Survivor of Bradley disaster recounts story at library

Frank Mays, one of only two survivors of the Carl D. Bradley sinking, told his story to a standing-room-only crowd at the Presque Isle District Library in Rogers City last Thursday. Mays survived a grueling 15-hour ordeal after the Bradley broke in half and sank in Lake Michigan on November 18, 1958. Mays and Elmer Fleming were the only members of the 35-man crew to survive. The Bradley was a self-loader built in 1927 by the American Ship Building Company of Lorain, Ohio. It measured 623 feet long and 65 feet wide, weighed 7,700 tons empty and could hold five million pounds of cargo. It was the largest ship to ever sink in the Great Lakes until the 729-foot Edmund Fitzgerald went down on November 10, 1975.

MAYS WAS a deck watchman on board the Bradley and Fleming was the first mate. They both were swept off the deck and hurled into the dark icy water by the violent 40-foot waves that pounded the ship and broke her in two. By sheer luck, they were able to swim to a life raft that had also been carried overboard by the enormous waves. Many of the people in the audience also attended the ?Survivor? program at the Rogers City Theater the week before. Mays? topic on Thursday was about dives made to the wreck in 380 feet of water last July.

John Janzen organized the expedition and invited Mays along. Capt. Greg Such, owner of Shipwreck Adventures, a training and charter firm specializing in Great Lakes excursions, provided the ship and crew for the dive. The dive team plans to return to the site next year. They are seeking permission to raise the ship?s bell. This was done for the bell on the Fitzgerald and it is in the museum at Whitefish Point in the UP. Mays stopped into the Advance office on Monday for an interview and to share some of the photographs taken on the expedition in July.

TEN YEARS ago, Mays participated in the first attempt to view the Bradley on the bottom. He was the first person aboard the mini-submarine to spot and identify the wreck. The 1995 expedition was organized by Fred Shannon of Mount Morris. In 1994, Shannon also filmed the Fitzgerald 535 feet under Lake Superior. Mays mentioned that Shannon caused some controversy when he showed the body of one of the Fitzgerald?s sailors on television after agreeing not to do so. Mays said he considers the Bradley, as well other ships on the bottom, to be like a cemetery. ?You should be able to visit them, the same as visiting a cemetery, but you have to be respectful and not disturb them,? he added. Mays noted that U.S. Steel representatives always maintained that the ship had not broken up but photographic evidence gathered in 1995 and on subsequent dives put that argument to rest.

HE SPENT about 25 minutes on the bottom in 1995. Mays said the visibility was only about two feet then but today, because of the zebra and quagga mussels, the visibility is about 35 feet. Mays said Shannon never produced a video or a book about the 1995 expedition but tried to keep Mays from talking about his experiences to other filmmakers or even to public audiences. ?I agreed to his terms

at the time because I thought he was going to make something out of the films and the information I gave him but he never did,? Mays said.

Mays later received a signed release from Shannon and told his story in a book about the Bradley called ?If We Make It ?til Daylight? in 2003. He explained that the title of the book comes from his thoughts on the raft that terrible night. One ship, the Christian Sartori, had passed them in the night and Fleming said if the Christian Sartori was looking for them, so was the Coast Guard. ?I remember thinking to myself, ?If we make it ?til daylight, we?ll be found,?? Mays said.

He went on to say that the waves were 30 feet high with an occasional 40-foot rogue wave. ?I could tell the larger waves by the faster way they would pull the raft up to the crest of the wave. When we went over the top of the wave we would get dumped back into the freezing water and then claw our way back on board the raft. It was terrifying,? he related. At the Survivors program last week, Capt. Harold Muth of the Coast Guard cutter Sundew said it was truly a miracle that the two men survived 15 hours in one of the worst storms he had ever witnessed on the Great Lakes.