well, welcome, everyone, to tonight's program. bottled goodbyes. i'm kim kelderhouse. i'm the executive director of the leelanau historical society. and behind the scenes is my co-host elizabeth adams. she is curatorial assistant and she is going to troubleshoot in the chat. if anyone has any audio issues, please put in the chat. and then while you're watching rex presentation, if you have any questions for rick, please put those in the q&a. the leona historical society operates a museum and archival facility in leeland, michigan. if you've never been, we are open through the winter wednesday through friday a m to 4 p.m. and we are in the midst of our year end fundraising. so if you enjoy programs like this, please donate a link will pop up at the end of the zoom and consider a member donating and, supporting all of the great things that we do throughout the year. this just being one one small glimpse of that that and without

further ado i will hand things off to ric mixter, our presenter for the evening. thanks for being here, rick. oh, my pleasure, kim. as kim mentioned, you know, with the fundraising it's so critical to the things that i do too as i tell these stories to have my historical societies allow me to to you know get not only the history that they have in the area, but read their own archives. i mean, so much of the information i get is very specific to the to the actual areas where you different parts of the great lakes and without having societies and especially my museums and libraries. i couldn't function. so please think about them as we we continue on with giving was a giving tuesday i think is what we did speaking of things to do i actually had a folder and this said if you ever get time you can work on these things. and it always got put aside. it was a stories that i thought were very interesting bottles being washed ashore, especially

in the lake into all of the great eventually and i thought if i could just find the time to be able do this, this would be great. and i never i would. i started a new job at pbs i was doing about 50 lectures a year and then hit and as i say, this i realized that covid has devastated many families. i complain at all the worst i got off with was losing my job, my dream job at pbs. they laid 13 of us off. but for me it became that instant realization that well then let's start working. so every morning i'd wake up 6:00 in the morning, i would utilize so many online newspaper. so not just newspapers com, but so many like the state. new york has their own. this wonderful archives out of many of the nautical areas like door county that has all of the advocate, especially the plains dealer out of cleveland, all of

these newspapers. i could get access to silver. 5 million newspapers and i could search with a click of a button. but if you type in message in a bottle, you will get millions of hits and that's what i want to kind of cover today. the biggest hit, of course, you'll get is titanic and i'll certainly cover that. but if you go back to really the earliest that use of really a message in a cask, if will bottles are over 4000 years old. the recipe is in cuneo from babylonia. but if think back to the written history, this is really the first time that i found someone who would use this technology? you will. christopher columbus to the new world. he made his discoveries he had to wait for the trade winds to change and for him to come back. and as he did. he came into haiti and parked his nina, pinta and santa maria were right there and his accomplice at direction was, do not let the cabin boy drive santa maria. and guess what?

the cabin boy supposedly this is all according to christopher columbus. he drove it on to a reef, destroyed it. so the first exploration of the new world became, the first shipwreck in the new world, and certainly the most documented first documented. and this torn apart right on the reef, they ended up taking all the boards and creating some of the first structures in the new world and brought everything ashore. and poor pedro got most of the blame. but plse don't worry, pedro, because he actually got his due. coming up, i'll share with you as the trade winds did change, though, columbus started coming back. he took a more northern route. you can see it on your map there as he's going up homeward to bring back his message discovery. he goes past the azores and going into a it's a very significa storm on valentine's and this would be 1493 and he he's going to die he's down to just two ships the pinta, the

nina and on the pinta he decides, i'm going to take all my notes and i'm going to put them in a water cask and seal it. so it's watertight and i'll just leave it on the back deck. and if we sink, it'll float away and hopefully someone wolf, find out what i found and what, you know, what my accomplishments were. well, lucky for him, the storm wasn't that bad they made it through and he was able to go to isabella and ferdinand and actually tell them directly what he found. and of course, we know the history goes on. he'd return and now he's part of folklore of course. and as i mentioned, pedro, his due because as in 2010 we landed the opportunity rover on mars and as they went along and discovered new craters that they could see better on the surface, they found one that they named santa maria. so it's named for the shipwreck and the rocks around it started getting names. the crew and pedro, his own rock. you can see it. the cabin boy for the santa

maria has a giant rock on mars. and so i wouldn't feel too bad for him. he also made multiple trips. excuse me, with columbus, too so i don't think there was that many hard feelings for sure. this is the ship in the very back here you see a schooner barge called the plymouth. this to the ship really started the whole thing for me. i read about this during the 1913 storm. it was my first half hour documentary. i did shipwrecks back in 1993 and i was able to find at least we found two different survivors, including a wheelman who's really become a lot of my lectures. he was eight years old. he was 97 when i interviewed him, and he passed away soon after. but he sailed through the storm. well, this was one of the first casualties of the big storm, every lake except ontario had a ship lost with all hands. this was the plymouth and. it was going around. in fact, if you see the tugboat in front, that's the james h. martin. it's a very underpowered and

very old tug. it was famous in my book bottle goodbyes. i actually go into more detail about the hattie wells and the rescue that they had the year before. i also go into a lot more detail about, the crew, mackinnon and scott, who own the and there was a big problem with their dealer the hubbell lumber you can see the plymouth in the back here is up with 68,000 posts. this is a world record for cedar posts being towed and certainly probably more than they really have on board the old. although she did have steel arches was recently clocked at the shipyard in 1912, so she was in shape certainly than the james martin is. and so as get you know another cargo to go out with hubble hubble has some problems because they had sunk one boat called the wisconsin that they still owed money on and he said you know what we're going to need to have some kind of protection. and they said, if you bring along a police or a u.s. marshal

on board will allow this mission to go on. so they did they they libeled the ship. and it's like a lawsuit against the ship. and hubel actually had undersheriff chris keenan of menominee quit his job and went to become a u.s. marshal and became part of the seven man crew that were on board that schooner. and this is the route that they took i mean, you see him leaving from menominee and as they go up past washington island, they're going through a very dangerous area that's ominously named death door. port de mort is the term and as they went up to green bay, the storm switched direction as. they got to st martin's island. they dinner there and the lookout said, we've got to get out of here. the winds are changing and the winds picked to 60 miles an hour for 16 hours straight. and this is what the tugboats trying to pull them through and the big waves are causing problems for the tugboat so they finally decide as they get around poverty island that they're going to sink if they

don't cut the ship loose. of course, there's no telephones, there's no radio. so all they can do is to the horn. tell them to drop anchor and that the schooner complies dies. and you can imagine how bewildered they were. and they dropped their anchor and the tugboat cut the line and took off for safety going up into the upper peninsula by the garden peninsula to get a break from the winds, figuring that this big schooner was going to just ride out the storm. well, unfortunately, it didn't. and these seven people were left stranded at anchor and the tugboat came back to try to find them after the storm. and there was nothing left. so, of course, mckinnon comes back. mckinnon had actually the other co-owner, captain scott, the captain of the boat went to jail over this whole that they had and so they had a replacement skipper on board so when he came back into town and they're all asking where's undersheriff, you know, where are these men that? we've known for a while and mckinnon starts making up his own story.

fact, if you look at these dates, this is some of the stuff out of the newspaper. he starts blaming certain ski though the temporary captain who never even had a license for up into northern lake, michigan and lake huron, where they were going to get these posts that would that's located in search which is right past where the mackinaw bridge is now just a little ways into lake huron was where they were going to. well, apparently so certain ski didn't have a license, mckinnon says, well, you almost killed us on boyer's bluff. and then he went up to 11 foot tall. and there's all kinds of problems. and he kept blaming certain ski and he probably wouldn't have been challenged. but a bottle washes ashore in michigan and this is near manistee and on nechama. and as you see here, this is pathetic message in a bottle. some of the echoes from the great tragedies. and this note is one of the most deep held notes i've ever seen in all my research. and it's why i. i wrote this book because out of all the messages, you're going to find out many of them are

fake. this one was all too real. it was chris keenan, dear wife and children we were left up here on lake michigan by. mckinnon, captain of the james h. martinet anchor. he went away and never said or anything to us. we lost one man last night. we've been in the storm for 40 hours. goodbye i might see you and haven't pray for me at the bottom of the note in a different handwriting instead i had somebody else write this hubel that's the lumber company. me $35. so you can get. so here's this terrifying note to his family. goodbye. and then the realism at the bottom, you know, saying, hey, this is how you lost money. you know, make sure. you collect it just tear off. terrifying. no. written in the back of, a coal receipt. so we that the plymouth went to this coal company and that's why they saw the address of the coal company that people have found the bottle mailed it to them and it directly went to the families of menominee who confirmed it

was the writing of chris keenan. so now the blame is direct. i mean, he mentions mackinnon the note he the tug and of course everybody is calling for all kinds of investigate actions. in my book i go into extreme of how mackinnon wouldn't even go to marquette. he said, if you want me, don't have any money, come and get me and pulled his license for a while and. it just it snowballed from there. so the story continues on and it's certainly it was even a love in there with mackinnon always falling love with his cooks, and he finally does get married as well. but is only one of, i think, five notes that came out of the great storm 1913, the charles price, an upside down ship that was floating after the storm. and of course, was surprised that this this giant freighter could be upside down. it's 500 feet long. they were just as surprised that the carruthers banished, a 550 foot freighter, canada's large steamship, vanished in the storm too with all hands and no one

left to say what happened on the price or the carruthers or 11 of the ships that were lost complete when we add in the price. but this bottle washes into the river system allegedly followed by misters grain. and then another one is found supposedly written on a paper pie plate. and i allegedly because in the 1912, 1913 going into the titan back in 1915, a lot of people are writing fake notes. and i don't know why they do that, but it's certainly very prevalent to the point where lloyd's of london, the insurance offered a reward to turn in people if you know of these rascals are writing this stuff that are hurting these let us know. we'll pay you so very significant that many of these notes that came out including some that were found on lake superior, two of them were actually three of them on lake superior because. this one's from the leave field. it says no hope. farewell to all in god we trust will he fields still hasn't been discovered. another two bottles came ashore

from. the steamer henry b smith left marquette didn't have all of hatches. dog down went into this storm. excuse me. and was lost and eventually found 100 years later off of big bay, way further north, then more people thought, but it's in 500 feet of water. this note saying that they were only a couple miles from shore. the details are all wrong compared to what we found the shipwreck where it was broken with the location it was at so people believed that it was a fake note as well. i mentioned titanic again if you search message a bottle, you will find a lot of on the 15th of april 1912, 1500 people were lost, only 706 survivors. and, you know, from the movies and the tv shows and the books, they were all women. and children and only a couple of men that into the boats, some of the crew were making sure that they had leadership board the boats. and, of course, the rich guy is

may that snuckhe boat as well but there's a lot of stories that go behind this have. you seen the movie, you've heard of people shooting when people were men were getting in lifeboats and the only way to restore orr was the gunshot. well that really wasn't attributed to anybody until we start reading the newspaper. and it actually started to come into one of the bottles that we talked. but first, i want to show you two that were considered hoaxes. this is harry wilson. he says i am one of those wrecked on the titanic. this is what his boat there is bottle said and white star lion said. you know what? don't have any any, you know, crew list with harry wilson on it. we don't he existed and there was another guy from the engine with the same thing. and you see on the hand side these nobody's amuse themselves with cruelties you know they were being scull it in the newspaper for you know, these fake notes that, you know, maybe some people thought they were trying to help the families by giving them a last word. but clearly with the names,

people that, you know, didn't exist and wrecks it very clearly, somebody just trying to see they could get their name in the paper, at least, you know, put a name in the paper. look at this x, though. this is marks the spot of where titanic went down it hit the iceberg and went down in the north atlantic and deep water and you see the dotted line going to ireland. that's the last stop of they were so in very south ireland many people boarded vessel there and when vessel was lost at the x, it was surprising to find out that there was a message that was found right they originated from you know i'll let you think about the possibilities that somehow a bottle would go exactly the same route back against the current against all the drift of the debris and the ice floes. it didn't make any. and then it went into an area, ireland, that has so much coastline to think that it went into cork harbor, it launched from leads to a lot of

suspicion. but if you look at the note i think it kind of spells out why is the first thing is we know it's from jeremiah burke we know that it came in a metal in a tiny holy water bottle. you'll see that exact that's the actual note actual bottle that his mother given him. the arrow on the map is showing you where that bottle was found and how ironic that it was that that's where titanic left. but the clue is in the date the date shows you ten for 9012 instead of the 15th when it went down. i think that this was launched from the bottle because jeremiah burke was leaving ireland for good he was going to live with his sisters in boston. he had two of them that had already immigrated to the united and burke was going basically set out on his ways in the united states. so i think the good by all was listed that is were but as you know i'm leaving ireland it makes perfect sense because that's where they it.

i don't think that it drifted and again looking at that map of the thousands of places that a bottle if it ever could possibly make it back to ireland would have gotten it makes a lot more sense that jeremiah simply tossed it as he was leaving. i mentioned a famous note that came out to this one. we don't see the name archie but and think about anybody but he was actually in newspapers almost as much as. our political leaders were for time of theodore roosevelt. he was a member of the white house staff. and then once taft moved, archie moved in a major and going to increased and became the social coordinator for president taft. and it's interesting that archie had so headlines of newspapers, especially the houston post, all the way in texas, that would just chide him about everything that happened in his world. this is one that says he was

dating the president's sister, president's wife, sister, and they were going to get married and it got canceled. this almost came up like a cardiac and kind of thing that they'd cover everything that he did. he was the most eligible bachelor, and in many ways they were teasing him. but if we think about the note that came ashore from him, from titanic, we have ask ourselves, first of all, why he on titanic, you know, why, why did he end up in europe in the first place? and we have to look back to really where was with the government and where he was mentally, because as you know, i'll show this picture right now. this is taft on the left who was very famous for ditching his secret service guys and going walking in washington, d.c. and bringing archie with him. so archie would be kind of his guard. you will. he was a military officer and they would go out. well this picture obviously showed up in the newspaper. every picture we see of the president as his final act.

wisconsin. now he's in the far left hand corner, the car on the left, and he's on the far right standing up with the president. and the houston post would take exception with this. they would say every newspaper we see, there's a picture of archie, but it's in there. another magazine actually tied archie as the guy that pulled the president of the if you remember the famous story that taft was wedged into his bathtub. the only story i could find that this story was this time special that said he was on mississippi river boat and he was on a kind of a tour to show people how you opulent it could be to be on board these boats especially when the trains kind of more reliable but then, you know, i think the the riverboats kind of taking it financially a lot. so the president was ting to do pr trip for him and this is he allegedly had gotten stuck in according to this article, it was archie that him out of the houston post got to a point of saying when taft had his picture

actually painted, this is actually one of the only times that you'll see it says the president sat for a portrait in new york. so there'll be at least one taft picture without archie boarded. so this is how much they would chide archie in the stories there. and as it goes you know that teddy and taft were friends well, of course, theodore roosevelt decided run again. and there was a big rift them and of course because the major board had actually worked for both of them he was very torn on who he is going to support. so he told the president, i just need to take, you know, a couple of days. can i please go away? i want go overseas. and the taft said, what do you want to do? he says, i want to meet the pope. i mean, how can i meet the pope? so of course, taft just has to write a note and address it to the vatican and his emissary to bring it there. now, of course, the newspapers had a field day with this because with the election kind of piling in now, they were saying that this was kind of a tour to to get catholics on

taft. well, of course taft. you know, denied all of it. he said, no, archie just wanted to meet, you know, the pope and he got to meet one of the kings, too, while he was over there. and of course, when he came to come, his boat wasn't ready. and the titanic was they said, we're going to upgrade you and put you in a first class boat to come across on a maiden voyage. and we even know where his room was. so on this profile of the port side of the titanic, you can see those windows that's b38 is the room that he would stay and you see an example of the b, the newt, their web actually said this is b38. i don't know how true that is, but you can see what kind of room he was staying in. the last moments of him, though, board, we clearly know he didn't survive. obviously, the bottle and his body was never recovered. but we do hear several different stories because heas so public. i think a lot of people wanted to know wh happened and some of them said that he was the guy that shot people a got in a

lifeboat, say he pulled out a sword to, prevent men from getting in lifeboats. another one says that he died with john jacob astor on deck. and the one i believe the most is the lower left corner, it says, but went to death with smile on face, says miss. now, marie young was a piano teacher for ta's kids. and so that makes sense that she have known who he was and give the best story where she said gave up his scarf to a woman who needed to stay warm and he gallantly, you know, stepped aside and that's the last she saw them. so that the headlines get crazier as 1020, 30 years go by we see archie taking on a bigger lell of the you know the mysticism of these stories and the titanic growing but this is probably the most no one really believed the note because it said i'm starving o a life raft i'm running o fd things look and that white starlight said you know archie but was a

military guy he knew there were no life raft on the titanic only lifeboat codes. and it just di't seem like it all added up. and the last thing i was that the note was supposed go to the secrety of the president. that he could the president and could authenticated. and i cannot find anything further. that's not s it's not possible at a presidential library. my would be if taft has a library, which i haven't looked into, that i'll go there and hopefully some correspondence that mightw something more. so the chapter's not complete closed yet. i mentioned many bottles stories that up aren't real and many of them are simple. i put a note in a bottle and it ended up in some place thousands of miles away. and the newspapers usually don't question it? it's already too good of a story to pass up. and whether it's true or not, as long as they have somebody that said they found it, then they've got a whole story. and that was true of this one. this is a grocer in bloomington,

indiana who said he was just sitting by the river, found a bottle and. he put a message in it and it ended up in santa. that's over 10,000. i added it up 17,000, 144 miles. and when you think it doesn't make any sense. the first thing is this story was in january in indiana. the second thing is you look at the river system comes out of that thing. let me go back the river system that comes the mackinaw river is so convoluted. i don't think a bottle would it through. the second thing is january. the river was frozen. it was some of the best ice skating that they'd ever had. so i don't know how bottle managed to go anywhere for least a couple of months, much less get into the mississippi and then go all the way down around south america, all the way back up to santa monica. so again, i think the newspapers just covered the story because it was very interesting to people, they already had somebody that it was there. and that's probably why it showed up. and i think this is why we see a

lot of these stories going even into the 1990s. i found some notes that went to hawaii and such. not all of them are disasters, not all of them are people putting, you know, messages in a bottle just to see where it went. this is an aviation disaster that this was a daredevil actually started off as a tightrope walker. he would go to rivers and he would walk them and people would pay money to, see him do it. he'd do magic tricks. he was a gymnast and eventually somebody couldn't pay their bill and they traded him a hot air balloon. so instantly he became air tonight. and anybody flies in 1872 instantly becomes known as a professor. i think this is that you somehow something about air currents and meteorology or you wouldn't be able to do this, but washington. donaldson never ever went to college but immediately once he had the balloon he became professor donaldson. and we see this with all kinds

different people who are flying in balloons. notice on this balloon, there's no way for him to put more hot air in once you start flying. the burners wouldn't be invented for a while where you could actually add more air and continue lifting. his job was just to use what was in there from coal gas and then bearing sandbag and try to control his descent wherever he could. and sadly, in 1872 he was over chicago got drifted by the wind currents into lake michigan. he's skipping along the surface. the train is following him. and finally at kenwood station, he gets snagged the rocks and is almost drowned. but everybody got off the train and grabbed in the balloon. you can tell he doesn't even have a gondola there. there's no basket. he just goes up and he does at 500 feet. and then the newspapers usually write stories about him. and he got very good at taking advantage of the newspaper stories to the point where he would show up to the newspapers dressed up in a disguise and say, did you hear donaldson got killed knowing that a morbidity

of people you know if it's mcjob he's going to give more and they would run stories to the point where the newspapers found out he was in another city the next day you know, or the next week they said we're not going to cover anything you do. so every time. donaldson is kicking up his game. this is him to cross the the north atlantic in a balloon. of course, it wouldn't be done for another 150 years. but in 1873, his safety plan was to bring up three guys, including a navigator and a lifeboat, just in case crashed in the ocean, which i don't he could carry, you know, ten days supplies in there, much less enough to get him for months that would take him to drift, you know, back to wherever he needed to go. of course, they barely made it even a mile out of town. they crashed into a sycamore tree and the newspapers. a lot of fun with this. the globe sponsored and had their name on the balloon and they got worldwide headlines so it was worth investment. but the her newspapers all chided him and said you know he

didn't make it across the north atlantic he ended up in and i think they had a good time with that but he survived this and you would think, man, i bet you he quit after this, right? oh, no. because who got attention from? this was p.t. barnum. he said boy, i need you to be in my traveling circus. and so they hired him at, i think, ten or $20,000 a year, which was pretty extravagant. and of course, barnum sold this on his tickets that we have. you know, professor donaldson and, we're paying him this much. and he would around. but barnum told him, you've got to carry reporters that way. he get free coverage every time they flew here you see he took in the barnum balloon and toronto got pushed over. and joshua now, he's carrying three journalists with him as they start to drift over lake ontario. and i want you to think about june 1875. there's still schooners on the lakes and you're drifting along with just a on a schooner. and you the waves on the bow and

maybe a little thrilling in the in the sails themselves and all of a sudden you hear above you in the pitch darkness. help, help me. that's what happened to donaldson, because he's slowly starting to sink down to land in the water and. he's probably throwing all of his sandbags and is looking at which journalist he's going to toss next when he sees flying scud and the boat launches their yawl boat, think about boat is actually got water resistance. so the balloon is going faster than the boat can. it has no resistance other than the air. so the yawl has to roll to catch up with them and sure enough he saves them after hundred and 11 miles of flying, these guys have the story of a lifetime and of course donaldson gets great headlines. he comes to michigan. he almost crashes off of saginaw bay. he flies in grand rapids, and then he goes back to one of his first crash sites. and that's in chicago. he flies on the 15th of july and he lands no.

and the journalists look at him go, well, it's not too impressive. and he goes, oh, you just wait till tomorrow. and sure enough, the 16th of july, 1875 comes around. donaldson has two reporters slated to fly with him, but he looks up at the sky and he sees thunderstorms coming. and these are bad. these have tornado. he's behind him. he doesn't know this. of course, not a meteorologist and. of course, the forecasting back then is very, you know, difficult at so he decides to make it safe. he's only going to fly with one guy and he makes them literally draw straws. and grimwood thinking he's he's really got a good trip here and hops on and the professor at him and says go into town and get a life jacket he had been you pushed by the reporters to make something special and he was going to fly across michigan from chicago and they launch up and they vanish over the lake. and all of a sudden, tornadoes hit and devastate corn crops.

it's a horrible with lots of damage and of course, there's nothing to be heard of for a week. two weeks of the of the balloon until a bottle washes ashore in. lake huron. so now you're on the opposite side of michigan after tip of the thumb port hope, it says over lake michigan at 8 p.m. on the evening of starting 30 miles from chicago, 3000 miles high, a gale. the northeast, the balloon is getting out of. order gas is escaping fast, can't remain untouched much longer. will surely land in the lake. donaldson fearful storm. he writes to and so this is the note they find they eventually find four different bottles. but the big find is off of muskegon when. they find the body of newton grimwood, a post guy, is walking along the beach. he smells something horrible. they find the body inside the pocket, a library card identifying. newton grimwood and his notes are there, too, about flying.

now, i'm to save the notes for what he wrote, because it's a great pitch for my book. i'll give you an address two or a place to get it. at the end of the talk, i will say that there's nothing in there about storm. there's nothing about the crash. but he got his exclusive and sadly, it was the last story that he ever wrote. another bottle was found in a collection, not on the beach, but a bottle collection. years and years later, that said, i'm in love with the lady from the circus. please give all my money to the you know, to her. and of course, there is no the don right away after donaldson vanishes, they have to find another. and pete barnum does and that guy vanishes on great lakes, too. so just a devasted place. it's a it's no place for balloons obviously. and we've lost aviators that way on the great lakes for this is a sinking actually the first storm involves some tornadic activity. the waterspouts the george finney is out in 1889 and it

gets torn up by five different waterspouts and in fact they limp it in a short to buffalo in the shipyard. and the captain says his, name's ryan. and he goes, please, you got to fix up my boat. and the guy at the shipyard said, that's the worst ship i've ever seen. i don't think we can fix it. but they eventually fix it. he gets another season out of it. 1890, and then in 1891 he runs into a november gale and it kills everybody on board. the ship is actually because lake. erie's average depth is 70 feet. they actually a mass sticking up. so they found exactly where the finney had gone down. and divers visit it today. but the only thing they really got from a message, a bottle that came from the first mate, patrick mccarty, on this awful night in november. i this letter to inform the one that finds us that the boat we're on is going to founder. i'm going to davy locker. this is the first time in all of my research, the great lakes, and i've done 30 years of it that i've ever heard mention davy jones locker, much less to

have it in a message in bottle. it's pretty incredible this was an interesting twist because started off as a very message that was found in october of 1895. some boys found the bottle and it said, i'm on the sloop michigan a sloop is a small schooner and it says all these names of people who are on board. this is where we left from grand haven. we're going over to milwaukee. here's all the people you should notify. and out of all the names in this article, not one of those people exist. all the reporters tried to find them. they couldn't even find a sloop named michigan. but what weird about this story is you figure it's fake. but now a month goes and it's kind of a premonition because in november of 1895 a sailing vessel, the michigan runs aground near chicago. so it's all too ironic and it has an even twist. you see the picture here that the owner was pulling nicholson and the michigan as they're

going and they run and of course on board the nicholson captain smith has a six month old baby and his wife. so unfortunately you know, going through this turmoil, the good news is the life savers, you can see in the drawing arrive right on time the right hand picture shows them the baby, the six month old into a little bag and bringing them alongside the other ship. and that's probably the michigan and then the life savers, you can see them ashore the guy on the far left actually has a bundle in his that's the baby smith inside the bundle coming ashore so the nicholson is destroyed wrecked and we've never been able to find it in chicago but the michigan was rebuilt. it was a massive two deck schooner and well worth being fixed up. the ocean was also rescued and the cargo was brought in to chicago and the michigan sailed for many years. in fact, it went up to near where the edmund fitzgerald lost and took on some and started to sink. it was being towed by the

mandrake and the pulled alongside the all jumped off or so they thought because the cook had accident he slipped off and nobody noticed until well after that had been drowned. the michigan slips beneath the waves and deep water. most thinking it would never be found again. the drink sinks to, but luckily there's two steel vessels that come alongside and rescue everybody but the cooks. so two ships go down the michigan lost forever. the drake is actually a famous shipwreck. you can dive. rudder is at whitefish point museum, but the michigan was thought to be lost. as i reminded you earlier on, i had a lot of time during the covid layoffs and, they offered me a ride up there on the board of directors with the great lakes shipwreck society, and they have an amazing boat called the david boyd and well over $200,000 worth of gear on board. and we're cruising along and here i am finishing my book on

the michigan chapter and guess we find riding along you'll see us discover the. this is david darrell or tell. a shipwreck because that's a shipwreck we have a shipwreck that's about as excited as darrell gets to that. that's the silver. i think you can see the rudder there. so we bring out the marine sonic. this is how we find it. we can search a mile at a time with this fish and then down $100,000 robot. this thing can go down to 500 feet. it can actually go deep as lake superior can be over 1300 feet. he flies it using joysticks and it'll down there and it can stay down indefinitely. we've got wires that come down and we saw the bits and as you go over the deck did we didn't see a name board which he actually a dozen shipwrecks over the last two summers and the

joke was he was going to make a calendar because he had one for every month but as he's flying along we're getting clues as to the size of this the donkey boiler that's on the deck. this was actually on the michigan and alpina and then as we go through the center, there's massive double deck on it filled iron ore. the final cargo and then easily we know what the size of this it has to be the michigan on the other ships that he's found the atlanta had a name board written on it. the curtis actually had the name written on it. heinz lumber was painted on the side. if you read michigan history magazine, you may have seen my article on there. we'll also have a very neat special that's up on network tv in february. so be watching your tvs for too. and another discovery that's up there. i wish i could talk more about it, but we're in a agreement. but i'm super excited to be a part of it. but it'll be a very neat find. this is the acacia and you look on the mast, you can see she's

flying the union jack. so this is a british ship and it pulls into port. it's going into a new york harbor, new york state on july fourth. now, this is independence day. they're flying their union, jack and. they wouldn't take it down. so you can imagine the uproar on independence day that they would have this and, you know, the the port is screaming at him. he says hall that flag down commanded the officer go to blazes. simmons that's captain said he said i'll come aboard pull it down if you don't said bump and simmons said i'll shoot you full holes if you set foot and of course, he's talking a lot here. but simmons he can't get out of the harbor if he doesn't have his paperwork signed. so he eventually the flag and relents and gets his paperwork and sails on. well, of course, there's no message a bottle in this story. but the next season he's out with his grandbabies on the lake and sailing his mother in law as well. and they go out of oswego and they go to try to get into the

saint lawrence and they get turned away by a big storm. this is july. and normally this doesn't. and they get pushed around the point where they try to make it into sag harbor, but they strand and go on bull rock point. and at that point, the daughters, they know they're safe but they say we need to get help. papa, why don't we throw a bottle overboard? so they write one. ethel the granddaughter actually writes, hurry, we're breaking up and there's women aboard and they throw it in the water. but of course, the people the town had already seen the ship this is an actual picture of the acacia broken up. i've never drove this wreck. i'm to go up there because i'm sure it's still there. it was never salvaged. there probably wasn't much left after 1908 when it broke up, but it's just a neat story with a message in a bottle. it came on a very nice outcome with all the kids being saved of the full crew and the acacia back story of the flag is also very here's a little ontario just to show you that we'll get

all the lakes in on this, the noise is a very significant shipwreck and fact that it was being towed in 1902 and it broke away from steamship and it was the steamship that actually was lost with all hands that sent out the bottle. i'd like to play a real quick video for you that'll kind of outline some of the details of what happened to the hull in, the noise and the amazing rescue that ensued. the story of the schooner john ah noyes begins its launch in elgin back in 1872. by 19 otu she was the ripe old age of 30 owned by the donovan family who were towing it with the steamer, ihall. at 8 a.m. on december 11th, the keeper at charlotte life-saving station watched as two steamers pulled out into a gale. the resolute towing the abby and the donovans aboard, the hull and noise, the hull captained by tim donovan. tim's son george was skipper of noise and both vessels were

loaded coal headed for disaster until ontario on all four ships disappeared into a blinding snowstorm shortly after leaving port and 50 miles northeast of charlotte. the hull became disabled with few alternatives. captain tim ordered the mate to cut the tall. that was the last time anyone ever heard from the steamer john ihall until a bottle came ashore on stony island that next spring steamer haul off. come quickly. no to lose, captain donovan survived the storm managing to ride the wind with the schooner noyes after the steamer cut them loose, they tried to deploy their anchors. the chain worked like a chain saw, ripping through the hosepipe and threatening open the hull to the raging lake. the anchors were cut loose and the gale pushed them sideways up the lake. two days later, a farmer saw them off lakeside, new york, and he telegraphed lifesavers that charlotte keeper gray ordered the foghorn sounded every minute

to hopefully guide the schooner back to port. and then he called for the tug ferries as a rescue boat ice made travel impossible in the harbor, so gray scheduled the new york central railway bring two flat cars for his seven man and surf boat. another freight train delayed their voyage through the blizzard by 2 hours and later, they had to endure a chilly mile sleigh ride to get to the the lifesavers launched just before midnight, rowing seven miles to find nothing. gray returned to shore to warm his crew at a bonfire. that next morning a servant climbed, a windmill and spotted the noise. tom miles of gray and his crew again rode 20 miles to catch the noise, rescuing all five of the crew, which included the cook's and the captain's cocker spaniel. one crewman was out of his mind, shaking hands goodbye to his crewmates, just before the rescue. next was row 20 miles back to

shore where they grounded on a sandbar and waited to shore with the victims on their shoulders lighthouse keeper, mcdonald spotted the noise as it broke apart. salmon point, ontario captain gray and his man, gold lifesaving medals and, the american cross of honor for their heroism. but newspapers say the keeper never recovered from the ordeal. three years later, gray received a forced retirement when he couldn't pass annual physical newspapers, pushed for a pension for gray and other keepers who had given their health to the profession. president finally signed a bill providing monies for retired life savers in april of 1938, months after george gray had passed away is now incredible. i look at the amount of time i was able to spend on that only through really, you know, the devastation of covid where everything was shut dow what i have the detail to be able to go and not only chase

down gray's story, but thehole of the bill of congress. you know trying to pay his back and trying to give, you know, some kind a retirement for them. it really did allow to do a lot more research and certainly to finish two different books, which i'm grateful for. t if any lver lining in this horrible thing, it's got to be partly that this is a story. i think if you if you know of the big three shipwrecks in the great lakes, the mund fitzgerald is certainly the most famous. griffin ishe first of the upper great lakes and it's ceainly very famous 300 ye old ship. and the christmas tree ship, the rue simmons, is also very faus. the captain that you see here. and i put him in this picture this is not an original the picture of the simmons of the dock at clark stre bridge is certainly legit. they always pick tse older schooners, shoot them. and it had all six different ships. and he was on brother was killed trying to bring trees i

it was really not the best way to do it. people were ing trains at this time, but he would get headlines bringing these trees in as captain santa and theewspapers would herald him in as he went up to the chicago river with trees and he became part of christmas. it wasn't christmas until you went down. you know the street idge and actually got your tree from santa. but it sadly course it ended in tragedy for him because he came out of the upper peninsula with a lot of trees. they spent many weeks cutting them down and then loading the tree, the ship up. some of the crew actually wouldn't get on board. they said that the rats were swimming away from the ship because it was not safe. he had another captain that was on board with him and they started to sail into killarney and they got into a pretty big storm to the point where they flipped their flag upside as a sign of distress in quarry life, savers actually saw the flag upside down. the problem was they didn't have a motorboat there and this was

at the time they thought you know they're going to be drifting down to two rivers. they do have a lifeboat they have a telephone. they could call up and say, hey, why don't you get out there and get these guys? well, it was a bad move, obviously, because the route simmons never made it. two rivers, the crew went out there on the motorboat, found nothing. so, of course, everybody wanted killarney lifesaver. you know, chiefs had and basically he lost job. he went to become a grocer and he had to quit after a very illustrious screw career that i spot out in the book quite, quite a lot of rescues in other things. so sadly, he lost his job. it was a bad decision and the crew were lost. and eventually christmas trees are now washing ashore. not only two rivers, but allegedly all the way across the lake and the water and people are collecting them up, bringing to the widow who's in chicago who still has bills to pay. these lumberjacks want to get paid. so they're trying to, you know, at least salvage some of it out. and of course, the headlines are

just devastating. it's christmas time, you know, and this is a time when families supposed to be together. and i think that not only that generates meg articles and that becomes more folklore or but every year i point out in the book schulman's daughter would go to the media and say, by the way i was was the last my dad to this this horrible you know storm and that's this is who i am and they get out of it so you know it's easy for me to say wow, they shouldn't have done th. but the truth is she lost her father in a horrible storm. and you try to survive you can that in suffragette articles with you know the mom altar cutting down trees it even came to a point where they said elsie got her license. well, it's not true. but this is building on that that legend of the christmas tree ship when they say they found a skull and a net, they found the wallet of the captain. and again, i go into a lot more detail in the book about it, but it's more legend than it is true

as we look at it. but of course, eventually the christmas tree ship is found. and ken bell, richard found it. now we have zebra and quagga mussels that are all over it cleaning up the water for an unbelievable picture that celtic not only showing you the length of the ship with the divers over the top. but there's actually christmas in the center if you look just after the bough, you can in the middle there that you can see the trunks, the trees, the needles all fallen off. but the trees are still there. and that's just remarkable. and on the great for sure, i know at least one of those trees has come up that they tried to preserve for the museum and anchors and some other pieces. name board, i think has come up well this was a very unique story of a company called capital transportation out of detroit. they only had one ship. it was the benjamin. it was designed to haul pulpwood, but they were trying to diversify. the cargoes got bad. they lost their captain and they needed to find.

so they brought in a guy, isaiah hart, who had never sailed as captain. he a first mate and certainly experience, but not as a captain. and they said, well, go and meet them. leave out of cleveland and go to connie out and pick up some rails for the railroad. and you're going to take them up to superior, where they're actually going to be putting in a railway there. the great northern railway actually has a very specific rail and this is number 73, can tell. and as eisenhower actually shows up to the dock, he goes in and he says okay, see there's 60 cars there. how much do i put on boat? and they all looked at him, go you're the captain. and he says, oh, come look in the logbook, see what they took before. and they said, 55 cars were taken before. so he calls detroit and he goes, listen, i want to put a little bit more in on there. and he tells the guy at the dock, i've got to do this or they're going to think i have cold feet. how do we know all this? well, because a big lawsuit, obviously, these rails are never going to make it to minnesota and sadly, they're going to be

lost in the lake. and the lawsuit i found all the paperwork in india, of all places and managed to find all these notes, to tell a complete story and, including a picture that was actually taken of the ship when it left. this is the benjamin loaded so low that it's to the water level. you can see the spa deck is almost level there's any free board to the lake guy klump couldn't believe his eyes when. the vessel started to pull out in 1914, so he ran out to the end of the dock with his kodak and snapped this picture and of course, became evidence in a court case that they they soundly lost. but it brought up a lot of very interesting things about this. the first was the captain put on way too much and when even more going almost decks to the water. second his steamboat inspectors came on board in detroit after they were loaded like this and the story was they had to put galoshes on because the deck wet so the here they are seen a very

unsafe condition and never challenge to the captain and then they went to the sue locks were the lock guys all testified in the trial that this is the most overloaded ship ever saw. again you don't challenge a captain ever, but you do wonder why somebody didn't something especially at the locks where they do have some kind of authority you know to at least say, hey, listen, you know, you should, you know, look at the safety. well, of course, he makes it all the way across superior. but then a big storm starts blow up and the hatch blow off. and of course, now water is going into his hold that's filled with railroad iron. and he goes so hard that he actually skewers into the bottom and a bottle washes ashore saying how far off shore they are mentioning. they're pretty close to duluth and they're going to be lost forever. and of course here's the iron in the bottom. this was actually found by eliason and merriman on the and i believe craig was smith was part of this team and this is the iron that eisenhower had

loaded on board. he only left one car on the the dock, and the owners all said, boy, if we would have known we were going to lose, we would have had in that take you know, we would have insisted. but unfortunately, he was trying out to to impress his crew for sure. this is the kamloops. this is the vessel of another tragically true story. the bottle that came ashore was too confirmed. they were following along. in fact, their row came out of the sue following the q dock and as they went up to try to get into thunder bay, the storm hit. so they went behind isle to try to get some protection the q dock pulled away before they ashore and the kamloops didn't see the big rock and in the sea that was there and they ran right up on the rock and it started to sink. it's a 200 foot cliff. so nine people were managed to get a lifeboat. and you can see the distance all the way to canada where the did you see that? where another ship had been lost during this big storm? the marsh and went down the kamloops called to dock the bay in the land and the land is

pretty close to where a bottle washed ashore from the kamloops. so think about that immense distance. and it was from one of the stewardesses who'd gotten of the boat and managed get to the island, but think of isle royal in december. there's nothing there. then they basically had no and they froze to death on the island. now that the note exists, the family have the note. and i asked to see it. they said it was just to that they couldn't share it, but they would be more than happy in my book to share a picture of what she looked like. this is alice and sadly she never made it to her 24th birthday and the unfortunately they had a body to to bury where a lot of the people on the kamloops didn't the engineers are still inside the shipwreck divers have actually seen them and this is a 1927 shipwreck. so a very tragic story. there's still a chapter, i think i'd love to learn what the note was or perhaps i know if it's that graphic about freezing to

death, perhaps it's better left on saw. you know on scene so that that true is is true with any kind of these stories that are just so tragic. so why don't we have messages in the bottle anymore? well, the truth is, it was hard to find a message in a bottle. you know, a hard too hard to find a bottle in chaos of a ship sinking. and you're trying to get, you know, any kind bottle to put it in it, usually in the galley you weren't allowed to have alcohol after a certain on the ship so that limited bottles were available too. so a smart steamboat inspector named minnow came up and made his own tube out of brass was water tight, had a pencil and paper inside it, and the captain one, the engineer kept one. and in the case of the passenger, the purser would keep one. well, of course ship companies had their own metal smiths, so they could do this themselves. so i don't think made a lot of money despite a great in the newspaper i cover a couple of examples of when he tested it inside the book and the case of

the milwaukee where they found one of these tubes. it was handmade by the the people at the ferry company michigan went down under mysterious circumstances and of course the tube washes ashore with the enter this is the actual no inter-departmental correspond and it's written by the purser. you can see saade on the right on there. and as the flickers flooded, we're having one heck of a time to see are tremendous things look bad is he writes in this note this is the actual noted national archives which is pretty incredible to see you. the actual note i only had i think actual notes in the book itself but very tragic. and as we look at the shipwreck when i drove it, i could tell the sea gate was torn off and you could see tammy's here so you can see it's all crushed in that the roof of the ferry now coming down. there's inside they're loaded with coal or sinks and toilets. so is coming from wisconsin to come to michigan and of course, never made it. and everybody was lost on the

ship when it went down. of course, we don't use tubes either because radio was invented. marconi had a way to send signals through the air and he used a, you know, at first morse code was doing broadcast the english channel and this guy professor jerry green read about it and ocourse marconi was everybody how he made the radio so green just made a better one and you can see the antenna notre dame's actual chapel right there are up on the he has the antenna strung and the guys in chicago said, come the city and we'd like to do a story on you and us, how it works. but in the middle the city, the am radio wouldn't work very well. so they to take it out in the lake and, they put it on the tug protector. this is the first broadcast on the great lakes. and they send it out. they went a mile out and they sent semaphore flags back and forth that they could see through. speigel passes, and then they'd send that signal through the the radio to show it worked. and at the very end they sent the word marconi as a tribute to

the inventor. and of course, all the companies that had boats were like, we have to this this is the way to call for help. you know, this is a way to tell people what our schedule is. if we're off schedule, you know, it is a huge advance. if you can tell people exactly when the boats will be there. and of course, it took a while before radio got good enough. but of course, we saw one of the first uses of the cq or the s.o.s. when the panama cut, 17 went ther 18 went down. the 18 went down on september 9th, 1910. unfortunately, when they sent message that they needed help, it really fell on deaf ears because the 17 that was out there had an operator, but he was sleeping. he wasn't supposed to be on duty. so unfortunately it was just bad timing. and only when they woke up and saw the vessel had a distress flag up did they kw they should head over and try t help. and by then, half of the people were lost on the boat as went down. look at the angle that it sinking. and this is another one of those serendipitous things that happened as i was writing.

you casee one of the rail cars floating right in the foreground here. so several of the cars were dumpeds they tried to stay afloat. it was thought to be the lite the light, the last large shipwrk on lake michigan yet to be found, you know, the largest that was still. and most people thought they'd never find it because it was mid lake, at least 20 miles offshore. and i finish this chapter, my called up the ones that shared those rail pictures, eliason and merriman and they said guess what? we found and sure enough i had enough research to share with them. they had plenty of their own because they found it where. nobody else was able to find it. and it's sitting at that extreme angle a hundred feet off the bottom. so it's stuck in the bottom. but the bow was 100 feet up into the water column just because the way that it landed so very shipwreck, very deep and still covered with clams, you can see the quagga mussels are on here. visibility is is challenging, but i've seen some new footage

come out of it dustin hoffman up with that looks pretty spectacular ular it's very damaged but it's very interesting shipwreck for sure i'm going to leave you with this vessel it just because of the that we have with november 10th when the edmund fitzgerald sank and of course the release of my brand new book the tattletale sounds which i'll talk about in a second this is about the edmund fitzgerald and most people don't know that there was message not necessarily in a bottle. well but it turns out that the brand new maintenance man on board the anderson got out and he boy i sure hope we find a storm and boy did they find a storm. but it's not really for me to tell the story i want you to meet captain, who was the guy who turned around try to rescue the fitzgeralds. he was nine miles behind the fitzgerald when it was lost. they encountered the same killer wave that damaged their 30 feet above the water, smashed their

lifeboat to pieces, and it sped in front of them and took out edmund fitzgerald. course, we know now that 29 guys just vanished was nobody left nobody is nothing and he still turned around though and went back into storm that he knew killed 29 people to look for survivors. this is bernie cooper and this is his story of the message and the anderson, the chief engineer, was a little bit disgruntled when we were trying to turn around and go back out, he told one of the kids down there was a maintenance man. this kid was with a gung ho sailor, young kid wanted to be in a real storm that was just that was just thoughts, you know, when when the chief told him we were going back, he went down to his tape recorder, made a tape last testament will, put it in a jug and, sealed it. so he he was he was a real, real funny kid to get he got a storm pail. i don't know what happened to him after that. i never saw him after we landed in chicago, there was actually two people from the anderson

that quit. and it turned out that that wasn't the last storm that the anderson went through, they had a load of iron ore, their belly that they took from two harbors. they had to take it down go through the soo locks after the search and they went into a big storm on lake michigan that rolled them 30 degrees. that was the that they encountered coming back so yeah he lost not only them but i think the chief engineer resigned his wife was on board and was in just a mess of a storm as you know from the the stories and the folklore and of course the song by gordon. if you want to learn more about the fitzgerald tattletale sounds just came out it's the bestselling book on the great lakes right now. i'm thrilled to offer a 300 pages of things that. you probably didn't know about the fitz, but more importantly, told by the people that were there. i'm a television reporter by trade, so i've interviewed countless people that built the fitz sale, the fitzgerald and investigated the fitzgerald. this includes all the time on the great lakes. cousteau had behind the scenes

when they lost one of their divers and so much more the tattletale sounds is available. most of the great maritime museums i encourage you to go there to find it. also my book bottle goodbyes is also available at these museums. well, we want to work with leeland on certainly to make sure that they have copies so that you can support them as well. if you do run into a problem, you can always to shipwreck podcast scam shipwreck podcast dot com actually has many of my best stories. i just finished the dennis hale daniel j. morrell story. it's an hour long story about sole survivor of the daniel j. morrell he was actually rescued today. this is the anniversary of dennis hale coming. the only survivor, 29 men on board, sadly three other guys froze to death on the life raft with him. so in his interview first broadcast he ever made, the first lecture he ever made and, then the rescue of the nord mare. i've got the helicopter pilot in the same storm that plucked

eight guys off of the nord mare. it's a great podcast it's called the morrell you'll find it a shipwreck podcast. there's 4 hours of edmund fitzgerald stories there, too. and it eventually a bed up have a bottle goodbyes story on too because there's certainly a lot of stories that are dovetailing into a lot of the lectures that i do today. i sure hope you have some questions for me. feel free. i drove the fitzgerald in 1994 so i know a lot about that if you have any questions with any the shipwrecks out on the great lakes. i hope i can answer it, but i can certainly help you with. any of the bottle goodbyes? stories for sure sure. thank you so much rick and as he said use that box in the bottom of your screen to put questions in. and i will start with one of my own. you mentioned the rack that was carrying some railroad tracks or

beams. how you found the records in india. why? why did they end up in india. i thought it was the original court records, because it looked like a bound edition and. it looked old. and to my surprise, guys, and paying $50 for a book that i thought was antiquated and it was brand new, the ink was new. so they took all the information from our court cases and we're doing print on demand for different things and maybe it's because they've got a good with with attorneys don't know but i have to be the copy that they ever sold for the the battle between you know pittsburgh and and transportation but was such an amazing find and to through and to get every name of all people involved in the background eisenhart which allowed me in the book then to go not only into his back story, but the tragic story of his father's, too. there's so many stories. and the guy that was the manager of capital also had a father

that was lost, a shipwreck. so it's just amazing the amount of things that you can find in that book was big part of it. wow, that's incredible. we have one someone who's who's second in your benefits of corvettes. he says that he worked on a manuscript during covid, found that that time was such a gift at that time. it is. and i feel so horribly guilty because my wife kept working all the way through. she the benefits and everything, the good news is now with the sales of my books, i can pull my own weight again. i don't know that if i'll go back to work and definitely now for pbs they've filled it with younger people and i'm just at that age where maybe it's going to be touring all the time and stories and that would not be bad. me yeah, i hope you make a keep doing because you, you do so

well. are there any stories where the message wasn't necessarily on on a piece of paper or something. i guess the last one you mentioned it was on an audio cassette. my coworker shared with me a story about. they they scratched the note into a piece of furniture. that's probably the story the light ship 82 in fact from the 1913 storm they wrote good bye, nellie. ship breaking up fast. will and everybody wondered about that etching that was in a piece of the woodwork. some people said it was a draw. some people it was part of the paneling of the white ship itself. the weird part was that the wife's name wasn't nellie, it was mary. so there was all kinds of controversy issue with that. but she said no, that it was probably written by one of the new crew. they'd only been at buffalo station. they were a light ship that was offshore so they had to stay out in the great storm 1913 to help ships come in and sadly the

design of the ship, the wooden cabins were devastated. so six people, the first time that a light ship was ever lost with all hands, i go into very big detail and bottle goodbyes about light 82 and that's probably one that they mention it later on. find out, though, that there were some boys that were writing fake messages and one of the newspapers said that the boy fessed up that that's why the name was. wrong he just made it up and that's what the problem was that the that one of the newspapers in buffalo gave that up though because they had so much coverage of the the message and of course the eventual locating of 82 that was brought back up by divers and then brought into the service and sailed again. wow. we have one person asking if any of your books are available for for kindle. i'm working on that. yeah. i don't them up there yet and i, i've just had so many problems with amazon right now and you won't find my book and it's,

it's simply because of the cost that are involved. they want a $50 a month charge, whether sell or not. they have all kinds of restrictions on barcodes and isbn and and stuff that, you know, just cost more and more money and until i find a viable way do it through kindle i probably will only do the podcast and then do the books but. i definitely want to find a way to it because the files are already there. all i have to do is upload them so. so it wouldn't be that difficult to transfer it into a, you know some kind of a mobile device. i just need to figure what's the best, most cost effective way is. i think does anybody have any other questions i'm not seeing? oh, here we go. no question. thank you for your interesting presentation. thank you. i appreciate you being here today. but yeah, if we have any questions for rick, put them in the comments.

i've got to say, though, you do a thorough job on your your stories and i love how how easily you flow from one story to the next thank you i love doing and as i find interesting things i always that what i glean as being interesting is something that other people will and luckily i've been a news reporter 30 years so i kind of have a good idea. the other good part is that i work very quickly. you you do a story on the news. you come at noon or you come in at 8:00. you've got a broadcast at noon, a broadcast at five and a broadcast at six. you learned to turn this very quickly. so for podcast and all the other materials that i know a lot of time for other people, i'm lucky that i get, you know, i can it very quickly done and hopefully you know very interesting i want to spend more time on these things it's just sometimes it's it's got to be wedged in between other that pay. yeah. can you tell us a little more

about your podcast? are you doing that just sort of regularly or i do him as i have the largest library of shipwrecks survivors and rescuers i would say probably in world but i know for sure on the great lakes i've been doing it for 30 years i've got now survivors from 13th storm 1940 storm the largest shipwrecks on lakes michigan lakes huron lake. erie, the reed so i've just spent my entire career hanging around museums and historical societies meeting up with people who find these connections. for me. and then i get the interviews. so i get first eyewitness account. also people who who rescued me on board the cutter is my my coast guard cutter. video cutter rescues talks about the escanaba was built in michigan and a great podcast on that launched in bay city in tandem with the raritan and literally actually the raritan and the naugatuck were launched

together the escanaba came before them. it was a prototype cutter. they went to world war two and north atlantic and was lost. and i found the survivor who was a chicago cop. later on. so there's a great podcast on that so this is what you get. and then i find, you know, from 1934, the back court which is a very unique design of a ship and a friend of mine had recorded an interview, the phone with one of the survivors from there, who is, you know, loosely to the fitzgerald and that the first made of the court who wasn't during the shipwreck is pulsifer who becomes the third captain on the fitzgerald so all these neat stories all kind have a connection and i try to make it easy for the people who listen the people who read about you know, stories try to connect the dots them so that they don't have to, you know, do as much digging as i have. and again, bring something that nobody that's done. it doesn't make sense to do a book on the fitzgerald and cover the same stuff that it's already been done well by hemming

especially fred stonehouse schumacher there's been great but nobody's done detail on the airplanes that found the ship the sub hunters went out and found the fitzgerald or the coast guardsmen that came across in the storm. jimmy hobart the captain captain who just passed away, who was the coast guard investigator that looked into it. i even found the real two rails of them diving down the curve. three. no one's listened to them before. and i've transcribed painstaking lee all of these details out so that you can read them in the book and glean out. the best parts that i think are and i hope that that's what i do best. i personalize these stories to a point where other people haven't. yeah, i always think those firsthand accounts really make it make it come to it's amazing to know that these people are around. i don't like i'm going fast enough. i mean these, people have passed

away. we just lost fred shannon, who's a fantastic explorer that led the expedition i was on for the fitzgerald just died five days ago and it's tragic that we're all in this limited time on earth, but it's what we get accomplish. and hopefully people, you know, record so that we can play it back and keep the survivors of the morale in the bradley these amazing shipwrecks from 58 in 1966. these stories are incredible survival stories and they bring hope even today and to hear those stories and to hear from dennis, his voice again, i just released a podcast on the morale yesterday and it just brought back tears. it's just a fantastic guy, a fantastic lecturer in his own right, the best on the lakes in my and i'm kind of bringing him back by doing that. that brings great, great feelings. me yeah, that's, that's incredible. chuck asks can you please elaborate a tad more on how were in india and came across the trial concerning the benjamin

noble sleuthing by you is fascinating. i'll thank you. i, i didn't get to go to india. i want to go to india, of course, with covid. we were all locked down. and so i did very deep and very minuscule. you never find things labeled correctly and. that's how i made my documentary on the edmund fitzgerald had footage of the building, the fence that nobody else had. it said 301 gl w if you do your homework, you know, that's cleared great lakes engineering works in the hall number was 301. that's how i find these. so by doing a deep search on capital transport and then doing the legal search that brought up the court number found in india, the transcript. but i think that what they did is the book company just kind of, you know, watches over these legal cases. and because it's a precedent, they sell these things back. now thought i was getting for $50 a book that was as old as the wreck in 1914. you know the court case was

1915. i'm this is going to be great but obviously paid for a brand new printing of something they just had. so i found it online. i didn't to india, but it was just really good gumshoe trying to find these details and that allowed me to get 300 pages of court testimony that had every detail in there. so while the book does kind of look old, it sits on my shelf and i laugh every time i look at it because it's not old. but it means everything to me that it did have that journey and that i'd managed to bide that time from covid, where i would have, quite frankly, i would have been crazy. i think. i mean, to lose that much to the job and lose all of my lectures, 50 lectures, a year and then, you know, really my own personality, who i am you know what i got to be grandpa, that's a good thing. but the rest of it was sitting home, just trapped. again, i hate to cry about it

because. i, i can. people lost than i did, but i think everybody can kind of get the feeling that you had of, you know, what am i, where am i? and that helped me this research just brought me through. and i have two books now to show i'm just thrilled that i had opportunity. and i'm humbled. you know, to know that people lost a lot more, you know, during that. and i hope it never again. thank you someone have you considered doing an audiobook you actually reading your own book would be fantastic. oh thank you i mean about podcast kind of are that way and i would like to do that and i'll i'll i'll let you in on a secret it's hard for me to write books i'm a television guy so if i show a wave, i can show a monstrous wave in slo mo make it look you know put music behind it and make it scary the way it should be to about it is very difficult for me to say the, you know, the frothy, you know, mist

from the storm or the freezing temperatures. that's very difficult because i, i that's not what i need to do. the visuals are there for a television. so that's been very difficult. the reading part i'd love to been on the radio since i was 16 years old. so i love broadcasting. i love going behind microphone. i have a studio in my own house. i can do these things very cost effectively. so thank i love to do that. i probably on some of these if there's a market for it and certainly it's right thing to do for people who are you handicapped in a way that you know they can't read or they might not be to you know to listen there will be different ways to do, you know, things so that everybody can have access to these, which i think is important. in. that same vein, someone asked, is your podcast on spotify? i think it is. i hit most of the big ones. i know you can find it on amazon if you go to shipwreck podcast

dot com, it'll actually take you right to the page so you can listen. the easiest is through amazon. i'm 99% that is there and you should have today it should update to show denis hale's story on there so if you have any problems let me know if there is a better place for me to put. it always feel like you can send me a message if you look type in rick shipwreck, you will find me rick airworthy. that tv is my email. it's all over the internet so. if you think of another place i need to, i'd like to be there. thank you. and elizabeth, just put that link in the chat. if anyone wants to click on that, get there, hop over to the podcast. well, i think that concludes all of our questions. unless any more. go ahead and pop those in there. but otherwise, i think this has been a lovely evening and it of concludes our month of shipwreck programing so thank you to all the people who have participated

this month and and tonight thank