Ep. 790: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald

Summary

The MeatEater Podcast – Ep. 790: The Sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Nov 10, 2025)

Overview

Host Steven Rinella dives deep into the legendary 1975 sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Lake Superior—an event seared into cultural memory thanks to Gordon Lightfoot’s epic song and the ongoing fascination with Great Lakes shipping. Joining Steven is author and sports historian John U. Bacon, whose new book, The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, explores the lives of the 29 lost crewmen and the mystery that remains. The episode blends personal anecdotes, history, humor, and poignant storytelling.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Personal Connections to the Edmund Fitzgerald (02:34–04:45)

• Steven, born in the region, shares how the story haunted and inspired him.
• He dedicates the episode to his brother and the community at the Porthole in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan.
• John U. Bacon notes regional quirks, like the twin Sault Ste. Maries (US and Canada sides), connecting the discussion to local hockey legends.

The Significance of the Edmund Fitzgerald (06:02–10:32)

• John U. Bacon details the vast scope of the Great Lakes—Lake Superior alone is bigger than Ireland, making it both an economic engine and a site of maritime peril.
• Quote: “Lake Superior is 160 miles by 350 miles. It’s as big as the state of Virginia. It’s bigger than Ireland… If you’re in the middle… you can’t see either side. It’s not because of the mist or the fog—it’s because of the curvature of the earth.” (06:02, John U. Bacon)
• WWII history: The Soo Locks as North America’s most crucial, heavily-guarded wartime asset due to ore shipping.

The Dangers of Great Lakes Shipping (10:32–14:34)

• Great Lakes more dangerous than the ocean: Steeper, closer waves, frequent storms, and the stress on enormous freighters.
• Waves as close as 4–8 seconds apart, far more frequently and brutally than ocean cycles.
• Quote: “These ships are 700 feet long… 26,000 tons of iron—that’s 4,200 adult elephants… one of these waves is the same weight as two locomotive engines.” (12:22, John U. Bacon)
• The “paperclip” analogy: Repeated structural stress can snap a ship, as happened with the Bradley (1958).

Gordon Lightfoot’s Song and Cultural Memory (14:36–16:05)

• Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” made the tragedy globally famous—without it, “there is no book.”
• Quote: “From 1875 to 1975, there are 6,000 commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes… and how many do we know? We know one. The Edmund Fitzgerald, for exactly the reason you said.” (15:24, John U. Bacon)
• Discussion of Lightfoot’s inspiration, the emotional and factual accuracy of the song.

The Work and Lives of The Crew (19:04–25:11)

• The Fitzgerald was part of a crucial industrial chain, hauling iron ore for auto and steel plants.
• Sailor jobs were dangerous but offered high pay and union benefits, especially compared to farming or mining.
• Touching stories: Bruce Hudson, a young deckhand, planned a life with his girlfriend and their soon-to-be-born child, unaware the last voyage would be his.
• Quote: “You gotta care about the guys before they get on the ship. That’s kind of my rule.” (24:10, John U. Bacon)

The Mechanics and Economics of Shipping (28:40–34:01)

• Iron ore came from northern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula; shipped to factories below.
• Taconite pellets: innovation allowed the shipping industry to thrive after high-grade ore ran out.
• The Fitzgerald could carry enough ore for 7,000 cars per trip, making 50 runs a year—one ship could supply iron for millions of cars in its lifetime.

The Superstition and Launch of the Fitzgerald (34:01–39:24)

• The ship’s 1958 launch was fraught: champagne bottle wouldn’t break, a spectator died of a heart attack—ominous for superstitious sailors.
• Ships built to exact lock limits: narrow and long, which made them efficient but vulnerable in rough seas.

Ship Design and Wave Dangers (39:24–43:07)

• Ships were 75 ft wide but up to 1,000 ft long due to lock dimensions—this affected stability.
• Freeboard (distance from water to deck) regulations relaxed over time, which may have affected safety.

The Sinking—What Happened That Night (43:30–66:10)

• November Weather: Gales, locally-forming storms, and a dangerous warm spell set the stage.
• Navigational Struggles: Both the Fitzgerald and Anderson (another ore carrier) took a rarely-used "northern route" for calmer initial conditions, but risked a nasty final stretch.
• Captain Ernest McSorley, legendary for his courage and skill, led the Fitzgerald; this was to be his last trip before retirement.
• A navigational error may have led the Fitzgerald over the hazardous Six Fathom Shoal near Caribou Island; crucial instruments (radar, radio beacon, lighthouse) failed.
• Quote: “If you’re listing, you can’t steer properly. You’re much more in danger of capsizing when you’re going broadside.” (61:07, John U. Bacon)
• The final transmission: “We are holding our own.” (64:11, Ernest McSorley relayed by John U. Bacon)

The Aftermath and Theories (66:10–71:12)

• No consensus on the cause: possibly striking the shoal, possibly structural failure from wave stress.
• All 29 men entombed with the wreck—families largely declined efforts to recover remains, honoring the sailors' code.
• The wreck remains 530 ft deep, in two main pieces, with taconite still strewn across the lakebed.
• Families struggled with insurance and minimal compensation; lasting emotional scars.

Improvements and Legacy: No Major Shipwrecks Since (81:14–83:47)

• Advances in technology, communication, weather forecasting, and a new safety culture mean there have been zero comparable shipwrecks in the Great Lakes since 1975.
• Sailor’s code endures: when Coast Guard asked the Anderson to return into the storm to search for survivors, they did so willingly, despite the risks, because “We knew they’d do it for us.” (75:21, John U. Bacon)

The Families’ Stories and the Preservation of Memory (84:10–91:47)

• John spent months gaining trust, working with families so their stories could be told honestly and respectfully.
• Quote: “This is their one chance to tell their dad’s story in many cases.” (96:59, John U. Bacon)
• Intimate, multi-generational stories—including surviving children and grandchildren—transform the narrative from legend to lived, personal tragedy.
• Memorials include ringing a bell 29 times for each crew member, with children and descendants participating.

Gordon Lightfoot and the Song’s Creation (98:13–108:32)

• Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” was written the very night of the disaster, inspired by real-life weather in Toronto.
• The album version is a magical first take; attempts to re-record never matched the emotion.
• The song’s facts: some poetic license but largely praised for its accuracy and its ability to capture the spirit of the event for both families and sailors.
• Quote: “His description of the lakes… he nailed it. The family say that he nailed it.” (102:08, John U. Bacon)

Reflections on Journalism, Book Writing, and Hollywood (113:46–119:36)

• John U. Bacon shares frustrations with the media, emphasizing accuracy, respect, and giving sources control over their own quotes.
• Insights into book promotion, working with families, and navigating Hollywood adaptation offers—"two answers in Hollywood: Yes, and here’s a check." (117:31, attributed via Steven Rinella)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the ship’s scale:
  “It’s the same height as the Detroit Renaissance Center… 729 feet …but it’s no wider than the run from home plate to first base. It’s 75 feet.” (36:05, John U. Bacon)

• On generational sacrifice:
  “My kids run up to me… and I say, ‘No, daddy smells like a paycheck.’ That’s the life.” (34:01, John U. Bacon)

• On tragedy’s immediacy:
  “Whatever happened was fast. This guy is the best captain of the Great Lakes. If he had ten seconds to get on an SOS with coordinates, he sure as hell would have done it.” (64:46, John U. Bacon)

• On the enduring pain:
  “Once you know the story, the song kills you.” (22:38, John U. Bacon)

• On legacy:
  “We are holding our own.” —The last words from Captain McSorley, tattooed by a descendant as a memorial. (91:47, John U. Bacon)

• On journalistic philosophy:
  “If I’m talking to Brody or Steven, I say, we’re going to talk freely. I’ll send you your quotes, you’ll fix them as we need to. You have a right, I believe, to be quoted accurately.” (93:13, John U. Bacon)

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Key Segment Timestamps

• 02:34 – Setting up why the Edmund Fitzgerald matters personally to the host/guests
• 06:02 – Lake Superior’s geography, scale, WWII significance
• 10:32 – Why Great Lakes shipping is more dangerous than ocean shipping
• 14:36 – How Gordon Lightfoot’s song preserves (and shapes) the legend
• 19:04 – The work, pay, and life of Fitzgerald’s crew—real people behind the myth
• 34:01 – The Fitzgerald’s superstitious and challenging launch
• 43:30 – The fateful final voyage: weather, route, captain’s decisions
• 61:07 – The actual catastrophe: evidence, theories, the final moments
• 81:14 – Shipping safety after Fitzgerald: “not one” comparable tragedy in 50 years
• 84:10 – Engaging the families, survivor’s stories, the personal impact
• 98:13 – Gordon Lightfoot’s creative process and the song’s immediate resonance
• 113:46 – Journalism, family trust, and the meaning of telling these stories honestly

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Tone & Original Language

The episode is conversational, irreverent, and full of regional humor and pathos, but deeply respectful toward the tragedy and the dead.

• Sailor slang and technical terms are explained, sometimes in detail, but the podcasters trust their largely outdoors-savvy audience to keep up (“Frog here… You can do that all day long.” – Steven Rinella).
• Bacon is candid (“I’m taking advantage… those voyagers were badasses”), and Steven often prompts with genuine curiosity.
• Emotional moments—especially recalling families’ stories and last words—are met with respectful pauses.

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Conclusion

This episode stands out as an emotionally rich, fact-filled exploration of a legendary shipwreck, but more importantly, it humanizes the men behind the myth, bridges music and memory, and chronicles how natural elements, industrial ambition, and ordinary lives collide on the Great Lakes. Both Steven and John deliver a show that is at once a tribute, a detective story, and a piece of living history—sure to resonate with anyone who knows the chill of a November gale or the echo of a bell rung 29 times.

Recommended for:

• Fans of history, music, and maritime adventure
• Anyone interested in how stories, songs, and families keep memory alive
• Readers of The Perfect Storm or Dead Wake
• Listeners seeking something both informative and moving

Find John U. Bacon’s book: johnubacon.com
Support the families and maritime preservation at: [Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, Whitefish Point]

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“We are holding our own.” — The last words from the Fitzgerald, echoed by every family who remembers.

Transcript

[John U. Bacon]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[John U. Bacon]

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[Steven Rinella]

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[John U. Bacon]

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[Steven Rinella]

This is the Me Eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely bug bitten, and in my case, underwearless podcast.

[John U. Bacon]

You can't predict anything.

[Steven Rinella]

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[John U. Bacon]

There's one like.

[Brody]

This is.

[Steven Rinella]

This is the one. This is one of the most exciting conversations for me because this is something that I like. I'll just come out and say it. We're. We're here to talk about the, the, the Edmund Fitzgerald, which is like weird, like I was one year old, but when it happened. But it's, it's sort of, I don't know, man has haunted and inspired.

[John U. Bacon]

My.

[Steven Rinella]

Whole life, being from that neck of the woods.

[John U. Bacon]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

The second opening I was going to use is how I've never done this before, but I want to dedicate this episode to Drost Fitz, Poot Maggot, my brother Danny. This one's for you and everyone at the Porthole in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan side.

[John U. Bacon]

Been there. You guys probably don't know this. There are two towns called Sault Ste. Marie right across the river from each other. Because why wouldn't you do that, right? One's us, one's Canada. Canada produces NHL hall of Famers, the Esposito Brothers Tony and Phil, et cetera, et cetera. Gretzky played there for a while. The American side produces guys like us.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

He. I'll introduce you in a minute.

[John U. Bacon]

Don't worry, we'll get to that.

[Steven Rinella]

I tell the story every other episode. We're sitting there and we're watching Uncle Gord. You know, I'm talking about Gordon Lightfoot and he's doing his show. He's got a lot of hits. People don't realize how many hits.

[John U. Bacon]

Oh yeah, they're in the book.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. But then later in the. Later, not the episode, later in the concert. This will kind of date it because your book, the Gales of the Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John U. Bacon, should you want to find out what the U stands for. Good luck. Not Ulysses.

[Randall]

He's very tight lipped about it.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

That's right.

[Steven Rinella]

Because I was struggling with that professionally this morning.

[John U. Bacon]

Justice. Morning.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Okay. You're about 20.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

Or it'll be blank in the place just. I mean.

[John U. Bacon]

Erupts.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

Not.

[Steven Rinella]

No, it erupts. But that's home turf.

[John U. Bacon]

That's very much home turf.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. I mean you're looking out, you know, you're looking out on white. We used to fish in Whitefish Bay. And like.

[John U. Bacon]

Dude.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

If you're fishing in Whitefish Bay. Whitefish Bay, Lake Superior is 160 miles by 350 miles. It's as big as the state of Virginia. It's bigger Than Ireland. People don't realize this unless you get up there. If you're up there, of course, you can't see across any of the Great Lakes. If you're in the middle of Lake Superior, you can't see either side. It's not because of the mist or the fog. It's because of the curvature of the earth. It's just too damn big. So there you go. So if you're out there, by the way, you know what you're doing, obviously. And Sault Ste. Marie is where the Soo Locks are. That's the bottleneck of US Industry. So all the iron ore, the copper, I know you guys got it here in Butte. Copper, the iron ore, limestone, all comes from the northern part of the Great Lakes. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Upper Peninsula. It's gotta go through this one spigot, this very tight widget at the Soo Locks. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Cause Lake Superior falls 23ft to Lake Huron or something.

[John U. Bacon]

Well done, young man. This guy passes the fish.

[Steven Rinella]

Caught many a fish out of those falls.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go. Exactly. It's a good place to catch them, actually. So During World War II, they built a new lock because I had to get all the iron and all the steel from up there down to build at Willow Run, where the Ford Motor Company was. If you've seen Ferrari versus Ford, that's what it's all about. They're cranking out one B24 bomber an hour, every hour for three years during World War II. So they build a new.

[Steven Rinella]

Say that again.

[John U. Bacon]

One B24 bomber, which. Which has 1.5 million parts. I looked it up. They create a.1 per hour, every hour for three years, nonstop. There's Rosie the Riveter, all this stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

Almost as fast as they were shooting them down.

[John U. Bacon]

Almost as fast, but not quite as fast. And that's how you win the war. So FDR, during World War II, stationed 7,000 soldiers where you were at the Soo Locks. It was the most guarded position in North America during World War II.

[Steven Rinella]

Seriously?

[John U. Bacon]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Because they're worried about saboteurs.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

The only way you can get there.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

But they recognized that. It was like.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Sort of like the perineum of the world, man.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

That's the name of the episode right there. Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

I gotta stay moose for this one, people. I've done about 30, 40 interviews. We've done. Didn't expect CBS and everything else. Yeah, I gotta. I got. I gotta widen my strike zone here a little bit.

[Randall]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.

[Steven Rinella]

I think Istanbul probably is a good.

[John U. Bacon]

Is another candidate here.

[Steven Rinella]

Here's what. Here's a word that has been used on this show. Hampton Sides. Hampton side's been on the show a couple times. Here's what Hampton Sides says about the Gails. November here is a work of spectral beauty destined to be a classic. Readers of Sebastian Younger's the Perfect Storm. He's been on the show. Eric Larson's dead Wake, we should put that on our list of people to get on the show. And Nathaniel Philbrick's in the Heart of the Sea will love this deeply reported tale from our vast inland ocean. With John U. Bacon's graceful and poignant retelling, the saga of the Edmund Fitzgerald now takes its rightful place among the world's greatest legends of shipwrecks and tapentious. Tempestuous.

[Randall]

Tempestuous.

[John U. Bacon]

You got it.

[Steven Rinella]

Who got it?

[John U. Bacon]

You got it. Tempestuous.

[Steven Rinella]

Cs. It's from Hampton Sides. There's a bunch of good quotes on the back here. Ken Burns, he's been on the show. John U. Bacon has done it again. This is another riveting narrative that puts facts on a still memorizing legend. But this is more than getting the details right. Bacon has distilled the essence of the story and rendered a huge monument to those lost. To those lost and a great gift to the rest of us. Ken Burns FILMMAKER I'm excited to tuck in. I haven't read it. I'll tell you what I did do is I looked at some of the pictures. It's just heartbreaking to see the pictures of the guys I had. Weirdly, in my life. I realized I've never looked at a picture of anyone that died on that boat.

[John U. Bacon]

Stephen. That's exactly why I wrote the book. Wrote the boat book. I can't get that word right. And people ask me what drove me. Yes, I want to find out what happened. And that's always Part of the mystery here, of course, and we advance certain theories and we probably diminish other theories. But I'm not here to close that loop because you really can't. There are no witnesses. All 29 men went down with the ship. Aunt Ruth, who's the mother of Bruce Hudson, Ohio State student who takes a couple summers to get in the Lakes. He's a 22 year old deckhand who goes down with the ship. And that's her only child, which I can't fathom. She had a great line. She said only 30, no, 29 men in God. And no one's talking, so we're all trying to guess. So what did drive me? And that's what it was. Who were these 29 men? All right, what were their jobs like? What were their lives like? What were their families like? At home I interviewed half the families. They talked for the first time. This. I got six crewmen who'd been on the ship obviously before it went down. And those are not easy to find. There's no list anywhere. And I got them all to talk. And it's just fascinating how it all works and I learning the process. Here's a fun fact for your listeners who'd be into this for sure. You talk to Great Lakes sailors. By that don't mean the guys with the sails, of course. These are commercial shippers. Copper, like I said, copper, iron, all this stuff. They tell me consistently that sailing on the Great Lakes is more dangerous than sailing on the ocean. And that blew my mind. I grew up in the Great Lakes, so did you. How can that possibly be? And it's a few reasons. One is salt water. Salt water on the ocean, on the Great Lakes. And by the way, do hand gestures work really well in radio?

[Steven Rinella]

I bet you for some people they do. It depends on how you're listening.

[John U. Bacon]

Well, if you got the premium package, you'll get this one. So on the Great Lakes, you've got these sharp pointy waves at the top, like mountain ranges, basically. On the ocean, the salt smashes those down so they're nice and smooth.

[Steven Rinella]

Is that right?

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, you get smooth roller coasters and they're twice as far apart. It spreads them out. And on the ocean you get these storms from 500 miles away, 1,000 miles away. So by the time the waves get to you again, you have this general roller coaster, still no fun. And you've seen perfect storm. But it's manageable on the Great Lakes they're sharp and pointy like mountain ranges. They're twice as close together on the ocean they're 10 to 16 seconds apart. On the Great Lakes are 4 to 8 seconds apart. What does that mean? That means you can have the bow of your ship in one 30 foot wave, nothing in the middle and your stern in another 30 foot wave. These ships are 700ft long and in between you have 26,000 tons of iron. That's 4,200 adult elephants. That's enough steel, enough iron, sorry, to make 7,000 cars. What happens? It bends down, it sags, then you go over the next wave and it hogs and it sags and it hogs and it sags and hogs. Bend a paperclip back and forth 10,000 times, that's how many waves you get in a day. What's going to happen? Paperclip's gonna snap sooner or later. The Bradley In 1958, I got a chapter on that. We have witnesses. It actually snaps in half between two waves.

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[John U. Bacon]

The morale. I never even thought picture that the.

[Steven Rinella]

Bow and stern would. I just imagine the bow and stern would cut in, into the water and it would never have enough to lift.

[John U. Bacon]

It like it does. These waves are lifts the center, these waves are. Don't mess around with the waves, man. One of these waves is the same weight as two locomotive engines. One wave. And these guys get these waves every four to eight seconds. And the night of this, November 10, 1975, it's the storm of a century. They got 100 mile per hour winds, that's hurricane force. At that point the waves were 30ft regularly, which is still pretty intense. This ship only has 11ft out of the water. So 30ft means you're underwater 20ft every time this happens, every four to eight seconds, that takes a toll. But then we now know from computer models that if you saw that many 30 footers, you saw 1040 footers, you saw 3 or 450 footers and you saw 1 or 260 footers. And as one of the experts told me, this ship ended up in exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time. And it was the only ship in that one hour area, basically. So there's part of your answer.

[Steven Rinella]

We started out talking about.

[John U. Bacon]

Sorry, sorry about that tangent, by the way.

[Steven Rinella]

No, no, that's all. You can do that all day long. Frog here. We started out talking about Gordon Lightfoot as kind of like a touch point where many, many people, like undeniably many people, when they hear the Edmund Fitzgerald, they know what that means because of the song entirely.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, no question.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

That's good.

[Steven Rinella]

Like, the object is the. The sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald. And it's like. Shadow is like.

[John U. Bacon]

That's perfect, Gordon.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

I will say it. From the. From the mountaintops. Absolutely not.

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[John U. Bacon]

From 1875 to 1975, there are 6,000 commercial shipwrecks on the Great Lakes. That's one per week, every week for a century.

[Steven Rinella]

Wow, man.

[John U. Bacon]

Really? 30,000 men went down. That's one a day, every day for a century. Wow. And how many do we know? We know one. We know the Edmund Fitzgerald for exactly the reason you said.

[Steven Rinella]

And La Salle is the Griffin.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Well, that was the first ship.

[John U. Bacon]

That was the first ship.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

That's exactly right. And at the time, the biggest ship, period, on the Lakes. But, yeah, without that, there's no way. There's 6,000. We know one. Without the song, there is no book. It's just that simple.

[Steven Rinella]

Really.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Yes. What am I doing here? Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

So, like, you've written books on hockey, Football.

[John U. Bacon]

Yep.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

And it's my second. The previous one was called the Great Halifax Explosion.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, that's right.

[John U. Bacon]

From 1917.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. Okay.

[John U. Bacon]

I'm sorry. From 2017 is when the book came out. 1917, this ship called the Mont Blanc. World War I is leaving Gravesend Bay, New York. That's a pretty good name. With £6 million.

[Steven Rinella]

Gravesend.

[John U. Bacon]

Gravesend. How about how prophetic, Right. It's leaving Gravesend Bay, New York, basically New York with 6 million pounds of high explosives. That's TNT, not gasoline.

[Steven Rinella]

Like hauling high explosives.

[John U. Bacon]

Hauling high explosives. High explosives don't need oxygen to blow up. One good bump and it happens. And it's in Halifax harbor on the way to World War I to blow up Germans is the idea. I'm sure and instead it bumps into another ship. A fire starts. Well, the guys in the Mount Blanc, they know what the hell's gonna happen. So they get in the rowboats and get out of there. French crew, the ship slips at 8:45 in the morning. Ghost ship slips perfectly into Pier 6 at the base of Halifax. The timing's cruel because the kids are walking to school, everyone's walking to work, and it's burning. So they're all gonna come down to watch the burning ship. They have no idea what's on it.

[Steven Rinella]

And how long is this after everybody bailed off?

[John U. Bacon]

About 15 minutes.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, okay. Very fast.

[John U. Bacon]

So pretty fast, yeah. And then at 904.35, we know exactly when. Cause all clocks stopped. A 2 million high, 2 million, 2 mile high mushroom cloud. The first in the world's history. 1/5 the power of the atomic bomb blows half the city away of 50,000 people. And Oppenheimer, of course, who built the A bomb. See the movie Oppenheimer, he talks about this. He's the one who did the math. The only model they had for Hiroshima was this. So this 1/5 the power of the A bomb. But people in Boston sent two ships, two trains, 100 doctors, 300 nurses, and a million bucks, which back then's a lot of money. And they of the 9,000 wounded, they saved like 95%, which should not have happened with the medicine at the time. That's what made the US and Canada allies. And I know this because my mom's Canadian. So trust me, if you want a different version of the War of 1812, give a Canadian two beers and you're going to hear a whole different version of how all that went down. So I'm a hockey guy. I speak from experience here. That was my first foray. There's a long answer.

[Steven Rinella]

Sorry.

[John U. Bacon]

That was my first foray into that. That allowed me to write this book. Without that book, the publishers never would have given me money for this book.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[John U. Bacon]

So that proved I could get off.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Great question. That's another thing. Dude, again, I grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, not too far from Muskegon. We grew up to Traverse City and so on. I've swam in all these lakes. I've sailed on two or three of them. I thought I knew them. I didn't know anything. 95% of the stuff in that book I had no idea about. And one thing is how incredibly important Great Lakes shipping is. The French Voyagers, here's your predecessors here in the Meat Eater podcast. These guys were badasses. I can say that on your show and I can't say that normally. So I'm taking advantage.

[Steven Rinella]

No, we might bleep it out.

[John U. Bacon]

Oh, man. Captain Bow, I was killed to my right over here. Here's my one chance. Finally, Those voyagers had 30, 40 foot canoes carved out of one one tree. They got 400. They got 400 million beaver pelts in two centuries. Almost made beaver extinct. But they're wearing those hats in Europe, so they. That's billions of dollars of that. Then you got lumber. More money is made by lumber than the gold rush. You got grain. The Great Lakes supplies the world with food, basically. And a lot of your food comes. All the cereal companies are based in Battle Creek, Michigan, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for a reason. But then you got, like I said, copper, which now you mine here. Limestone, you need to make, turn iron into steel. And iron, it was and probably still is the biggest producer of iron in the United States. Here's a fun fact for you. So this is Silicon Valley before Silicon Valley. After World War II, the Great Lakes states, five of the top seven were all around the Great Lakes. Only California and Texas were in that pile. Here's a fun fact for you. 1960 census, what great Lakes city was bigger than Miami? Tampa, Jacksonville, Nashville and San Jose, California. Cleveland, Toledo, Toledo, Ohio was bigger than all those. Is how big it all was. So Detroit was the epicenter of all this stuff. And I grew up in the shadow of that one. There you go at the tail end of that. But this is what they did. 37 of the top 100 companies were all based around Detroit. Tire makers, oil make, oil companies, steel companies, car companies, GM's number one, Ford's number three, Chrysler's number seven. That's. I mean, they had no competition after World War II. So this, this place is humming. They're making a lot of money. And these guys, the guys, 29 guys on the ship, the old guys, they grew up in the Great Depression. They grew up in World War II. Why do you have these? These, these jobs are hard, no question about it. But man, compared to being a minor or a farmer or a factory worker, you take it good union contracts, These guys are making good money. A deckhand in 75, Bruce Hudson, the guy I mentioned, he gets out of Ohio State University.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

He's a badass. He's. He's one of yours.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

He's got the long. The mutton chops, the long hair.

[Steven Rinella]

Looks like Randall.

[John U. Bacon]

Looks like Randall.

[Steven Rinella]

If he was, I like him already.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go. I'll show you. There you go. Go to the picture section. You'll know exactly what you're talking about.

[Randall]

That's what I do anyway, when I.

[John U. Bacon]

Pick up a book. Perfect. You're my guy. So this guy leaves Ohio State to be a deckhand. That's the lowest guy in the ship. Basically, he's making, in today's dollars, $180,000 a year. Even back then, he's making three times what a teacher makes. Four times.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[John U. Bacon]

And he's salting the money away, except for one indulgence. He's got a 1972 Dodge Challenger. Badass muscle car. Beautiful burgundy. We found the car. It's still in mint condition. It's still fantastic. Still has a sticker of Columbia Transportation, which leased the Amethyst Herald.

[Randall]

I'm looking at it right now.

[John U. Bacon]

There's the sticker right there.

[Steven Rinella]

No shit, right?

[John U. Bacon]

That car. That was last year. We took that photo.

[Steven Rinella]

I looked through these Pictures of my 10 year old this morning. Then I kind of choked up because we were listening to the song Will get you.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Oh.

[John U. Bacon]

No matter what happened, they're gonna finish the season. That car is waiting for him on the dock in Toledo three days later. The Captain McSorley. I'll get to him in a bit. He's gonna retire after this run after 30 some years. 40 years in the Great Lakes, promising his wife, all these guys. So they're gonna get in that car and bomb across out west where you guys are, to go to Colorado to get some Coors beer. Because in 1975, that was exotic. And you gotta be old enough to remember that one, by the way.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, yeah. Cause they used to make all those. All those movies. Smokey and the Bandit.

[John U. Bacon]

You got it.

[Steven Rinella]

Like Burt Reynolds built his career on Ohio.

[Randall]

This story, that photo really is speaking to me.

[John U. Bacon]

There we go.

[Steven Rinella]

I think he's an Ohio man.

[Randall]

If I did a couple cycles on a glp, one I think would be. Would be looking quite similar.

[John U. Bacon]

Well, Ohio man, 1/3 of the crew comes from Duluth, 1/3 from Toledo, one third from Cleveland. So a lot of Buckeyes. This guy was a Buckeye also. But then he finds out in September, phone call back to the Port Bar in Silver Bay, Minnesota. Beautiful spot, the Silver Bay Municipal Bar. And I've been there, of course, for hard hitting investigative journals and people. That's all I'm doing here. Gotta get out all the bars, Stephen. And the bartender who served him, Stephen Burns, is still, he was 18 at the time. He's 68 now. He's still there.

[Steven Rinella]

You're kidding me.

[John U. Bacon]

Dude, I got so lucky on research again and again and again at the President's Lounge in Superior, Wisconsin. He's still there. He served him the night before they left. So I'm getting all these guys. So Hudson finds out by payphone that his girlfriend in Toledo, who's a waitress, Cindy Reynolds, vivacious blonde and all that, she says, surprise, I'm pregnant. And okay, you got that phone call. You're not ready for that. So I'm not going to ask for personal experience here who's gotten that phone call and who hasn't. But you can imagine if you haven't that you, you pause and go, oh my gosh. And he says the right stuff. He says, don't worry, we're going to move in together and we'll raise the child ourselves. And when she hears that, she goes, okay, go ahead and go on that trip. Because that's November, the kids not due until June. So now he thinks he's going to marry this girl, of course. But these are the stories that happen before November 10, 1975. And you got to care about the guys before they get on the ship. That's kind of my rule. So these are real guys. I mean, these are guys, these are your neighbors. They had plans, they had futures. And of course, no one thinks this is going to happen.

[Steven Rinella]

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[Steven Rinella]

That iron ore would come out of the Iron Ranges, like in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, out of the. The Iron Mountain, Huron range.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Because they're smelting it down there.

[John U. Bacon]

Exactly. They smelled it right on the dock, man. It's a very efficient process. These pellets called taconite. Should have brought some little rusty Pebbles. Guy figured out how to do that. You know, how. Fracking reinvigorated. Obviously, drilling here in the United States, we're out of the easy stuff so we can start fracking. All the easy iron ore is gone after World War II. We used it up for World War II. So what do we do? We're screwed. Well, this one professor in Minnesota figures out how to pelletize this iron ore, the scrap heap called taconite. You can actually use it if you process it and so on. We've been using taconite now for 80 years. That's what we're on. So this guy figures it out. 500 million pebbles of this stuff go on a ship. It's dirty, it's rusty, it's heavy. I've been on. They tell you to wear a hat. I've been on two of these ships, by the way, the Arthur Anderson. I was out with them that night. And I've been on the Wilfred Sykes, also out with them that night. And they give you a helmet, you know, when you. That stupid writer guy, right? Okay. Land lover with a soft hands. Here's a helmet. Don't do anything stupid. So you put the helmet on and you realize very quickly there, There are Pellets of the stuff nailing your head right now as you walk to the ship. Because they're loading.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh so.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

You're not going to believe it. It's 26,000 long tons. It's a British measurement. It's actually bigger than us tons. Why they do that, who knows. But it's equivalent of 4,200 adult elephants. Enough iron on that ship to build by itself 7,000 cars and they make 50 runs a year. So one ship, the MFS Gerald per year gives you enough iron to build 350,000 cars in the course of its 18 years. Enough iron to build 6 million cars. That's one ship. That's what? The sheer scale of all this is just mind blowing. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And that thing, I didn't know that thing was making 40 some trips per year.

[John U. Bacon]

50. Yeah. And I mean it's non stop. It's nine months out of the year. And trust me, you're either loading or you're sailing or you're unloading. I took a Skip Barber race car class years ago for the Detroit Grand Prix. He said, you either put your foot on the gas, your foot on the brake, if you do anything else, you're losing. So you're either going as fast as you can or as slow as you can. These guys, same thing. If you, if your ship gets into Zug Island, Detroit, a nasty little spit of land, at 3 o' clock in the morning they're unloading and then at 7 o' clock in the morning they're loading and then, then they're sailing. And they don't wait for anybody or anything. You're constantly moving and I was kind of wondering, if shipping's this big, it was a great line from William Sutton. This is dangerous, why do it? Willie Sutton, the old gangster, said someone once asked him, why do you rob banks? And he said, because that's where the money is. He's got a point. If it's this dangerous, 6,000 shipwrecks, why do it? Because of where the money is. Like I said, Detroit was that big a deal. Then I also wonder, okay, you know, I live in Michigan, you live in Muskegon. Muskegon is one of the best natural ports on the Great Lakes. And that's in the book several times. It's a very important port. And that's lumber. In the old days, the lumber from Muskegon built the first Chicago that burned down in 1871. So that's your town. I was wondering, why have I never met these guys? I mean, I know factory workers, miners, farmers, et cetera. I don't know any sailors. Because there are only 9,000 of them. 30 guys per ship, 300 ships in the heyday, it's only 9,000 guys spread out over eight states.

[Steven Rinella]

And also they all pass through the porthole.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

He was just on the ships nine.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, talk about that. There's kind of like three sort of. I don't know, man.

[Randall]

When you say launched, you mean that night or when the ship was.

[Steven Rinella]

When they christened it? Yeah, like the, the gal.

[John U. Bacon]

The first photo.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Randall]

Now, okay, It's Tigers baseball.

[John U. Bacon]

They sucked, okay? I'll grant you that simple point. But it was a huge deal. And people came in their Sunday best to see this, and they had a launch pad and she was up there at the bunting and all that in her Sunday best. Three whacks to break the champagne bottle. Sailors are notoriously superstitious and they're already getting the bad voodoo on that one. So that's not good. Took them about half an hour to get that ship into the water. Because guess what it weighs the numbers in there. Some ridiculous number of tons of crazy. It's the same height as the Detroit Renaissance center. The tallest one. 730ft. 729ft. But it's no wider than the run from home plate to first base. It's 75ft. It's because of the locks. Because the locks.

[Steven Rinella]

Is it really that narrow?

[John U. Bacon]

It's these. These things are nuts. And no ships like this are built anywhere else in the world. And if you're sh. I'm.

[Steven Rinella]

That thing is 25 yards wide. 75ft wide, exactly.

[John U. Bacon]

It's nothing crazy. You're old ruler at school. That's about the dimensions. It's 10 to 1. They don't. I mean in the ocean, they. They make them shorter and fatter like you should basically, like you would normally.

[Steven Rinella]

Man, I gotta just tell you a little deal about that. When we used to hunt ducks right at like Sugar island, Nevish Island, St. Mary's river, you have your ducks out, you have your decoys out. 18 inches of water. One of them sons of bitches come by, Whoosh. First off, all of a sudden your ducks are in 36 inches of water. When that passes and the water comes in, your decoys are laying in the mud when it fills back in.

[John U. Bacon]

And that's just when those. These big old ships are putting through. Yeah, they're not going.

[Steven Rinella]

Your decoys are in the mud and all of a sudden they come right.

[John U. Bacon]

Back up if you were hiding your fish.

[Steven Rinella]

But I would never guess that's only 75ft wide.

[John U. Bacon]

It's crazy.

[Steven Rinella]

They look like bigger than God.

[John U. Bacon]

But they are.

[Randall]

It's 700ft tall, you said.

[John U. Bacon]

Well, it's 729ft long.

[Randall]

Oh, long, long. Gotcha.

[John U. Bacon]

The Detroit Renaissance center, if you know where that is, they got the four shorter buildings and the tall one, it's the tallest building between Toronto and Chicago. It is 730ft. So there's a 73 story skyscraper on a side nose. Yeah, and a nose. Thank you. That's the phrase I need, Stephen. Thank you. But only 75ft wide. And again, if you're a shipbuilder, and these guys were great shipbuilders, you got three criteria. One, haul as much cargo as you can because that's how you make money. Two, fit the damn thing through the SU locks because they're only 75ft wide. Is that's the limit right there.

[Steven Rinella]

Like that sets the ship's design.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

So these things are very ported, designed for rough seas. Like I said, you can snap it between two waves. They roll back and forth, which is left and right. Hey, your podcast is awesome because your guys have been in boats, all right? They've been out fishing and so on. When you're facing waves, you think smashing the waves is bad With a V haul. No, it's not. It's broadside. That'll screw you up. All right. In the trough, baby. Exactly, Exactly, Brody. It's exactly what happens with these ships. Where do you not want to be? In the trough. And that's what's going to happen later on. So smash into waves sucks. And one of the guys, I got one guy, Rick Barthuli. You guys would love this guy. He's got looks a bit like my buddy Randall over here. He's got people, good people, self educated guy, very smart, likes hot dogs. Likes hot. Oh, hell yeah. So he does not own a computer. He has not got the Internet. All he has is a cell phone. He's off the grid, basically, except for the cell phone. So took me a year to find this guy. Another year to convince him to talk to me. He's the last guy left, to my knowledge, of anybody on the Arthur Anderson that night, which is one hour behind the fits, taking the same route. And they're the ones communicating back and forth. So he's as close as we can get to what's it like to be on this thing. And he says, you know, you think you're smashing this wave unless you've been on one of these ships, you have no idea what this is like. Every wave is a train wreck. It goes bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang as it kind of crunches down. And then it stretches out again. Then it goes bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And that's 48 seconds. 20 foot waves. You ain't sleeping. There's no way. And they got 30 and 40 foot waves. So that's how they designed them. And it's ten by one. It's crazy.

[Brody]

Has that design changed since then?

[John U. Bacon]

No. No, because the soo locks haven't changed and they're finishing another one. The first one since 1968. They're doing that one right now. And trust me, they're going to get bigger. Now. You got thousand footers that are still 75 foot wide.

[Steven Rinella]

You're kidding me.

[John U. Bacon]

How nuts?

[Randall]

How deep are they sitting in the water?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Loaded, unloaded.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

With big mariners, people actually know what the hell?

[John U. Bacon]

Expired captain's license. You're as close as I get, Randall. I'll take your expired captain. Captain's license. Yeah. You guys know what it's all about. So freeboard is the distance between the water and the top of your deck. And the US Coast Guard and others, ABS have got regulations on this, okay? When the ship was built, 1958, it was allowed 14ft of freeboard, and then therefore, about 25ft below the water.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, on these things, you see those markers?

[John U. Bacon]

That is the Plimsoll Line. I got a chapter on it. You're on the Plimsoll Line. A British politician from the 1840s, who. Plimsoll, who made this line. And everyone ignored it. Except Lloyds of London, the insurance company.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, they care.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Brody]

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

[John U. Bacon]

It's divided into three main cargo holds. And I've heard stories about guys who fell into those. Back then you could drink on board and things like this. And drugs were prevalent. Guys who fell in and died while trying to hose it down. So don't drink and hose is my advice on that one. But yes, that's three gigantic holes. That's most of the 700ft.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

And I mean I'm standing there two feet away from these things and it's only like two feet. I mean I could easily fall in. It's one of those things where they tell you don't be an idiot. So. But yes, that's a very good question. And they unload it now they've got self unloaders, but back then they scooped it out. So. Yeah, so it's a crazy setup to say the least.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Every time there's nothing to bring up there.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[John U. Bacon]

Anything you put on a ship, you put on a ship. It's just far more efficient.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[John U. Bacon]

So you're right. And also when you're coming back, you're riding high. That's when you fill the ballast tanks with water to give you some. If you don't fill them with water, the screws, the propellers, which are 30ft high, they won't even touch the water. So you gotta weigh it down.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, no kidding.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah. You'll just grind it to death.

[Randall]

Huh?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[John U. Bacon]

So you lose 10, you know, 5, 10ft or something.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

So.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

They take them. Whenever they take off.

[Odoo Advertiser]

Trust me.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

This guy might be a genius. Exactly. Right? The two problems they had back then, that's.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a stretch, but I know that.

[Randall]

I actually like the positive vibes in.

[Steven Rinella]

The room right now. But I just know the wind.

[John U. Bacon]

Assume that's rare, random.

[Steven Rinella]

I know the wind in the wires made a tattletail sound.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go.

[Steven Rinella]

He knows what you left fully loaded.

[Brody]

He doesn't pay any attention to the weather. When we're in Alaska, Skips.

[John U. Bacon]

But now.

[Steven Rinella]

Now what the forecast is. I'll say, let's go have a look.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[John U. Bacon]

Oh, yeah. And they.

[Steven Rinella]

And it's really worse than January.

[John U. Bacon]

It's worse than December. It's worse than January because by then winter has arrived and the water and the air get along. They're not in contrast.

[Steven Rinella]

I see.

[John U. Bacon]

So it's when they're fighting, you get waves. So. And on top of that. And you're right about the forecasting. So a few things happen. One, it's 70 degrees on November 9th. The day they take off at 2 o' clock in the afternoon, it's 70 degrees in Duluth. Wow. And it ain't supposed to be 70 degrees in Duluth. All right. You think that's great news? It's bad news. What I learned doing this book from the experts, the longer winter takes to arrive, the nastier it shows up. It's like water behind a dam. And the more water you get when that dam finally breaks, the worse it's going to be. So 70 degrees on Sunday is really bad news.

[Steven Rinella]

Just too warm, water's too warm.

[John U. Bacon]

Water, water's too warm. And the air is. The air switches. It's going to be. It's going to happen fast and nasty. Isn't that like this year everything's been real hot up there? Yeah, basically, but exactly right, Corinne. And if it happens suddenly, these guys will know better. Yeah.

[Brody]

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

[John U. Bacon]

They actually do. And what these guys told me, that you have faraway storms in the ocean. As I said earlier on, the Great Lakes are called locally occurring storms, which means the damn thing right over your head. So you're fishing in the morning and you're rowing for your dear life. Two hours later, it happens very fast. So winter's gonna come from the Alberta Clipper, from obviously Western Canada, across the Dakotas, Minnesota, and that's going to run all the way across 350 miles of fetch. And you guys know what fetch is across Lake Superior? That's nasty cold, dry air. They knew, they expected that. Basically. They didn't know how bad. They did not know about another storm. They should have. Some of the guys did know about this in the weather forecasting business. Hot, wet air coming in from California, Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa, straight up to the Great Lakes. These two storms are going to meet right in front of Whitefish Bay, your old fishing spot. Whitefish Bay is home plate. That's where you're trying to get to. After two days getting across Lake Superior, now you got. It's like a catcher in front of home plate blocking your way home. And this captain does not know that. So that's tragic. And then what happens? So he does know he's in for a storm. So he and Bernie Cooper, Arthur Anderson, they're buddies, but they're still competing, of course, to get there first. And why did he compete? If you beat a ship by a minute, you beat them by a couple hours because you will get to The Sulacs first, only one ship at a time. You will get to the dock first, you unload first. That's four or five hours a minute is can be a half a day. So these guys are competitive dudes to say the least.

[Steven Rinella]

But they still like.

[John U. Bacon]

But they still get along.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, but they still come together. Is it just coincidence that they're sailing together?

[John U. Bacon]

No, it's not.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[John U. Bacon]

And Norman, he'd never do that. And McSordy was the best captain on the Great Lakes. Captain when he's 31 years old. He's been youngest captain in the Great Lakes when he became a captain at 31. Now he's 63. He's been a captain more than half his life. He's the most aggressive captain. He never turns around, he never takes the northern route. He never weighs anchor. He just goes, goes, goes. So the company likes that. He's the best in rough weather. They all say, got a witness, Craig Sullivan, who's on the ship in 72. He said, I saw that man park 729ft of steel between two other freighters with three feet in either side and not touch a damn thing. Like you're parking your. You're parallel parking your Ford F150. This man was the best. And he's also beloved, which those guys were not back then. These guys would throw hot coffee at you, yell at cadets and all kinds of other stuff. They're tyrants, basically. This guy was so beloved, his crew would follow him from ship to ship. So you have the best ship in the Great Lakes. The longest, the fastest, the most luxurious. How about that? The best food.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, they had air conditioning in their bunks.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Those are like leather furniture and stuff like that.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Brody]

What was the advantage of taking the northern route?

[John U. Bacon]

Smart man, Brody.

[Steven Rinella]

Good job, Brody.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Fishing, man.

[John U. Bacon]

If you're in a bookstore in Milwaukee or Minnesota, you better explain a lot of stuff. So this is my. This is my gang. So you get the lee of the western shore, the northern shore. You're basically hugging Canada across Superior. Now, a few catches to that, though. One is the safe, rational thing to do. So I'm not one of those ones that dump on Masoni and say, screw the whole thing up. That's a rational move. Okay. All right. But few catches. One, one of the yours you already know. It's pay me now or pay me later. So. Okay, the first two legs are quieter and softer and not as windy and so on. But that third leg's gonna be hell. Cause now you're exposed, you have 350ft, 350 miles of fetch. And now those waves are hitting you broadside. This is the. You're in your bathtub and this is the drain. And go ahead, make some waves. What's gonna happen at the end? It's gonna be nasty at that end. So. And you're gonna be hitting those broadside. That's not what you want. All right, Your last leg, that's going to be about 10 hours. That's one problem. Second problem is it's 14 hours longer than the straight shot. All right? You just gave that Southern storm a 14 hour head start to get to Whitefish Bay first. And I posit in the book this.

[Steven Rinella]

Is the captain's call. Completely like, he's unilateral. That's what's happening.

[John U. Bacon]

Not a democracy. Yeah, the votes. One nothing on all decisions. You may consult. And he did. But it's one nothing. And you are therefore responsible for all decisions. Another guy out that night on the Sykes, he said, this is too nasty. And this is one of the best captains in the Great Lakes. Also probably the best at forecasting. And he says, we're tucking in. We're gonna go into the bay. And his crew is warning him and ride it out. Ride it out. And his crew is warning him, sir, if you do. Captain, if you do that and there's no storm, it's gonna be your ass with Cleveland, with the company. So those are the pros and cons you deal with now. McSorney no longer cares. This is his last trip. So, anyway, so, 14 hours. Here's the third problem. He does not know this route nearly as well. He takes the southern route 50 times a year. Really? A hundred back and forth. He's done that his entire career. 40 years at least. He's done this thousands of times. He knows all the islands. He knows all the stuff out there and the currents and everything else. He does not know this. I had two guys on the ship that year, and they said, we didn't take it in the last year and a half. Not once. The northern route. Got it. Why does that matter? It's superior. It's 1300ft deep. It's gigantic. Not quite. There's a little crappy pile of dirt called Caribou island in the northeast corner of Lake Superior. Right. When you take that final stretch down, it's one mile by three mile. It barely shows up on most maps. It's called Caribou Island. I have no idea why.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, can I interject?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Historically. Here's the crazy part. Like, Isle Royale.

[John U. Bacon]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Being a wolf. Moose Island.

[John U. Bacon]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

Historically, was a caribou. Lynx island.

[John U. Bacon]

I did not know that.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

Isle Royale is the nation's biggest. I'm sorry. It's the nation's only island national park, and it's 10 times the size of Manhattan. But no one knows that there was.

[Brody]

Caribou up there, like after 1900.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. No, in the modern. Like in. Like, modern America. Yeah, sorry. The biggest. During American history, there was a caribou Lynx Island.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Randall]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Biggest lake that's in the book. It's a iro is so big. 10 times the size of Manhattan. It's got a lake in the island with an island. With a lake.

[Randall]

Been there.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go, Randall.

[Randall]

Seen it with my own eyes.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Randall]

The worst boat ride I've ever been on was getting Dial Royal on the, on the Ranger three from the, from International Falls side.

[John U. Bacon]

Oh, God, that's brutal.

[Randall]

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

[John U. Bacon]

All right, we're getting pretty serious here. Here's the thing they used to do, the guys on those ships who work in those ships. I talked to one of those guys. I had to cut the damn thing, but this will be fun for you guys. I remember Dinty Moore, Hunter Stew and all that stuff. The one guy would start acting like he's sick with five foot waves. Five foot waves are enough to get these campers to sick. He had some Dinty Moore and he'd all of a go blah and spill the stuff. And his other buddy comes by and goes, oh, my God. He'd have a spoon and he'd start eating it. And then of course, the campers, the poor campers, they see that they're over the side.

[Steven Rinella]

So, okay, so I derailed. Yeah, Caribou Island.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

So. This episode is sponsored in part by BetterHelp. Now, winter's coming along. Days are getting short. There's a lot less daylight. There's a lot less going on outside at night. People kind of tend to, you know, button up in their home. It's time of year when you ought to start checking on people you love to make sure they're not alone, that they're feeling good about things. Okay. And as seasons change, right, and these days grow darker and darker, it can be a tough time for many. This November, better help was encouraging everyone to reach out, check in on friends, reconnect with loved ones, and remind the people in your life that you're there. Just as it could take a little courage to send that message or grab coffee with someone you haven't seen in a while. Reaching out for therapy can feel difficult too, but it's worth it. And it almost always leaves people wondering, why didn't I do this sooner? BetterHelp does the initial matching with a therapist for you so you can focus on your therapy goals. A short questionnaire helps identify your needs and preferences. And BetterHelp's 12 years of experience and industry leading match fulfillment rate means they typically get it right the first time. If you aren't happy with your match, you switch to a different therapist at any time from their tailored recommendations this month, don't wait to reach out. Whether you're checking in on a friend or reaching out to a therapist yourself, BetterHelp makes it easier to take that first step. Our listeners get 10% off their first [e-mail] Meater that's better. H E L P.com Meater hey, it's.

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[John U. Bacon]

So Caribou Island. It's one mile by three mile. It's called Caribou Island. I have no idea. It's a swamp with mosquitoes. It's nasty. The caribou left. If they're ever on there, they swam across to Canada long ago. It's no reason to go there. But in front of it to the north is something called Six Fathoms Shoal. You guys know what a fathom is? My other folks usually don't. It's 6ft 6 fathoms is therefore 36ft. If you're drafting 29ft on a good day, and this is not a good day, you have no reason to be anywhere near this. Nothing to gain. But it's also misleading. It's not six fathoms. In some places it's 11ft. That's no deeper than your backyard pool. So you have no reason to be anywhere near this thing. Why would he come anywhere near it?

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[John U. Bacon]

The storm now is 70 mile per hour winds, 30 foot waves. It's pretty nasty. Not quite the worst he's ever seen, but getting there. His long radar is knocked out, his short radar is knocked out by waves. By waves, exactly right. Thank you. And Whitefish Point. And you've seen that lighthouse. It's the one lighthouse on the Great Lakes everyone's dying to see. That light, of course, goes out that night. The radio beacon that signals the ships where you are also goes out because of why the storm. I mean, the storm knocked the lighthouse out. Well, dominoes start falling. Power outage and just dumb luck in some cases. So. So there you are. So now you have truly sailing blind. All you have are what they call charts and we call maps. And it's about as big as this table. These things are like four by five. They're huge. And in these, in the chart room you got these gigantic drawers. One says Lake Huron, one says Lake Ontario. I mean, you pull out six or seven per lake. Now, if you're old enough and you kids have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, but AAA used to give something called a triptych, all right? And to put all your maps on a trip, all in an order. So if I'm going from Michigan to Montana, I would know how to do it. And it works pretty well. That's how these maps work. But if you skip ahead, you're screwed because now nothing makes sense. So if he does not know where he is. Tom Wider, a great hunter also, by the way, is also a sea captain in the Great Lakes. He said it's entirely possible he would have changed maps too soon. You're in 30 foot waves, you've not slept in 36 hours. You get what's called motion fatigue. That is like being drunk after 36 hours of these waves. And you've not taken this route in years. If he shifted his map too soon to get Whitefish Bay on the map because that's where he wants to go. The caribou area is still there, but it now disappears because the scale has changed. So you might not be Aware that you're anywhere near this. And the Anderson is convinced that they saw them on the radar go right over Six Fathom Shoal. If they did, it would explain why. Two hours later, he's talking to Bernie Cooper. That is the captain of the Memphis, Gerald McSorley, saying, My fence railing's down. I've got two vent covers blown off by the waves. A few other problems. And kind of in passing, I've got a list. All right. Okay. So you guys know what that means. That's my 30th term. I don't have to define to you guys, but tilting to the right, to starboard. All right. Not that big a deal at first. Two hours later, it's the first thing that he mentions. And these guys are very reluctant to admit anything is wrong with their ships for a few reasons. One, they're in competition. You don't put anything on the radio. You don't have to. Second of all, the whole macho aspect, man. We've all been on planes. We're experiencing a little turbulence here, people. Yeah, we're bouncing up and down 200ft. We'll be okay here in just a few minutes. That's what these guys are like. So for him to admit this much is very unusual. So now you got a pretty serious list. What does that mean? It means either taking water from the bottom or the load has shifted, or possibly both. And if they bottomed out at Six Fathoms Shoal, that could be the reason. Once you've starboard, all right, you can't steer.

[Steven Rinella]

Why wouldn't he have mentioned we hit.

[John U. Bacon]

Here's the bizarre part. And I could not believe this either, but I had 10 experts tell me it's true. You might not have known. And I thought, that's impossible.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

I've been on it.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

Manitowoc, right?

[John U. Bacon]

That's right. Yeah. Wiltsey is the captain of that ship. He said, I was leaving the breakwater one time, and the waves are so nasty, I thought I hit the breakwater. I had not. And I didn't know this stuff worked like that. It does. So even a good captain cannot be aware. So whether it tore hole or scraped it or whatever, we're not quite sure. But anyway, now you're listing. If you're listing, you can't steer properly. You're much more in danger of capsizing when you're going broadside.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

And like a three legged animal in the wild. And you guys know what those are like. All right. One good wave now can take you out. And when it reaches the point that they didn't want to be in, as I said earlier, the worst place, the worst time, 100 mile per hour winds and up to 60 foot waves. And at some point the ship Pride and come back up, we don't know. But that's the best guess.

[Steven Rinella]

The best guess right now is that it hit.

[John U. Bacon]

Did it hit something that I think if you're asking.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I know, like understanding that no one really knows, but like where is sort of the.

[John U. Bacon]

All right, let's get. Let's get down and dirty.

[Steven Rinella]

Sort of like academic consensus.

[John U. Bacon]

There is none. Okay. But I can tell you this, some new data in here. Dick Race, there's a name for you. He's the best diver in the Great Lakes. He died in 2002 when a 747 went in Lake Michigan in the 60s. He's the guy who found it when no one else could. The lakes are bigger than you think. He worked at the Chicago Police Department. He did his own work. He's the best in the lakes. Three guys who knew him well. Also the same thing. The company asked him to dive down six months later on Six Fathom Shoal.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, look for a strike.

[John U. Bacon]

Look for a strike. Exactly right, Stephen. And wherever that report is, by the way, I found the guy, Peter Grow, who's in charge of a thousand boxes, bankers, boxes of that company's files when it went bankrupt in 2004. He spent two years going through all these files. He found every box and went through them all except for three. The three involving the Edmund Fitzgerald. And no one signed him out. There's no trace. That's where his report is. I'm almost sure of it. And I couldn't find it. Dick Race reported on this. So his file is gone. We don't know where it is. And I tried like hell to find it. But he told three different guys in Chicago, Traverse City and Muskegon the exact same thing. I saw the Fitzgerald's paint on that bottom. I saw a rock nearby with scratches that no animal can make. That had to be from the ship.

[Brody]

So is that proof There wasn't, like, when they found the wreckage, there was, like, no, like, autopsy they could do on the wreckage?

[John U. Bacon]

Yes and no. And it gets us closer to it, but it's not definitive. Yeah, but anyway, so at seven o', clock, when Bernie Cooper calls him and he's the captain of the Anderson and he says, how are you making out with your problems? He says, and I quote, we are holding our own. And that is the ringing line from Kevin McSordy. Those are the last words from anybody on board. Whatever happened next? One that we say that people academically even agree on. Whatever happened was fast. And what's our proof on that? This guy is the best captain of the Great Lakes. If he had 10 seconds to get on an SOS with coordinates, he sure as hell would have done it. This guy's good. All right. The lifeboats were secured. The life jackets were where they left them. Only one guy we've seen in the bottom is wearing a life jacket. So whatever happened happened very fast. They say it went 35 miles per hour down to the bottom. It might have cracked on top.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

How come he didn't float?

[John U. Bacon]

Because he's inside the. Oh, inside the. They're all inside the ship.

[Steven Rinella]

Understood. Oh, they are?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Is that right?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

And how deep did it?

[Randall]

How deep did it.

[John U. Bacon]

Here's the weird part. So kind of an academic question. Did it crack on the surface as other ships had, or did it crack after it hit? And a lot of people say it cracked on the surface. And again, can't prove it either way. But here's a wild stat for you. It's down 530ft deep. Now, you better, you know, you can't dive down there for the hell of it. You better know what you're doing. Special gear, you know, licensed people, submersibles, all that stuff. So it's 530ft down, but this ship is 729ft long. So even if it hit the bow, you have 200ft out outside the water. All right, so that would certainly have cracked it at that point with all the weight on it. So either one could have happened. And I can't say.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I never thought of it.

[John U. Bacon]

It's taller than it is deep and it's 530ft deep.

[Steven Rinella]

How far are the two pieces apart.

[John U. Bacon]

About a quarter mile, about like that. And in between it's like one third the bow upright. So you can see the Edmund Fitzgerald on the side, one third the stern upside down. So we see in the book Edmund Fitzgerald upside down, which is sad to see, in the middle is about a third and it's just blown apart. And the tacanite is still down there and all 29 men as well. And the line from the song the Chippewa comes from a Newsweek story, but Gordon Lightfoot got the Great Lake, never gives up her dead. What that means is the lake, it.

[Steven Rinella]

Is said, never gives up her dead.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

No problem.

[John U. Bacon]

He's got it. He's right. The leg, it is said never honorary dead.

[Steven Rinella]

Honorary dead doctorate.

[John U. Bacon]

I call that a professional courtesy. Thank you.

[Steven Rinella]

This is real.

[John U. Bacon]

We need, we need a light moment. So that's good too. Yeah. The author of the book who paid $2,000 for the rights didn't get the lyric right. So thank you for that. Why is that? Because if you drown in Michigan, like Michigan, like Erie, almost anywhere you go in the United States, bacteria will eventually invade your body. And the bacteria do that. They are lighter than water, so your body starts floating up. So that's why they float up within a week or two, usually in drownings, fishermen included. On the Great Lakes, I'm sorry, On Lake Superior, you're so far down, it's dark all day long, it's pitch black. It's so cold, bacteria can't live there.

[Brody]

It's a sterile down there.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

One of them did for a while until she found out her. She's an only child. Also, Deb Shampeau just saw her two days ago in Milwaukee. She's a 16 year old girl. When her dad's ship goes down. And they were very close at first she wanted to. And his brother was in Vietnam. And here's a little story. He's 13 years old in the Great Depression when his dad dies suddenly. He's the oldest of five kids. What do you do if you're in rural. If you're in rural Wisconsin, at that point, you drop out of school and you start working. These guys are tough dudes. So he paid for his kid, you know, brothers to get through school. He joins the military, sends checks back. He was decorated himself, gets on a ship, makes good money, and gives the money back to his family. But he always promised his brother in Vietnam, if anything ever happens to you, I will go to Vietnam and I'll bring you back. And he said that more than once. So when this ship goes down, his brother wants to do the same thing. I want to go down and bring you back. But Deb Shampeau realized a. It's very dangerous. They've made three drives, three dives down there. No accidents, but it's very dangerous to do that stuff. Two, the other people are also on the ship. And she said, the Marines, you never leave your men.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

And how they're all accounted for, that.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

But I'm just surprising. Conditions were such that no one would be on deck. It'd be like laughable to be on deck.

[John U. Bacon]

No, exactly. And laughable is right. No offense. Railing even on top of that.

[Steven Rinella]

And so fast that no one ever attempted to. Like, no lifeboats ever washed ashore.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

I see.

[John U. Bacon]

And these things were destroyed.

[Randall]

Okay.

[Steven Rinella]

But no sign that someone had taken any kind of steps to do that.

[John U. Bacon]

The one life jacket is the only sign we have that anybody felt that, you know, doom was apparent. These guys usually didn't wear life jackets. Some of these guys couldn't swim. Seems crazy to me. But coast got. Never tested for it. And Ransom Cundy, there's a name for you. Nickname was Handsome. Ransom Cundy. He told his daughter, all it does is prolong the agony. So these guys. And yeah, you have 10 minutes in that water anyway, kind of a fatal.

[Brody]

It's like, why bother Kind of thing.

[John U. Bacon]

That's what that was the. That was the mindset.

[Steven Rinella]

So it's. It's. It's assumed that the men drown.

[John U. Bacon]

Yes, I think proven, basically. So 29 minutes.

[Steven Rinella]

That thing went down fast.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Brody]

What was going on with the other captain?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Brody]

Did he also take. He did take the northern route.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Right?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Randall]

And without an.

[Steven Rinella]

There's no reason to coming near the Six Fathom Shoal.

[John U. Bacon]

Exactly. That's death.

[Randall]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Radio or like, I mean, Bernie Cooper and the Anderson.

[Randall]

At what point. At what point do they realize something's happened?

[John U. Bacon]

They come to it slowly because again, he's fighting for his life. He's an hour behind. So the worst of it lasts about an hour. And that's where the Fitzgerald was. It's still bad when he comes through. 30, 40 footers, whatever, but. So he's keeping it monitored. But you only check it in every half an hour of an hour. But he loses them on the radar. That concerns him. But that's possible. That can happen. Then he tells his guys the power might have gone out on the ship, which does happen. Electrical systems can pop out. But after an hour, he realized this is not right, so he calls the Coast Guard. And I hate to be critical of the Coast Guard. These guys have saved thousands of lives. And I got many of them in the book. These guys risk their own lives. They're very, very good. But the Soo Locks Coast Guard station did not come through that night. They had two ships that did not go out.

[Steven Rinella]

It wouldn't have mattered.

[John U. Bacon]

It wouldn't have mattered. But you got to be ready. But anyway.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

No pun intended. Sorry. But the Captain Cooper of the Anderson calls the Sioux group in the Soo Locks and talking to Petty Officer Branch. This guy's young buck. And he asked Cooper to go from channel 16 to channel 12, because channel 16 is for emergencies. He's reporting Edmund Fitzgerald being missing. Is there a Greater emergency than that. I mean, what's even close? This guy's just not getting it. And Cooper's trying to get through to me. Hey, I think the ship is missing. When they finally get to Whitefish Bay at 9 o' clock at night, he's certain that it's gone. There's no reason why we wouldn't pass them. It wouldn't be in.

[Steven Rinella]

What time did the ship break apart?

[John U. Bacon]

Seven o', clock, 7:10. Somewhere in there that time of year.

[Steven Rinella]

Dark.

[John U. Bacon]

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's been dark for a while at that point it's like 4:30. As you know, that area. So the petty officer Branch testifies a few days later and asked to explain himself his various responses. And he says, I thought it was important, but at that time not urgent. And I can't explain that answer. So it doesn't. Again, it didn't matter as far as what happened, but it still, that's what Cooper's dealing with. When they get to Whitefish Bay, they've not even weighed anchor and Coast Guard says, can you go back out and look for the Fitzgerald says to who? Cooper of the Anderson.

[Steven Rinella]

To take an iron ore freighter and go look for it? Yes.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

A loaded freighter out and look for a freighter.

[John U. Bacon]

600Ft some. Oh, it's actually longer at that point. 700 some.

[Steven Rinella]

What the hell's he supposed to do?

[John U. Bacon]

I just gave a shrug for the radio. It's a fool's mission. And they know damn well that you don't lose 729ft of steel. It's a fool's mission. They know that. But in the Bradley in 58 and the Morrell in 66, great first person testimony we've got in the book from the guys. There are three guys in one raft and four guys in another raft and end up being two and one. Because the guys died on the raft and stayed on the raft. They didn't have the energy to throw them over at that point, these horrible wrecks. And they said, we're freezing. We have no energy to even grab a rope by the time they get us. What kept us going? You know, we're dying and so on. The only thing that kept us going was the thin thread of hope that somewhere out there is some Guy in the Coast Guard or somewhere else who's willing to risk his life to save mine. Because you can't save my life any other way without risking yours.

[Steven Rinella]

Got it?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Yes.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

I should have the thing I, I got on my PDF, my computer. How about that for a non fister response? I can find exact quote when it, when the Coast Guard captain tells him to go out, he, we have his quotes on what he said. Where's that damn thing? It's right there. I'll get it in a second. He said, dig time. Do you know what the conditions are like out there? And the guy doesn't answer. And Cooper says again, do you know what the conditions are like out there? And again he doesn't answer. And I said he didn't answer, but we can. He had no idea because even on Shore, with 20 footers going over your building on shore, if you weren't out there, you'd have no idea. And so Cooper knows this guy's asking a lot and he has no idea what he's asking for. But they didn't. He didn't even stop and think. I mean, you didn't like it, but you gotta go. And these guys are a different breed.

[Randall]

How long were they out there?

[John U. Bacon]

About 14 hours. Because that's how long it takes to go to make a loop.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

And the scary Loaded with all.

[Steven Rinella]

But that's the thing that I keep. I know I keep coming back this. But like loaded with all that iron ore and.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah. You can't drop it first and go back out. That's. That's part of your problem. I mean, his. His feet.

[Steven Rinella]

You gotta do. You're gonna.

[John U. Bacon]

It's crazy.

[Steven Rinella]

You're doing what, like, throw some ropes? Like you're going to try to pull up along. You're gonna try to pull that thing up alongside a life raft, I guess.

[John U. Bacon]

And. And they have in the past. They would try. And would it work? I mean, I don't know.

[Brody]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Or you'd find it adrift, I guess.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[Brody]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Exactly. 15 minutes takes an hour. Yeah. These things are not that. They're 60 miles an hour and they're big and slow. So you gotta. And I talked to captains about this. It's dark. You can't pick the right wave. It's too dark to see, like you're saying earlier. So just making that turnaround. And Barthuli, who's not an emotional guy, he said, trust me. When we got back into Whitefish Bay.

[Steven Rinella]

The second time, there's a lot of.

[John U. Bacon]

Guys who became very religious. Yes. Who had their come to Jesus moment on their way back. So they knew how bad it was. So those guys were impressive. The ocean guys did not go out. As I said earlier, John Hayes had sailed on both 23 years. The Great Lakes and 12 on the ocean. He said, the Great Lakes and the ocean, it ain't even close. And anybody who's sailed both will tell you the same thing. The salties always laughed at us until they got in the Great Lakes. Then they shut up pretty damn fast and start looking for safe harbor. And that night, a half dozen American Canadian ships went out. And all the Southeast stayed in Bay, so that's the difference.

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[Brody]

Has anything comparable happened since then?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Randall]

You should go out to lunch after this.

[John U. Bacon]

I admit my ignorance. I admit my ignorance about the Meat Eater podcast. I'm not kidding you. I'm getting the best questions. That's been very impressive. So 6,000 shipwrecks between 1875 and 1975. From November 10, 1975 to the present, almost exactly 50 years. Zero, not one. So you go from 6,000 in a century to zero for 50 years. And why is that? Just what you said Stephen, earlier. Forecasting is better. They also taking it more seriously. Communication. Don't just know the information. Tell the captain and tell the captain on a regular basis what they're in for today. So they had more technology back then. And one of my experts said, when do you fix anything? When it's broken. All right, nine, 11. We're complacent. We got smart about certain things. We could have done things then to be smarter. Of course, same thing here. But the biggest change I believe since then is simple common sense. The author photo there in the back is me at Whitefish Point. Is November 11th of last year of 2024, the day after the anniversary. I spoke with the families the night before. I'm looking at about 30, 40 mile per hour winds there. I don't look too happy. About 10 foot waves. Every single ship that day. And my computer program on my phone shows this. Every single ship was anchored in Whitefish Bay. And I guarantee you in the old days, not one. And if you're anchoring, you're fired. You're not gonna make it. Or ridiculed at least. So wait a day. Wait a day. The next day on the Lake Superior, after the ship went down, it was glass. Oh, you could have gone out one day later and made up all your time. Straight shot. So that's part of the tragedy. I'll add to the tragedy. Eddie Bindon, 47 years old, first assistant engineer, High in the pecking order. Handles the engine. Been married 25 years to lovely Helen. Her photo's in there in Cleveland area, more or less. He about to celebrate their 25th anniversary. He's about to retire after this trip as well. He gets from Superior, Wisconsin to Duluth to the jewelry store, because Superior didn't have one, apparently gets a very nice 25 year diamond anniversary ring. And for reasons only he knows, he does not pack it in his duffel bag. He's gonna see her in three days. She's gonna be there in the dock. They live two hours away. He gives it to a friend and tells his friend to mail this to my wife and gives the address.

[Steven Rinella]

That is so wild though, man.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

When we say the like, if I say the families or if you hear the families are there. Are there still 29 families? There's some like semi cohesive units or is it. Or some of the families sort of dissolved and some have dissolved.

[John U. Bacon]

Well, Eddie Bendon and his wife Helen. No kids.

[Steven Rinella]

I see.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

And she's. And she's.

[John U. Bacon]

She's deceased.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay, I see.

[John U. Bacon]

She was 47 at the time. So at 50.

[Steven Rinella]

So there's no, there's no. In that case, there's no family spokesman.

[John U. Bacon]

Three or four of the cases, they're not.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

He was, yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

I got three.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Well we didn't even intend to do that.

[John U. Bacon]

Well then no one decided that. There are accidents and there are accidents. We can talk about that another time. But anyway, so just to clarify, that.

[Steven Rinella]

Was our best accident.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go.

[Steven Rinella]

It was a genius moment.

[John U. Bacon]

The third one by the way. The trailers we call them. Everyone always says that. Worth the price of admission right there. But. So Ruth Hudson, she finds out she's 4 foot 9 and her back up.

[Steven Rinella]

This is not the girlfriend, this is his mother. No, Bruce Hudson's mother, Ruth.

[John U. Bacon]

Thank you for the clarity.

[Steven Rinella]

She has one child.

[John U. Bacon]

One child. She had one child. Her niece saw her every day. Pam Whitig in the same neighborhood. She's been great to me and thanks for the clarification. So Ruth Hudson, she's 4 foot 9, but she tells you that she's 5 foot 5 and you believed her. Apparently she was a little spark plug, just full of energy and all this. The company called nobody. She finds out the next day, driving to her job at the Bonnie Bell cosmetic factory in Cleveland on the radio. What? Yeah. This is brutal. This is cruel.

[Steven Rinella]

This is before the time of contacting next of kin, before you announced.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Six months later. The person never thought to make the connections.

[John U. Bacon]

No, the 17 year old girl at the time, 20 year old guy, 17 year old girl, which back then was not that uncommon. She didn't tell her parents that she was pregnant. She didn't start showing until like month eight. That's when she calls Ruth Hudson. And that's a tough phone call. And Ruth at first thought, you know, why are you telling me? She goes, I'm not asking for anything. I think you should know that you're gonna be a grandmother. And she has Heather. And Ruth and Heather are very close. They went shopping together and so on. Heather has four kids and the oldest is Austin, now 25, who looks just like Bruce Hudson, apparently. And yes, aunt Ruth played favorites. She lost her son and she gains a grandson who looks just like him. It's pretty amazing. So I know these stories go on like this. I gotta tell you one more. That yeah, it's like just to sure you're right.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

It's a song. It's a song. Church bell chimes. We don't know anything else. I didn't know a single name church.

[Steven Rinella]

Bell chime till it rang 29 times.

[John U. Bacon]

That's right. And now they ring it 30 times for all the other accidents as well. And so do the families. But yeah, I mentioned earlier, maybe I didn't. The last words. Of course, McSorley, I did mention that we are holding our own. So Heidi Wilhelm is a 12 year old girl at the time. She's the youngest of seven kids. And all seven kids depend on one guy on their ship. Because the mom's raising seven kids. She's working her butt off too. Next door neighbor knocks on the door, says, your dad's ship is gone. So my mom's on the phone trying to get anyone to answer. No one does at the company and they never called. Wow. What do you do? And the insurance companies didn't pay in many cases because it's an act of God. You got some Social Security in most.

[Steven Rinella]

Cases, like it's like inherent vice or something.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, exactly. Inherent vice. There you go. Your legal degree is also paying off today. And the company paid the minimum that they had to basically maybe a year salary. Well, what does that get you with seven kids? Yeah, so. And she said, what do you do you do what we always do in the Midwest, you suck it up. You know, we're going to. We're all going to get jobs. We're all going to start working. They pulled through. They joined the military. They often went to the then very cheap state schools. They're not so cheap anymore. They raised kids. They often did a combination. Heidi's now 62. She's got a daughter, Sarah. She went to the Air Force. Her daughter Sarah's also in the Air Force. And Sarah was born on the 23rd anniversary of the November 10, 1998. The grandfather she would never meet, obviously, and a really great guy by all accounts. When she turns 21, this is six years ago on November 10, 1990, or, sorry, 2019, she gets a tattoo. And we're hanging out at Whitefish Point. A table kind of like this butcher block table in the cruise quarters where these people stay when they're in town having some beers. We're telling some stories. This is where I got to know these people. And this is where I get choked up. And at this point, Heidi says, sarah's got a tattoo. Sarah, show John your tattoo. And she pulls up her left sleeve and her hoodie and it says, we are holding our own.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, man.

[John U. Bacon]

And that's what these people do. And it's getting me, too. So, yeah, that's how.

[Steven Rinella]

Well, that's incredible.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

So that's incredible.

[John U. Bacon]

So is it.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

They did.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[John U. Bacon]

They added it there. They rang the bell for him when he died. And that's no small trick, by the way. You need special welding tools. You got an underwater welder who knows what he's doing. That bell is heavy. It's. It's brass. Yeah. So bring that up 530ft. The family was there the next boat over when they brought the bell up. That was an emotional moment. July 4th.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, I've seen that stuff from that.

[John U. Bacon]

And they put the other bell down there.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Not with me. And so far, knock on wood is for Micah. Whatever you got, it's a. I think it's bamboo. I involve the families. And I also do something that most journalists don't. If I'm talking to Brody or Steven, I say, we're going to talk freely. I'll send you your quotes, you'll fix them as we need to. You have a right, I believe, to be quoted accurately. And that way you build trust. Certainly it takes longer, but you always get more than you think. That way, once they realize where you're going, people will usually own their opinions. It's been misquoted that I fear. I get misquoted. You get misquoted. I'm sure of it.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Why am I doing this?

[Steven Rinella]

It's painful to participate in anything. With journalists, I got friends that just. That don't.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Why?

[John U. Bacon]

Because they're 25 year old kids who. I mean, budget cuts.

[Steven Rinella]

Because. No, they already know. Like, dude, they already know what they want you to say.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

They don't want that.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

I've seen it in hockey locker rooms and football locker rooms. Exactly. Ask the guy the same question three or four times. And I hate that kind of journalism. One of my bosses once asked me, I was doing a story on the Potawatomi Tribe basketball team in Escanaba, Michigan. They played away games on Beaver island and Mackinac island because the casinos, they get a little plane. So this is pretty cool. And my guy asked me, my editor said, what's your angle? I said, I got no idea. I haven't met anybody. I've not seen the place. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. I got a lot of questions, all right? I have no idea. So you go. And that's what you guys did here in this interview. You go where the interview goes. Don't just have your questions and force it. You get crappy interviews. You want a conversation. It's exactly what you guys are doing here. And yes, so I get nervous about that. So with these guys, I mean, we talked 10, 15, 20 times and to make sure that any scene involving them was accurate. And it's also scary how many things I'm talking to you, I'm writing it down, things I got wrong, or maybe they said I'm wrong, but I probably got it wrong. I mean, you cover yourself that way. If some jackass in California says your book sucks on Amazon, I'm not happy about it. But it's gonna happen. It already has. We're getting 4.7. But there's. Joy's a jackass in California.

[Steven Rinella]

He's always out there.

[John U. Bacon]

We know that guy exactly. Who knows more about the book than I do, so. All right, pal. Whatever. And didn't sign his name, naturally. He's pretty tough until he's time to sign your name. But whatever. Keyboard cowards, as we call them. But what I can have is somebody who's in the book telling me I got it wrong. If I did a book on your podcast, you know, what I can't have happen is Corinne says, you got it wrong. You say, I got it wrong, then I got it wrong. So I've never, in 14 books had anyone say, misquoted, out of context, inaccurate, any of that. So these, the people, I'm not trying to pander to them in writing the book. I mean, there are still tough things in the book, no question about it, but it's accurate and it's fair. And those people, I mean, they trusted me and I appreciate it. Without them, it's not a book.

[Steven Rinella]

Did they feel like they.

[Randall]

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

[John U. Bacon]

That's really good because it is.

[Randall]

It is one of these things where it's a line in a song to most people. And I imagine it's tough to open up about tragedy, but at the same time, like, this story hasn't been. Their story hasn't been told. And so there's sort of a tension there between.

[John U. Bacon]

That's well said and good insight. Six crew members who'd never been talked to before, who'd been on the ship beforehand. Half the families I got to of the 29, 14 have some voice in here. And they did kind of say that. That we've been holding our stories back because we're afraid it'll get screwed up. I mean, I interview, you know, rich, famous athletes and coaches. They get quoted all the time. They don't care all that much. And it's irritating to you and me a little bit, but so what? I'll get over it. This is their one chance, you know, this is. These are people who are not rich, not famous, and this is their one chance to tell their dad's story in many cases. So, yes, there was. And the Grifters have come and gone. Bruce Lynn again is my key there. And now I got to know them. I've known him for three and a half years now. So now when I see him in Milwaukee or Grand Rapids, Michigan, or whatever, I get big hugs and they're crying and all this. So that's how that one works.

[Brody]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Yes. No question.

[Brody]

And later on, you mentioned there was, like, some local news coverage. What was, like, the national awareness of this thing when it happened, that surprised.

[John U. Bacon]

Me, actually, and there's far more than I thought.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[John U. Bacon]

And here's.

[Steven Rinella]

It was a national news story.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Randall]

The Times said about it.

[John U. Bacon]

Exactly right. Exactly. So then they call your bluff and say, you know what? Here's some money. Go find the oil. And you go, oh, crap, there better be oil down there. I kept on getting lucky. More luck. I'm working out at. And not recently, obviously. Shame on me. Not enough hockey these days. But I'm working out about a year and a half ago or so. And a buddy of mine, Larry Lage, who does Associated Press for the state of Michigan, covers all sports. We've been friends forever. And he says, you know, Harry Atkins wrote the first story on the mfs. Geraldine. Harry Atkins had his job doing sports before him. 30 years, AP Sports Writer. I've been sitting next to Harry in the damn press box for decades. I had no idea, really. He goes up that night with a crazy photographer. They get a plane in the wind. They do all this, and he does a wonderful job. And he still had a copy he's still alive. He's 84, he's still sharp. He gave me an original copy computer printout of that thing from 75. And without a cell phone, without Internet.

[Steven Rinella]

It was like picked up on the wires.

[John U. Bacon]

And 6,500 newspapers around the world.

[Steven Rinella]

You're shitting, man.

[John U. Bacon]

Including LA, where life. It was that day or the next day, whatever. He gets that. Newsweek magazine picks it up two weeks later, and he does a beautiful job. His name is Jim Gaines. He went to the University of Michigan. We got mutual friends in common. He's still alive, he's still sharp. Lucky as hell. And his story was so good that five or six lines in the song are from his article, which I lay out in the two articles. Two articles, two chapters that are now in the Rolling Stone. Let's do the damn song. We might as well do it now. You gotta ask about the song, people. Obviously. So Gordon Lightfoot is an experienced sailor. He did the Port Huron to Mackinac race. I've done that race. It's like three days. It's brutal. You think it's. Oh, let's go sailing. Ah, it's freezing, you're cold, it's miserable. But he's a really good sailor and he's serious about it. On November 10, 1975, Monday night, he is working on a song in his attic in Toronto. And it's an Irish Sea shanty, the earliest song he can remember when he's three and a half years old. And he's obviously changing it, but he's working on this. He goes down to get some coffee. It's 10 o' clock at night and the wind is howling in Toronto also. And he said, he had the explicit thought, it must be hell on Superior Night. He was connected at that moment. I mean, he knew what these guys are going through. That's where the spirit comes from. He starts working on the song. Doesn't play for anybody. He's too self conscious. The reason I was. A lot of ways to screw this up. Remember Body Heat? By the way, if you've not seen this movie, people go see it. It's like 40 years old now. It launched Kathleen Turner and Mickey Rourke and William Hurt. And at some point, William Hurt's character, a lawyer, wants to blow up his girlfriend's husband. Bad idea. And one of his repeat felon bombers, basically, he's teaching them how to do it. And finally Mickey York says, hey, man, do you have any effing idea? I can probably swear on your thing. Can I? Yeah, you're fine there you go, you have any effing idea what the hell you're doing? Because if you're a genius, you can think of 50 ways it can go wrong. And you ain't an effing genius, you can think of 25. And that's how I felt about the book. There are 50 ways to screw this up, and I might be able to think of 25. So. And that's how he felt. And I knew exactly how he felt.

[Steven Rinella]

He made one mistake. Oh, he made a couple mistakes. He. There's some ad. There's some, like, assumptions about what the cook said. And he says. And he couldn't do Toledo right, Toledo left, fully loaded for Cleveland because Cleveland.

[John U. Bacon]

Fits and Toledo doesn't.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, couldn't make Toledo.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

His description of the lakes, like, because I grew up on Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan steams like a young man's dreams.

[John U. Bacon]

The islands and bays are for sportsmen, and they are. That's where you learn how to fish, right? I mean, in Muskegon Bay and all that.

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[Steven Rinella]

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[Randall]

What was the family's reception to the song?

[John U. Bacon]

Well, before that. So he's gonna record his new album in March of 76, about five months later. And they got 11 songs lined up. Not this one. This one he's convinced is not ready. He's not played it for anybody, so. But each day after they do their songs, he's screwing around with us on his guitar. They're a tight band. After three and a half days, they got five days rented in the studio. Three and a half days, they're done. And that's how tight they are. And he says, okay, gentlemen, good job. Let's go. They're literally packing up their guitars and their instruments. And then the producer on the PA says, why don't you try that song you've been screwing around with? And he says, it's not ready. It's not ready. It's not ready. And he says, look, dude, I'm charging you for five days whether you play a damn thing or not. So I'm here now, the band is here. Why not give it a shot? So he gets talked into it and he finally says, okay. So he asked him to turn the lights down. And he's quiet for like a minute. The drummer, Barry Keane, still alive. And so is the bass player. God bless them both. He's there. He says, what do you want me to do? He's never heard the song. He says, when I want you to come in, I'll give you a knot. Okay? So he's going a minute and 30 on the song. That's where songs end in 75, 76. And Barry thinks that, okay, you've forgotten all about me. Nope. At 1:34, he leans over, he looks over and gives him a nod. That's when he comes in with the thunder and lightning. You know that part? And he just makes it up in the spot. And they just keep going. After six and a half minutes, which is three times longer than a normal song, they finish and they go, that wasn't half bad. But he's a perfectionist, Lightfoot is. So let's try it again. Not as good. Try it again. Not as good. Three more times. Four more times that afternoon. They come back the next day just for this one song. Not as good, not as good, not as good all day long. And finally they pick. The song you hear on the radio is not a first take. The song you hear on the radio is the first time the band ever played it. And as Barry Keane.

[Steven Rinella]

You never hit that emotion again, man, that's.

[John U. Bacon]

You guys are brilliant. That's exactly it. Barry Keen, he's been on 500 albums for all kinds of games.

[Steven Rinella]

Did you ever hear the Danny Warhol cover it?

[John U. Bacon]

It's pretty cool. Oh, yes, I have. And Billy Strings, by the way, Billy Strings got a new version out from Traverse City, Michigan. He does a brilliant job.

[Steven Rinella]

He does. Yo, the Dandy Warhol's kind of phoned it in a little bit. Yeah, they were big drug takers.

[John U. Bacon]

All I can say about that one was throw a stick. So is Gordon Lightfoot.

[Brody]

Yeah, he had a little problem.

[John U. Bacon]

He got clean around 1980 or 81.

[Steven Rinella]

So that's when the Dandy Warhols were getting born.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go. But probably true, too. We're around that. So Barry Keane tells me, look, man, first takes happen once in a blue moon. First time I ever played it, he goes, never ever, ever, ever. He said, I'm willing to bet never in the history of rock and roll recording. And I asked him why and exactly where you're going, Stephen? He said, this is not a song you think your way through. This is a song you either feel it or you don't. If you feel it, the technical stuff doesn't matter if you feel it. That's the spirit they got to hear. So, song comes out, they're on the Midnight Special, the old Friday night concert show. You're allowed to play six songs, and they don't pick this one because they think there's no way in hell this is gonna Work. And this song ends up being number two in 1976, behind Rod Stewart's Tonight's the Night, with his hot Swedish girlfriend, Britt Eklund Kuhn in the background. That's the 70s, man. That's the me generation. This song is the opposite. It's got.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Oh, there's no question.

[Steven Rinella]

Rod Stewart, Reason to believe. Come on.

[John U. Bacon]

And when you get the mandolin and all that, that's good stuff. But the point is.

[Steven Rinella]

It's a mandolin wind.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He snarled at that one.

[Steven Rinella]

I'm a Maggie May guy.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go. That's the mandolin thing or something like that. But anyway. But the families, they played at all the reunions, they played for the grandkids who never met their grandfather. Oh, they do. Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

Wow.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Really?

[John U. Bacon]

And that's your best review right there. And life, it became great. Friends of the Families. He's a hero in this book. He's given money for scholarships in Traverse City for the Great Lakes Maritime.

[Steven Rinella]

I saw him play in Traverse City once.

[John U. Bacon]

There you go. Scholarships in his name, the Maritime Academy. Ruth Hudson is on her deathbed on November 9, 2015. November 9, yes. This is the day before the 40th anniversary. And Gordon Lightfoot goes to Whitefish Point. Not to play, just to pay his respects to these handful of families. That's what I mean. Way out of the way, obviously. And he asked Pam, where's Aunt Ruth? And she's on her deathbed. Give me a phone. And that picture's in the book of him in the kitchen on the phone talking to Ruth Hudson under her deathbed. And she said, I promised Bruce I would be in heaven with him before the 40th anniversary. He's been alone too long. And that was her last phone call. And she gets off the phone and tells her. Tells the mom, the child, she said, I was talking to Gordon because that's how close they were. So he's a hero in this book, man.

[Steven Rinella]

I gotta just hit you with something totally unrelated, but a little bit kind of similar, you know, in Neil Young's Old man, the Pedal Steel.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

So they had a dude come in. They had a studio Guy come in to do the pedal steel on old.

[John U. Bacon]

Man, which is great.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Wow.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't know if that's true, but.

[John U. Bacon]

Trust me, the stories are about the 70s and rock and roll. Yeah, it was true.

[Steven Rinella]

What are you going to write next? You know yet?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Come work for me and Randall.

[Randall]

We're in need of a writer.

[John U. Bacon]

All I can say is careful.

[Steven Rinella]

Randall's burned out on history.

[John U. Bacon]

Careful what you wish for.

[Steven Rinella]

Randall's got a history project.

[Randall]

As long as you maintain the.

[John U. Bacon]

The compliments, you know, hey, they're easy, easily proffered. Trust me. Look, you know, very quickly, people know what they're talking about. When they don't. When you do these things and it's like when people call up you. Have you ever heard my podcast or not? You can tell pretty quickly. So you guys. Man, I never had an interview like this. 20 terms not defined at this table. No, that I have to explain everything normally.

[Steven Rinella]

But what kind of book are you going to do next? Sports?

[John U. Bacon]

No, not sports. Probably do. There are a few other Midwestern disasters, sadly, that I know about that I'll probably dive back into those. This one. We're dealing with movie rights now. We'll talk about that.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

And plus, you know, text me when I should get jealous.

[John U. Bacon]

I'll let you know.

[Steven Rinella]

Just. Just text me a J. I don't know what it means.

[John U. Bacon]

Dude, J, sit with that for a little while. As they say it in Casablanca, Humphrey Bogart. That's gonna be the start of a great friendship. Classic ending scene.

[Steven Rinella]

So a Midwest disaster. But you don't want to wind up that they're like, you know, the great Midwestern disaster writer.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, exactly. You don't want to be that guy. Right? Oh, no. Bacon's coming. That's something bad. You don't want to stay away from that guy. Exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

So that's a possibility. The Great Halifax Explosion. Talking to Hollywood about that for a possible five part TV series.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, okay.

[John U. Bacon]

Previous book, let them lead. About coaching my old high school hockey team. In Ann Arbor. The Ann Arbor Huron River Rats. I'm not making that up. For some reason, we're the only high school in America. Name their team. The River Rats. Go figure on that one. That's a good one. But worst team in America. Coached by the worst player in school history. Yours truly. I still hold the record for the most games. And here on Uniform 86, I played all three years. Played in every game with the fewest goals. Zero. And I played forward.

[Steven Rinella]

So you're gonna do a book like How I Did it?

[John U. Bacon]

No, you did that book. It's in its fifth printing, but we're in our third draft with Disney.

[Randall]

It's another Midwestern disaster story and Muskegon's in it.

[John U. Bacon]

Muskegon makes an appearance. So. Yes. So doing all that stuff first. Then I'll get back to a book.

[Steven Rinella]

So, like disasters like the Edmund Fitzgerald or your hockey career?

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Well, if you have any technicality, if.

[Randall]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, you're thinking, let me know. Randall's the guy. Yeah, you can see how buff Bruce was.

[Steven Rinella]

By the way, Randall, instead of sending me one letter, send him two, and it's no hot dogs. And he'll know to get ready. NH 12 months.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Bad news is. Yeah, well, let me remind you what Bruce looked like growing the hair out. Randall, there's. There's more to it than the hair, buddy.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

So I'm very. I'm very comfortable.

[John U. Bacon]

And with your sexuality.

[LEGO Advertiser]

Where I landed.

[Steven Rinella]

Where I landed. Very comfortable. Bruce is a striking man.

[John U. Bacon]

He's a striking man.

[Steven Rinella]

He's a striking man. That him? The photo, the guys at the wedding. It's heartbreaking.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

They're human beings.

[Steven Rinella]

I've never seen the pictures, man.

[John U. Bacon]

I don't like.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't get it. Well, I do get it, but I Mean, it's just like, it's like anything you just put and you're like, man, these are like guys, like, it looks like pictures of like just people from around when I was growing up.

[Randall]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Like any wedding photo.

[Randall]

Wedding that they went to.

[John U. Bacon]

That's exactly. And they're old Kodak photos. A little grainy.

[Steven Rinella]

It was back in that era those weddings would have been when you would take those little mints and cocktail peanuts and tie them up in a spawn sack.

[Randall]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

And had a dollar dance.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

But you're not bitter. But anyway. No, no, no.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like the first early on it would be that here's people that aren't. They're kind of like, they'll come in and mine you for what's going on in your neck of the woods.

[John U. Bacon]

They want your knowledge without paying you.

[Steven Rinella]

Because they're like, they're not out and about. And they're like, so what kind of things are you in? You'd be like, oh, you know about this, you know about that, you know about this, you know about that. Then later you learn just to shut up.

[John U. Bacon]

Right. You just forked over the store, basically. So these meetings in Hollywood are kabuki theater. So they, they another term that probably has not been used in this studio.

[Steven Rinella]

Here's the first term. I don't know what it meant.

[John U. Bacon]

It means it's kabuki theater. It's all been rehearsed.

[Steven Rinella]

Okay.

[John U. Bacon]

It's like you think you're doing a pitch, but you're really not. So they always meetings at 10 o'. Clock. The earliest going to be is 10:05, maybe 10, 10. How late they make you wait is one indicator. Who shows up? Martin Campbell showed up from one of my meetings. He's the director Of Casino Royale and Zorro. Okay, that's a big boy meeting. Or the intern. And the quality of the water they give you. They give you the fancy, you know, the best bottle stuff. That's one thing. If the intern's giving you a Styrofoam cup of tap water, you're just practicing. What about a middle ground, like a pint glass?

[Steven Rinella]

We gave you a nice glass of tap water.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

I believe that this. I don't even want to say the name, but I have to because he's such a controversial character. Here we go, the Congress. Schiff, a senator or a congressman from California? Adam Schiff.

[John U. Bacon]

He's a senator now from California.

[Steven Rinella]

I believe he was a screenwriter. Do you know that? I did not know that he had written some screenplays. I think that it was Schiff, I'm sure.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

He said.

[John U. Bacon]

I had no idea.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

How about this? I keep getting yes.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

We love it. This is great. Exactly.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, we're gonna get a hold of you.

[Randall]

We'll call you.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah. This is the last. We're gonna end the podcast. I'm gonna give this last bit of advice. This is career advice for people. If you get into this world, this business, books and all that, and you do these and you do Hollywood meetings, here's how you end them. Well, let me preface this. Last night, my buddy had to call my boy had to call my buddy to ask a favor. I said to him, I'm going to give you a pointer. I want you to ask the favor. I don't want you to push for an answer. I want you to then say, think about it, Give it some thought, and text me. And I said, that's how I want you to end the call. Okay. You're not after an Answer, give it some thought and text me when you have a Hollywood meeting. End it by saying, thanks for the time. Here's what I'd like you to do. Get with your guys, think about it, and just give me a shout and just. That's it.

[John U. Bacon]

You know what?

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Pardon me.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah.

[John U. Bacon]

Perhaps you've seen that gesture before. I did that. Is that thing on right there?

[Steven Rinella]

And just leave it. Leave it. You think about it. Get with your guys. Just let me know.

[John U. Bacon]

I'll tell you how I'm gonna end.

[Randall]

My next performance review here.

[John U. Bacon]

I think, you know, this is how I think I've done. You think about that. I'll tell you what, I'm gonna work out.

[Randall]

When you're ready, you know, that's right.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

And then you hang up and it just never happens.

[Randall]

Not looking for a snap, judge.

[John U. Bacon]

And that way you've maintained your own dignity at least. Oh, yeah, I'll tell you What, I'm owing 20 my way. I might as well try your way.

[Steven Rinella]

Your way is like, sign this, sign. It's not my way.

[John U. Bacon]

So what do you think? Oh, we love it. We love it. Now you don't.

[Steven Rinella]

All right, Ladies and gentlemen, the Gales of November. The Untold story of the Edmund Fitzgerald by John you Bacon, New York Times best selling authority. Dude, that was a lot of fun. I'm glad you came. It's such a dude. I can't wait to read it. I'm in a little streak where I'm talking to writers. I haven't read their damn books yet, but I'm a little behind on my.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, but you know, you're talking about. That's all I care about. That's big. And like I said earlier, people don't think about that. You don't have to read my book. You gotta buy it. Yeah, the buy in is the key.

[Steven Rinella]

Yeah, buy that book.

[John U. Bacon]

Joking, of course, but it's about the families. No, this is when I swear to God. Probably the best interview I've done so far.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

It's a heavy book. It's.

[Steven Rinella]

It's like. It feels like much.

[Randall]

Much like Hampton side blurbed your book. You should blurb this podcast.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

No, you just feel that. Son of a Bitch, I don't know.

[John U. Bacon]

What the hell I'm talking about normally, but when I'm on there, we're great.

[Steven Rinella]

Thank you so much.

[John U. Bacon]

Everyone says I got to do it, and they're right. This has been fantastic.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

That's.

[Steven Rinella]

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

[John U. Bacon]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

But this has got, like, bad weather ships.

[John U. Bacon]

Bad weather ships, sailors, all that good stuff.

[Steven Rinella]

Fetch, Lee. See?

[John U. Bacon]

Freeboard things. I did not explain broadside waves. I mean, I can get 10.

[Steven Rinella]

I don't even. This. I don't need to wedge it in. I can put this book in like this.

[John U. Bacon]

That's how it fits right in the string sideways.

[Randall]

75Ft wide.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

Oh, I got one last tip for you.

[John U. Bacon]

Sure.

[Steven Rinella]

When you talk to. You know what they should have done? They should have made this book. The proportions. So it's like a big, tall, skinny book. I've heard that's the next.

[Randall]

That's the next trend in book publishing.

[John U. Bacon]

It's just two and a half inches.

[Steven Rinella]

Wide, tall, skinny book, man.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Steven Rinella]

They ship in the gun. They ship in the gun box.

[John U. Bacon]

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

[Randall]

Turn that thing around.

[John U. Bacon]

Right.

[Steven Rinella]

John EU Bacon. Thanks again, man.

[John U. Bacon]

Thank you. A real pleasure, truly.

[Ryan Seacrest]

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[LEGO Advertiser]

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[Steven Rinella]

What a matchup we got, y'.

[Odoo Advertiser]

All.

[Steven Rinella]

This is that classic HBCU vibe. Non stop action. The band is rocking and the crowd lit. Chance echo drum beat, everybody. Showing that school pride Game like this.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah.

[Steven Rinella]

It calls for an ice cold Coca Cola. Ah, crisp and refreshing. That's a game changer right there.

[John U. Bacon]

Yeah, that taste.

[Steven Rinella]

Oh. Always hits the right note. Just like the band at halftime. And just like that, we're back at it. Passionate fans, school colors everywhere and in.

[John U. Bacon]

Ice cold Coca Cola.

[Steven Rinella]

That's a winning combo. No matter the sport, no matter the yard. Everybody knows fan work is thirsty work. So grab a Coca Cola and keep that HBCU pride going.

[John U. Bacon]

This is an iHeart podcast.