A shipwreck is found in Lake Superior. The captain's behavior remains a mystery.
When the SS Arlington, a Canadian ship carrying wheat across Lake Superior, began to sink in stormy weather on May 1, 1940, the crew boarded a lifeboat and then stared at a strange sight.
There, across the stormy waters, stood their captain, Frederick Burke, known as Tatey Bug, waving to them from the deck of the Arlington just before he went down with his ship.
The strange behavior of the captain, a lone figure left alone after his men escaped, remains a mystery. And it's likely that an explanation, like the ship itself, will never surface, according to researchers at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which announced Monday that the Arlington had been found off the coast of Michigan's Upper Peninsula.
“The question is whether he said, 'Hey, hold the lifeboat,' or waved goodbye,” said Dan Fountain, a researcher who volunteered with the historical society and first discovered the anomaly in the lake bottom that led to the discovery of the Arlington. last year.
Hundreds of ships have sunk in the Great Lakes, threatened by stormy waters while crossing with cargo. Many of the wrecks have been found over the years and are slowly coming into view from the murky depths with the help of sonar or satellite technology.
As with the Arlington, the wrecks can be seen, but the details of the ships' last moments are often never discovered.
Lake Superior, the largest freshwater lake in the world by area, has served as an important commercial shipping corridor for centuries. It is estimated that there are hundreds of wrecks in the almost 32,000 square kilometer lake.
Because the silt at the bottom of the lake is unsettled by current and time, the wrecks reveal themselves in stages. Disturbances in the lake bottom show up in remote sensing data and are subsequently confirmed side scan sonar, which sends and receives acoustic pulses that help map the lake bottom and detect submerged objects. Then remotely operated vehicles pick up the details.
Artifacts, ship hulls or steering wheels come into view. The ships are rarely brought to the surface because it is too expensive and against Michigan law. Survivor manifests and crew lists are searched for clues about life on board.
Some keep their secrets to themselves. The Edmund Fitzgerald disappeared into the snow in Lake Superior in 1975, taking 29 men with it and becoming a cultural legend thanks to Gordon Lightfoot's haunting folk ballad. The schooner Atlanta, lost in 1891 and found in Lake Superior in 2022, revived the story of the six crew members who clung to their lifeboat, only two of whom survived after it capsized.
The Arlington has kept its best-kept secret until now, including any explanation for Captain Burke's behavior in the ship's final moments of distress as 10-foot waves washed over the tilting deck.
“The stereotype is that the captain goes down with the ship,” Bruce Lynn, executive director of the historical society, said in an interview Monday. “But there was enough time for that captain to get out of his wheelhouse and be part of the crew that was going to be rescued.
“So I think it was the mystery of what the captain did that makes this unique,” he said.
Loaded with wheat, the Arlington left what is now Thunder Bay, Ontario, for Owen Sound, Ontario, on April 30, 1940, with a crew of 16. The ship and a nearby freighter, the Collingwood, encountered dense fog. Towards evening the ships were battered by a storm, Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society said in a statement.
Captain Burke, who had made many voyages on the lake, had made decisions since the storm began that baffled his crew, the Historical Society and Mr. Fountain said, citing contemporaneous reports from the time the ship sank.
When the Arlington started taking on water, it started first mate, Junis Macksey, ordered to hug the north bank, hoping for protection from wind and waves. But Captain Burke demanded that the ship stay on course over the open water.
On May 1, around 4:30 a.m., Arlington's chief engineer Fred Gilbert sounded the alarm as the ship began to sink. The crew began abandoning ship in the absence of an order from their captain and reached the Collingwood, the Historical Society said.
Mr Lynn said the captain had spent a lot of time in the Arlington's wheelhouse while the ship was in distress, and there was confusion about why he was waving. Some crew members said they thought he was sick or had fallen and could not get into the lifeboat.
“The last man in the wheelhouse simply said he wasn't coming,” Mr Lynn said. “There is speculation about this veteran of the Lakes. Why did he behave the way he did? What happened in those last moments?”
Mr. Fountain, the researcher, in 2019 discovered an anomaly on the lake bottom about 56 miles north of Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula. Since it was confirmed that it was the Arlington, which was partially upright and mostly intact, he has been trying to find descendants of the crew in Midland, Ontario.
“It solved a mystery by saying we now have an 'X' on the map instead of a blur in this area,” he said. “We are happy that we found it. But it's also sobering to realize that this is also Captain Burke's grave.”