"MAYDAY — We're Breaking Up!" …Then Her Lights Went Out | SS Carl D. Bradley, 1958

On the night of November eighteenth, 1958, the limestone carrier Carl D. Bradley — once the longest ship on the Great Lakes — broke in two in a Lake Michigan gale. Thirty-three of her thirty-five crew were lost, twenty-three of them from a single small town. The question that followed has never been fully settled: why did she break? An aging hull, riding empty in a storm, failed amidships and jackknifed near the Beaver Island archipelago. Two men survived fifteen hours on an eight-foot raft. The Coast Guard's Marine Board pointed to heavy-weather stress; the Commandant suspected an undetected structural defect; the industry insisted the ship was sound. Beneath all three lay an unresolved question about the brittle steel of the pre-war fleet — one that would return eight years later with the Daniel J. Morrell. Last Known Position tells the stories of ships and the people who sailed them — what happened, why it happened, and what changed because of it. Calm, careful, and researched from the official record. ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00 Intro 1:43 The ship 4:04 The voyage 6:43 The event 9:50 The why 13:18 What changed 14:31 Coda 📖 ABOUT THIS EPISODE The SS Carl D. Bradley was a 639-foot self-unloading limestone carrier built in 1927 at the American Ship Building Company in Lorain, Ohio, and home-ported in Rogers City, Michigan, at the Port of Calcite. On November 18, 1958, running empty from Gary, Indiana toward home, she broke apart southwest of Gull Island near the Beaver Islands in Lake Michigan. Captain Roland Bryan, First Mate Elmer Fleming, deck watchman Frank Mays, and the rest of a largely Rogers City crew are at the center of this Great Lakes shipwreck investigation, along with the German freighter Christian Sartori, the Coast Guard cutter Hollyhock, and the U.S. Coast Guard Marine Board inquiry into why she sank. 🔔 SUBSCRIBE: @ownPositionDocumentary 🗺️ See where every wreck lies on our Master Map: @ter-map/ 📚 SOURCES Researched from the official inquiry record and public sources ("SS Carl D. Bradley", "Rogers City, Michigan"). Original narration — not a reading of any source. Every episode is fact-checked line by line before narration; no recycled scripts, no invented details. 🎵 MUSIC Original ambient score. #maritime #shipwreck #documentary #greatlakes #carldbradley