The S.S. Daniel J. Morrell had set sail from Toledo with coal for Green Bay, Wis., two hours earlier on a November, 1966 day when its ship-to-shore phone rang with news for crewman Milo Becker.
During the short time after his return to the ship after visiting his family in the city, his wife had died. Mr. Becker was dropped off in Detroit so he could get back home, while the Morrell continued on its way.
The lake freighter completed that trip and an ensuing iron-ore run to Buffalo. But Mr. Becker was still on leave when the Morrell, returning to Minnesota in ballast, ran into a severe storm, broke in two, and sank in Lake Huron on Nov. 29, 1966. Only one of 29 men then aboard survived.
“His wife dying actually saved his life,” said John DeBeck, a Wisconsin-based author and Great Lakes historian who has written a book, The Daniel J. Morrell: Lost, But No Longer Forgotten, and will speak about it Saturday in Toledo. His program, hosted by the National Museum of the Great Lakes, will start at 1 p.m. in the Fifth Third Center auditorium at One SeaGate on Summit Street.
Some early news reports listed Mr. Becker among the shipwreck’s casualties, Mr. DeBeck said, because the Bethlehem Steel Co., to which the Morrell was chartered, listed him among its crew.
How he ended up ashore, the historian said, only recently came to light when relatives of the Morrell’s first mate produced a letter the latter had sent home that included an account of Mr. Becker’s need to go home.
Three other Toledoans among the Morrell’s crew were not so fortunate. John Schmidt, the ship’s chief engineer, Leon Truman, a coal passer, and Larry Davis, a deckhand, all died when the Morrell went down near Pointe-aux-Barques, Mich.
The Morrell is the third-largest ship ever to have sunk on the Great Lakes. But it long has been overshadowed by the larger ones: the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank Nov. 10, 1975 during a Lake Superior storm, and the S.S. Carl D. Bradley, which was lost in Lake Michigan on Nov. 18, 1958.
The Big Fitz and its 29-man crew, all of whom went down with the ship, was made famous by Canadian folk singer Gordon Lightfoot, while of 33 men who died in the Bradley’s sinking, 23 lived in the small Michigan town of Rogers City, where the limestone the Bradley regularly hauled to steel mills was quarried.
“It kind of got lost in the shuffle,” Mr. DeBeck said of the Morrell.
“The Morrell gets lost,” agreed Christopher Gillcrist, the local maritime museum’s executive director. He said that before the Fitzgerald sank, there was a widespread belief that the Morrell would be the last major shipwreck on the Great Lakes.
The Morrell functions historically as a bridge between earlier times, when annual vessel sinkings of five or more were not uncommon, and the Fitzgerald, Mr. Gillcrist said.
Like the Fitz, the Morrell sent out no distress call, but unlike the later, more celebrated sinking, it had a survivor. Dennis Hale, a watchman, was able to tell its story after the Coast Guard rescued him from a life raft comprising netting suspended between floating barrels 36 hours afterward.
Mr. DeBeck said Mr. Hale initially balked at speaking much about the Morrell or his survival ordeal. Three shipmates on the same floating hammock froze to death before he was found.
But three years after David Trotter, a Michigan shipwreck diver, found the Morrell’s forward half in 1979, Mr. DeBeck coaxed Mr. Hale out of seclusion to speak during a memorial event.
That, Mr. DeBeck said, marked the start of a 33-year friendship that proved key to locating other Morrell sailors’ families and, through them, learning the life stories of those who perished.
“There’s a lot of guys with tales to tell. Some of them were shipwrecked previously — some of them more than once,” the historian said while praising their families as “super cooperative.”
Mr. Hale, who died of cancer in 2015, “embarked on a speaking career,” Mr. DeBeck said. “It became therapeutic for him — it helped him deal with it.”
More recent dives on the wreckage, meanwhile, have disproved the Coast Guard’s investigative finding that the Morrell broke up because of “brittle steel” used to build its hull, Mr. DeBeck said.
That finding, he said, was based on a single steel sample investigators took from the ship’s aft half shortly after the wreck. The more recent, more thorough examination of the wreckage shows the tumultuous seas the Morrell encountered bent clamps securing its hatch covers so severely that water started flooding its hold, and the excess weight eventually snapped its hull.
“We have obtained a whole lot of evidence using tools that weren’t available in 1966,” Mr. DeBeck said.
The freighter’s aft half, with its engine and propellers, sailed on for five miles after the forward half sank before losing buoyancy.
The ship was not reported missing until the S.S. Edward Y. Townsend, a sister ship that had taken refuge from the storm in the St. Clair River, arrived at the Soo Locks the next day and its captain asked when the Morrell had locked through. About that same time, Mr. DeBeck said, the freighter G.G. Post came upon floating bodies and debris from the sunken ship.
A Coast Guard helicopter then found Mr. Hale clinging to life, wearing only a peacoat and boxer shorts, in the makeshift life raft.
Mr. DeBeck said that while Mr. Hale initially avoided the spotlight, he amassed a large collection of Morrell memorabilia over the years. His wife, Barb, initially considered selling those artifacts to collectors, he said, but was persuaded that the best way to fulfill her desire to have the Morrell’s story publicized was to donate the items.
They now form the core of an exhibit in the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum’s permanent collection in Whitefish Point, Mich., that is designed to be mobile, so it could travel to the Toledo museum or others around the Great Lakes, Mr. DeBeck said.
Mr. Gillcrist said the Toledo museum currently has no Morrell artifacts on display. It was the recipient several years ago of a life ring bearing the Morrell’s name, he said, but museum staff have been unable to confirm that relic’s authenticity.
Admission to Mr. DeBeck’s presentation will cost $5 for National Museum of the Great Lakes members and $8 for the public.
The presentation Saturday was scheduled for the One SeaGate auditorium, Mr. Gillcrist said, because the museum has invited all surviving relatives of the Morrell’s crew to hear Mr. DeBeck’s presentation for free. Though the number is unknown, he said, many are traveling to Toledo to accept that offer.
First Published August 11, 2022, 1:46 p.m.
