lake Huron at Rogers City, Michigan. The storm that took the Bradley to the bottom, began building a day earlier on November 17th.
The U.S. Weather Bureau at Kansas City issued a special weather bulletin #9. “A storm which will make weather history for its large extent and unusually severe conditions for so early in the season is causing wintry weather all the way from the Dakotas to southern Arizona and western Texas. The storm is gradually increasing in intensity and will quite likely reach maximum intensity over the plains in the next twenty-four hours.”
Since the end of the shipping season on the Great Lakes was quickly approaching, there was a big push to make as many trips carrying much needed cargo to supply factories on the lower end of the lakes. The Bradley was running empty back to Rogers City to hopefully get in at least one more load to a steel mill in Buffington, Indiana, before freeze-up.
As the lakes began to swell, the Bradley’s captain, Roland Bryan of Loundonvillle, New York, known as “a heavy weather captain,” one of the few crew members not from Rogers City, MI, ordered the crew to start filling the ballast tanks so the ship would ride lower in the increasing winds and waves. By the time the Bradley went down, the tanks were filled to maximum capacity, as the waves reached 80 feet high, as winds reached 100 MPH.
It was a well-seasoned crew and a well-built ship that set many shipping records. On her maiden voyage the Bradley set a record, the first ship to haul a 16,000-ton cargo.  A week after this record breaker, the Bradley broke its own record by carrying 17,030 tons of stone. One year later she broke the old record as she hauled 18,043 tons of limestone. On May 9, 1929, she broke yet another record with a loading of 18,113 tons…a record that stood until 1943.
A German WWII U-boat captain in WWII, Captain Paul Mueller was also plying Lake Michigan that night as captain of a German ship, the 256-foot Christian Sartori. During WWII Mueller plied the North Sea, which is noted for its horrible storms. He had seen stronger storms on the North Sea, but the storms he often faced on the Great Lakes, he dreaded.
It was getting late in the shipping season on the Great Lakes and the Sartori was trying to make good time to navigate the 2,000 miles back to the Atlantic Ocean before freeze-up of the lakes. The Sartori was the closest ship to the path of the Bradley when word first went out about the Bradley being in trouble.
The Coast Guard radio stations, becoming aware of the Bradley having serious problems, began calling nearby ships to seek out the Bradley to see if they could be of assistance.
By this time, word had gotten out that the Bradley was in trouble and, in all likelihood, had sunk. Family members of the crewmen quickly gathered in various homes and churches to provide comfort to each other. 
Second mate Jurgen Schwant was on the bridge of the Sartori, and saw in the distance, the lights on the Bradley. “I saw the Bradley and I saw the explosion and after the explosion, a short moment later, there came up a dark cloud of smoke. And after this cloud of smoke there wasn’t anything to see.”
The Coast Guard also sent up one of their Albatross’s, an amphibious flying boat, to aid in the search. The Coast Guard ship, Sundew, was dispatched to find the Bradley. Ships in the area that found somewhat safe harbor around the islands near where the Bradley had gone down were asked to pull up anchor and head out to the wreck site to help search for survivors and bodies.
The Coast Guard members who had seen many heaving storms on the Great Lakes had never seen anything like this storm. It had gotten so bad the sailors on the Sundew had to tie themselves to tables so as to not fall in the heaving waters. Hospitalman Second-Class, Warren Toussaint, commented, “I have been in a three-day storm in Drake’s Passage off the tip of South America, and that was not nearly as frightening as the night of November 18, 1958.”
The last words heard from the Bradley were, “Mayday! Mayday! Mayday! This is the Carl D. Bradley calling any Coast Guard Station in northern Lake Michigan. Mayday! Mayday! Ma-“!
Four days later, 22 funerals were held for the men of Rogers City, Michigan. At St. Ignatius Catholic Church in Rogers City, the Most Reverend Stephen S. Woznicki, Bishop of Saginaw, Michigan, officiated for nine of the sailors of the Bradley. “While reaching for the stars and moon, we have not yet mastered our elements of air, fire and water.”