The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 58: A Lesser Known Vessel

Episode Date: May 30, 2017

Captain Cooper was asked to do the impossible - But he found it impossible not to try.

This is the way I heard it. The transmission came over the shortwave radio at exactly 2,100 hours. It was a simple request, buried in a sea of static, delivered by a man accustomed to giving orders. We've lost contact with McSorley, the voice said. Can you get back out there? Bernie Cooper looked at his radio and cocked his head. Maybe he had misheard. Maybe the captain was just indulging in a bit of gallows humor, as military men sometimes do,

when the danger is so clear and so present, there's nothing to do but joke. Bernie turned up the volume and asked the captain to repeat his request. The captain did, and this time there was no mistaking the gravity of the situation. McSorley and his men had gone dark. They were surrounded by a merciless enemy who would take no prisoners, and Bernie was being asked to charge back into the fray to rescue 29 men who were probably already dead. Bernie's initial reaction was not exactly enthusiastic. Have you seen the conditions out there? He said. If you really want me to, I'll try, but the situation is untenable. Do you understand that?

If you Google the actual conversation, you'll hear the dread in Bernie Cooper's voice. Even through the static, you can hear a man hoping to be ordered to stand down. But the voice in the static, only set the hook deeper. You're right, said the captain. I can't order you to risk the lives of your crew. I can only tell you that 29 men are in grave danger, and you are their only hope. Bernie Cooper closed his eyes and considered the facts. Even if McSorley and his men were still alive, which was unlikely, there was no way they could survive the night.

And even if Bernie left immediately, he was still hours away, with a vast, superior foe in between determined to destroy him. So Bernie talked to his men, and then he did the only sensible thing a man in his position could do. He turned the Arthur Anderson away from the safety of Whitefish Bay and sailed straight back through the gates of hell. For the fearless, courage comes easy, but real bravery, that's what you see when frightened men do something courageous and make no mistake. Bernie Cooper was frightened. Over the next few hours, the captain could only watch as 35-foot waves hammered the deck of the Arthur Anderson, pushing it further and further below the surface. There were moments, more than a few,

when every instinct in Bernie's body demanded he'd turn his ship around. But he didn't, because ultimately, Bernie knew it could have been him out there, struggling to stay. afloat in the dark and frigid waters. It could have been him, wondering if anyone knows where the love of God goes, when the waves turned the minutes to hours. So, Bernie stayed the course, and the Arthur Anderson held its own, and when they finally arrived at McSorley's last location, they found precisely what they expected to find. A few empty life jackets, a shattered lifeboat, and no sign of survivors. Today, 41 years later, the legend lives on, thanks to a ballad that honors Ernest McSorley's mighty ship,

now forever consigned to the shadowy depths of the big lake they called Gichigumi. You probably know the ballad. In fact, you can probably sing along with the musician who calls McSorley's tribute the best thing he ever wrote. But what about the spirit of Captain Cooper? That little ditty never made it onto the charts, but it's out there, and if you Google it, you'll hear another ballad of a lesser-known ship sung by a lesser-known artist in honor of a lesser-known captain, a captain who risked everything to save 29 doomed men who would have surely done the same for him,

a captain who understood that in battle, on land or sea, you never leave a man behind. You have to try and save them, even when the gales of November come early, even when nothing remains but the faces and the names of the wives and the sons and the daughters. You have to try. Captain Cooper failed to save a single soul that day, but he did not fail to try, and that is a single soul. and that is why he and his crew were so warmly welcomed in that musty old hall in Detroit called the Maritime Sailor's Cathedral. There, the brave men of the Arthur Anderson gathered with hundreds of mourners and did the only sensible thing men in their position can do.

They wept and prayed in quiet reverence, as the church bell chimed till it rang 29 times for each man. on the Edmund Fitzgerald. Anyway, that's the way I heard.