November 18, 2016. Sitting here at 5:30 p.m., the wind howls outside, beating on the storm window panes. What started as an unusually warm mid-November day quickly turned cold, with high winds building.  A stark reminder of what often happens on the Great Lakes in mid-November. A time of the year that the Great Lakes sailors fear, and for good reason.

On this day in 1958, at 5:30 p.m., the Carl D. Bradley, affectionately known as The Queen of the Lakes, sunk near Gull Island on Lake Michigan, with a loss of lives greater than the more well-known Edmund Fitzgerald, which sunk in 1975.

Fr...