Courage of the Sole Survivor

Lashed by mounting waves on its starboard side, the S.S. Daniel J. Morrell clawed northward on its last run of the season. It was late November 1966, and a fall blizzard had overtaken Lake Huron. As the long night deepened, the tough old ore boat began to blow around, pitching and rolling in 25-foot seas.

Built in 1906, the 600-foot Morrell had previously weathered 100-mph winds and high seas during a 1958 Lake Superior storm that sank the Bradley, another ore vessel.

By 0200, the Morrell had fought its way off the thumb of Michigan’s “mitten,” known as the graveyard for ships. Confused seas from both the north-northeast and the north-northwest swept its length, and the Morrell took green water over the bow.

Asleep in his forward quarters, able-bodied seaman Dennis Hale woke up to the sound of books falling off his bookshelf. Alarmed, the 26-year-old sat up and tried his bunk light. The bulb remained dark.

When the emergency bell sounded the general alarm, Dennis grabbed a life jacket and rushed on deck. Gusts of wind hit the 250-pound man, who staggered to stand upright. Ankle deep in icy slush, clad only in his life jacket and undershorts, Dennis shivered as he peered down the spar deck. The center of the boat’s steel deck was bending crazily, grinding up and down, and groaning. Sparks flew from the twisting metal, and steam billowed out.

Suddenly, the deck reared high in the air. The boat was breaking apart. Dennis scrambled back to his cabin for more clothing but could only find his wool pea coat in the darkness. He threw it on over his life jacket and hurried back on deck. He felt snow on his face, frigid wind on his naked legs and ice under his bare toes. Around him, black seas roiled.

Shivering, Dennis climbed aboard the life raft that was lashed atop a hatch behind the pilothouse. Made of two 8-foot steel pontoons topped with a wooden plank deck, the last-ditch survival raft offered no weather protection but did have a center compartment with emergency signaling gear. Too heavy to pick up and throw overboard, the raft could be launched only if the bow section sank and it floated off. The ship’s lifeboats were in the aft section—out of reach over the cracking hull. Some crew members had already boarded the raft, some stood alongside, and one man lashed himself down.

The power cables running to the forward section had snapped. But everyone remained calm and confident despite the fact that no mayday could be sent.

The ship’s end came quickly. Dennis watched the inch-thick steel deck tear in half from one side to the other. The gap widened as the aft section separated and fell back, still afloat but at an angle to the bow section.

With lights on, engine running and propeller churning, the cavernous severed hull charged straight toward them.

Clutching a handhold on the raft, Dennis watched it approach and closed his eyes as it came nearer. Suddenly, he was struggling beneath icy waters not knowing which way was up. Remembering an old scuba diver’s trick, he exhaled and followed the bubbles to the surface.

Not far away, the bobbing raft’s automatic emergency light beckoned to him in the darkness. High waves obscured the light, but Dennis kept his bearings and swam hard.

Exhausted and cold, he pulled himself aboard the raft, where he found deckhands Arthur Stojek, 33, and John Cleary Jr., 20. Minutes later, they pulled wheelman Charles Fossbender from the icy lake.

Only four men survived the 50-foot fall into heavy seas and made it to raft.

They scanned the seas and hailed for survivors. No one answered. They fired off flares in a desperate attempt to signal any ships in the area. None responded.

Minutes later, Fossbender excitedly waved the flashlight back and forth, signaling what appeared to be a nearby ship. Dennis shielded his eyes in the spray and driving wind and shook his head dejectedly. Blackness sank into the pit of his stomach.

It wasn’t a ship. Fossbender had seen the Morrell’s ghostly stern, still brightly lit and under power, sailing away.

Exposed to the driving winds and freezing spray, the survivors huddled on the grating between the two pontoons. Only Fossbender, who had been on watch, was fully clothed.

By dawn, Cleary and Stojek were dead, leaving only Dennis and Fossbender.

Dennis lay on his left side, his head cradled under one arm, on the partly collapsed storage compartment. Fossbender was behind him, facing away, curled with his legs up. Both men shivered uncontrollably.

At about 1400, Fossbender raised himself. “I can see land.”

“How far away is it?” Dennis asked.

“Quite a distance,” Fossbender responded. Two hours later, he died.

Now alone on a pitching, frozen raft, Dennis tried to remember: Cleary and Stojek had died around 0600, and Fossbender, at about 1600. The first two men had endured about six hours of exposure; the third man, about 16.

Later Dennis found out that their death certificates listed the cause of death as drowning brought on by exposure. The report said the men were conscious until shortly before death. Although Fossbender never complained, his chest had been crushed and both shoulders broken.

Desperately alone, Dennis thought up ways to stay alive. He tried moving parts of his body to keep up his circulation. He put his fingers in his mouth so they wouldn’t freeze and held his urine for more than 24 hours to save his internal body heat.

The raft ran aground on rocks several hundred feet from shore. Dennis saw lights from a farmhouse and fired several flares, holding the broken flare gun together with his bare hands. No one saw the flares. He yelled hoarsely when he heard voices. No one answered.

He tried to move from the raft but was almost paralyzed by the cold. In pain, his unused muscles knotted with cramps, he could only lie and watch.

He couldn’t give up hope. If he remained where he was, someone would see the raft and come to rescue him. Somebody would notice that the Morrell was missing and send a search party.

He nursed himself through the long day with hope. By nightfall, the wind rose and cold descended on his numbed body. Breakers rolled over the raft.

Dennis drifted in and out of sleep. Ice coated him.

Right after dawn, he awoke with a start. The farmhouse lights came on. He yelled and yelled for help, but no one answered.

It began to snow.

By afternoon, Dennis was ravaged by thirst. Earlier, he’d drunk a little lake water off his flare gun lanyard, but the water was gone. Although in pain, he managed to move his head around to suck the ice that had formed on his pea coat, but something stopped him.

Floating above the raft and looking down on him was a man dressed in white. He had a white moustache, white hair and nearly translucent bluish skin. His eyes burned with
intensity.

“Don’t eat the ice off your pea coat,” the man commanded loudly before vanishing as mysteriously as he had arrived.

Still thirsty, Dennis laid his head back down on the raft. Wind howled across the wave crests, sweeping across his ice-coated body. He lost track of time.

After a while, he felt himself moving upward as if a force were sucking him away from the raft. As he rose, he felt the pain and cold recede. He was headed toward a white light as if at the end of a tunnel, and when he emerged he saw a green, grassy field, well cut, with a little depression and a bridge going across it.

A man dressed in white stood waiting. He took Dennis’ hands and said, “Let us see what you have learned.”

Dennis’ whole life flashed before him as he answered the man’s questions. When he was finished, the man released the sailor’s hands and told him that he could pass over. On the other side of the bridge, his mother appeared—a woman he recognized only from pictures. She told him how glad she was to see him at last. Long-dead loved ones and relatives gathered around.

He descended into a mist until he came to the bow of the Morrell lying in a valley. His old shipmates hugged him and clapped him on the back. The stern section glided out of the mist and joined up with the forward section almost seamlessly. Dennis and his shipmates rushed to the ship and clambered down below, where they found the rest of the crew at work. They talked about how glad they were to be together again.

The third engineer, George Dahl, came up a ladder and stared at Dennis. “What are you doing here?” he asked. “It’s not your time.” All conversation stopped.

Someone said, “You’ve got to go back,” and Dennis found himself being hoisted into the whirlwind again.

He was back on the raft, all alone. His thirst had returned. He began to bite at ice when the man in white reappeared overhead. “I told you not to eat the ice off your pea coat,” he warned, shaking a finger at Dennis. “It’ll lower your body temperature and you’ll die.”

Dennis stopped eating ice.

The chief dispatcher of the Bethlehem Steel fleet was worried. Neither the Morrell nor the Townsend, which was also out in the gale, had arrived at the Sault Ste. Marie locks. On Wednesday morning, the dispatcher called the Coast Guard, who located the Townsend anchored in the St. Marys River. Where was the Morrell?

At 1312 Wednesday, the Coast Guard recovered a body at Harbor Beach. The man wore a life jacket with the Morrell’s name on it. The Coast Guard broadcast an alert. An hour later, a freighter saw wreckage about four miles north-northeast of Harbor Beach. It picked up ring buoys and an oil can from the Morrell. At 1400, it recovered three bodies.

The Coast Guard searched the snow-covered shoreline until late in the afternoon when a helicopter crew saw a life raft bobbing near the shore. On it appeared to be four dead men encased in ice.

Then one of them raised his hand, waving feebly. It was Dennis.

The helicopter landed on its pontoons in the shallow, choppy water.

Crewmen splashed out, wading toward the raft. They had to roll the half-frozen man off.

At Harbor Beach, an ambulance rushed Dennis to the hospital. He had lost some skin from his hands and had frostbite on his left foot. His skin hadn’t turned black, but his body temperature hovered at 94 degrees. They packed anything that would hold warm water around his body to raise his temperature.

Out on Huron, boats crisscrossed the lake in search of bodies. Of the ship’s 29-man crew, they recovered 20 frozen corpses. Eight men are still missing.

Only one man returned alive.

Dennis did not come through the ordeal unscathed. When I met him at a lecture at the Minnesota Historical Society in St. Paul, he limped and moved hesitantly down stairs. His left arm was damaged, and he has had 11 surgeries on his frostbitten feet.

After decades of silence, he was finally able to talk openly about the tragedy, including the man in white and his near-death experience. As I left the lecture hall, I felt that Dennis had given me—and all sailors—a gift. He had been thrust into a desperate situation and had endured.

Dennis’ message was that we should never give up, no matter how grim the situation. We can survive far longer and far better than most think possible.

He had.

Excerpted with permission from Marlin Bree’s Wake of the Green Storm: A Survivor’s Tale (copyright Marlin Bree, www.marlinbree.com). Marlin Bree is an honorary member of St. Paul Sail & Power Squadron, and his previous writings in The Ensign have won top honors in international boating writing competitions for the articles The Old Man and the Inland Sea (First Place, 2007) and The Day All Hell Broke Loose (BWI West Marine Award).

Back to top | Home