Edmund Fitzgerald’s final voyage captured in radio play
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After four decades, Minnesota writer Hal Barnes has brought a radio play capturing the SS Edmund Fitzgerald’s fateful final voyage to life — with help from a couple of old friends.
The ore carrier’s shocking Nov. 10, 1975, sinking was made more infamous by Gordon Lightfoot the following year when the musician released the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” In 1982, Barnes — a Duluth-native — decided to give the story a fresh, authentic perspective by using two-way radio transcripts.
Those conversations are between Fitzgerald Capt. Ernest M. McSorley and Capt. Bernie Cooper of the Arthur M. Anderson, which was trailing the Fitzgerald. Barnes also read the National Transportation Safety Board’s report of the sinking and got research assistance from the Lake Superior Maritime Visitor Center’s original director, Patrick Labadie, who connected Barnes with seasoned sailors.
Barnes’ play, however, sat in a desk drawer for 40-some years.
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In the spring of 2023, Barnes and his buddies Gary Muellerleile and veteran journalist Dave Nimmer were talking about Lightfoot, who’d just died, and Barnes mentioned his dusty passion project.
“And Nim says, ‘oh, I’d like to read it.’ And the next week I gave it to him, so that’s how it started,” Barnes recalled to MPR News host Cathy Wurzer. Nimmer was immediately impressed with the fact-filled narration.
“It read like a reporter wrote it. ‘She was loaded with 21,000 long tons of taconite pellets, and she carried 61,000 gallons of number-six diesel fuel, and she left at 2:15 when the last hatch cover was closed,’” Nimmer said. “And I'm thinking, ‘Are you kidding?’ This reads like somebody knew what he was doing and that just started the story going.”
No stranger to being behind the microphone, Nimmer took on the part of the narrator. Muellerleile, with a long-unused musical theatre background, became McSorley.
“So this was another opportunity to do something, you know, to become another character,” Muellerleile said. “And there's something extremely satisfying about that, to become somebody else. And so it's stimulating, it's exciting. And I got to do it with two of my best friends.”
All now in their 70s and 80s, Nimmer said the project appealed to the group’s instincts and became an opportunity to stay creative while remaining engaged.
“I’m a recovering alcoholic, and part of that is trying to live a life that is honest and a life that shares what you have with others, and try to be loving and kind — that's something I had to learn how to do,” Nimmer said.
“In this group of recovering guys that I’m with, we’re all trying to get somewhere, to do what we can, and that seems to me what it takes to be given a good life,” Nimmer continued. “Saying, I’m not sitting around, you know, waiting for the sun to set. But there’s music to enjoy, there's things to do, and we get to practice our craft.”
Listen to entire radio play, “The Last Voyage of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald,” written by Barnes and performed by Nimmer and Muellerleile by clicking on the player button below.
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