In July 2024 after diving some wrecks in the 230-240ft range out of Harrisville, MI (I should really write a trip report for that too..) in Lake Huron I was lucky enough to be able to get some dives on the Carl D. Bradley with some good friends. The Carl D. Bradley is one of the deeper wrecks in Lake Michigan. She sits in approximately 360-370ft (~112m) at the stern and about 340-350ft (~106m) at the bow. There are obviously deeper wrecks in the Great Lakes such as the Edmund Fitzgerald in 530ft (Lake Superior) or the SS Scotiadoc in 850ft (also in Lake Superior) but the Carl D. Bradley represents something a bit more depth-attainable, and legal to dive unlike the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Here is a little history from Wikipedia
SS Carl D. Bradley was an American self-unloading Great Lakes freighter that sank in a Lake Michigan storm on November 18, 1958. Of the 35 crew members, 33 died in the sinking. Twenty-three were from the port town of Rogers City, Michigan, United States. Her sinking was likely caused by structural failure from the brittle steel used in her construction as well as extensive use throughout her 31-year career.
Built in 1927 by the American Ship Building Company in Lorain, Ohio, Carl D. Bradley was owned by the Michigan Limestone division of U.S. Steel, and operated by the Bradley Transportation Company. She retained the title of “Queen of the Lakes” for 22 years as the longest and largest freighter on the Great Lakes.
At a length of 639 feet she was considered the longest freighter (and the largest self-unloader) on the lakes for 22 years. In fact, the Carl D. Bradley retained the title “Queen of the Lakes” until the launch of the 678-foot (207 m) SS Wilfred Sykes in 1949. For comparison, the Roy A. Jodrey in the St Lawrence Seaway was 640 feet in length which is 1ft 1inch longer but she is not considered a “Great Lakes” wreck. I’m just making the comparison to give you an idea of the scale of the wreck itself.
Diving Logistics
She is not commonly dove. You really need a good weather window, a group of qualified divers you trust and a boat willing to take you there. She is approximately 23 miles south of Manistique, MI. That is not say that she is never dove. To be blunt, I have done nothing special here. There have been plenty of people that have dove this wreck. I am neither the first, second or the 50th person to dive it but nevertheless it has been a goal of mine for a while.
The reality is there are really no regular dive charters that run out of Manistique, MI. You need to charter a boat willing to go there or trailer your own boat. We did exactly that. We trailered my friend’s boat up there. She runs a dive charter out of Milwaukee, WI but this was purely a friends trip and not a dive charter.
Nowadays it seems increasingly harder to find a dive charter willing to run out there or to get a group of divers comfortable at those depths that are all on good and friendly speaking terms. Perhaps that is the most challenging issue. There are plenty of people that are certainly qualified, on-paper certified and capable of diving beyond 300ft but a lot of those people tend to not like each other. I only wish that were an over generalization. Ask 5 tech divers what they think of the other 4 and you’ll get comments ranging from “they’re an asshole”, “they’re a dangerous shitty diver, “they have poor training”, etc. Full disclosure: Admittedly I’m definitely guilty of this. There are plenty of people I won’t willing dive with. I know they’ll also gladly also say the same thing about me and I really don’t care.
There are also no dive shops. You really need to be self-sufficient. That means bringing all of your own equipment, cylinders, gas, sofnolime, aqualseal, multiple drysuits and all spares. You can’t exactly hop down to the local 7-Eleven for wrist seal or 10/70 trimix fill. Even though Jitka travels with a compressor and booster in her truck we were all pretty self-sufficient and arrived with milkcrates of rebreather bottles already filled. Doing these types of trips I’ve found it’s really enjoyable to not have to boost gas or fill tanks after a long day of diving. It’s certainly really nice to just show up with a bunch of inflation bottles, rebreather bottles and not have to fill or blend gas for a week of diving.
My progression and path to dive the Carl D. Bradley in a nutshell
I’m not going to lay out my whole dive resume here. I’ve honestly been wanting to dive it for the last 5-6 years but the biggest challenge I have had is finding work-up dives to depths beyond 250ft (~76m) locally in New England. There are not a lot of charter boats that regularly run dive trips deeper than 200-250ft in the area where I live. It’s mostly private boats or special trips that get blown out frequently. Getting shake-down dives in 220-240ft (60-73m) range is “easy” enough. I do at least 4 or 5 trips a year to the Jodrey since it never gets blown out, and we have some local New England wrecks such as the YF-415 and a few others that meet those depth requirements but beyond that I need to travel.
In 2017ish, I had the “goal” of trying to get more comfortable in depths beyond 250ft+. Rebreathers in reality make this super easy provided nothing goes wrong but they do not make you superman. A running joke is a dive to 300ft is easy however surfacing is the harder and optional part. You ideally want to get experience doing multiple gas switches, get comfortable carrying 3-4+ stages/bailouts and frankly just seeing how your body reacts to that much decompression stress.
Admittedly that has been one of my main reasons for heading up to the Great Lakes. It’s simply a lot easier to get in some quality deeper dives. I’ve been lucky enough to get dives on on the Robert C. Pringle (~300ft) in Lake Michigan, as well as dives such as the Gunilda (~260ft) and the Kamloops (~260ft), SS Superior City (~250ft), Zillah (~250ft) in Lake Superior, not including a bunch of 200-250ft stuff in Lake Huron. My point was I didn’t just jump straight to 300ft+. Since 2016 I’ve probably spent ~3 weeks of every summer diving in the Great Lakes. It’s simply more reliable than local New England diving for getting out on deeper wrecks. The diving is also better.
In 2019, I was also lucky enough to be able to get a couple dives on the Sarah Ellen, a schooner that sits in about 300′ in Lake Champlain with my buddy Tom. That was actually a really good test for me. Tom was diving open circuit and we discussed emergency procedures, gas planning for the team with two CCR divers and one open circuit diver. We setup and rigged drop tanks for any emergencies. Unrelated but you can also get to 300ft+ at Thompson Point in Lake Champlain but really there is nothing down there to see but rocks and mud.
In 2020 and 2021 during COVID-19, I spent 2 winters in Florida diving Eagle’s Nest pretty regularly with my other dive buddy John. You can get to 300ft pretty easy in Eagle’s Nest however I am NOT trying to make a direct comparison. Florida divers will argue cave diving is more challenging whereas seasoned Great Lakes wreck divers will argue the latter. The reality is it’s somewhere in-between. Cave diving and scootering in warm water with relatively good visibility is certainly different than diving in 38f (3-4c) off a boat in rough conditions. Our dive times in Eagle’s Nest were actually much longer than a lot of my Great Lakes dives and we had the benefit of being able to stage a shit ton of extra deco gas and safety bottles in the cave. Deco-ing out on a log in a pond in 20-30′ of water is much easier than bouncing on a line in rough seas while freezing in 39f water with the risk of a flooded dry glove or a flooded drysuit.
Anyway, we were really lucky on the Bradley and managed to get 3 dives on her with pretty good topside conditions and amazing underwater conditions.
The actual dives on the Bradley
The first day was a bit sketchy for weather. We motored out there while getting beat up a bit but kept going because the forecast was predicted to lay down. We figured at this point we were committed and might a well keep going as seas were predicted to calm down and wind was supposed to completely drop out in the afternoon. We figured we could call the dive if we got out to the site and condition did not improve. All the forecasts were predicting this but unfortunately the seas did not really calm down.
Just as we were just about to grapple the wreck in pretty rough weather I spotted the floating tag line from the old mooring. Bonus! I think this made us all feel much better that we didn’t have to grapple the wreck in these conditions. I was truthfully wondering if we should call the dive. Since Steve was the one that tied in the mooring last year (sacrificing his one and only dive on the wreck because of last year’s weather) we knew exactly where it was tied in, a perfect location right behind the wheel house on the bow. This is great because the location is out of the photos but close enough to the memorial bell and a high point on the wreck.
It was also really nice because if we had to grapple the wreck there was a chance it could have hooked the wreck mid-ship in middle of nowhere in one of the cargo holds, or even worse on some debris in the mud at 370ft. We were ultimately prepared to deal with that but having the mooring made things much easier since we knew exactly where we would land on the wreck.
Ultimately because we did not know the condition of the existing mooring we opted to bring another line down with us just in case it was in bad condition. Neither of us wanted to deal with a broken mooring on a 300ft+ dive.
Steve, Jitka and I jumped in as a three person dive team while Craig, one of Jitka’s captains volunteered to stay on the boat and run it for us. We were all super grateful to have Craig otherwise we were going to be diving in teams of two which would have made for a very very long day. That was actually our original plan but unfortunately one of the our divers had to back out last minute, leaving only three of us available to dive. Thankfully we found the existing mooring was in perfect condition with no broken strands so we never tied in the other mooring.
The dive was fantastic and visibility was honestly epic. Descending to 200ft we could see the entire wreck. We easily had over 100ft+ of visibility with tons of ambient light. Jitka and Steve quickly got to work taking photos and I got to play dive model and position video lights.
Full disclosure: I did have a minor leak on my rebreather which both Jitka and Steve duly noted on the ascent. I guess it looked a lot worse than it actually was. Prior to the dive, Jitka, Steve and I all agreed that if anyone had any issues we would all ascent together as a team.
Interesting enough we all did thorough bubble checks at 30ft and there was nothing. At some point in the dive my rebreather head was bubbling (minorly) out after every exhale at around ~300ft. It was minor and noted pretty much at the end of our dive so there was nothing I could do at that point.
Other than that the dive went well. My rebreather was actually bone dry inside although I did go through diluent a little quicker than normal which is not really unusual at these depths but still a bit concerning. Post mortem analysis of my rebreather head revealed a small dog hair that might have been responsible. To be safe I also changed the head o-rings to brand new ones. I’m not going to lie here. The head o-rings I was using were at least 3-4 years old so it’s quite possible they were very compressed.
Interestingly enough, my buddy Scott had a similar issue in Newfoundland in extreme cold water (36f / 2c). IQsub said that this could potentially happen in extreme cold weather with expansion / contraction of materials. Their solution is to install a slightly larger diameter o-ring in the head connection. I bought some of those in case the problem occurs again however my issue was solved with new head o-rings and thorough cleaning of the sealing surfaces.
Deco was uneventful AND warm. My rebreather head stopped leaking around 150ft if I recall. The mooring line slowly went from bouncy to a complete standstill and by the time we got to around 50ft we could see that there was hardly a ripple in the ocean, err.. I mean lake. Finally, we surfaced to completely glass calm conditions. The NOAA prediction was accurate for once! It was just a few hours late.
Day 2 and Day 3 went well with no more rebreather issues for any of us. It was flat calm with the same visibility and conditions on the bottom. We were incredibly lucky as we had only planned for 3 days on the wreck and that is exactly what we got. We opted to stick to the bow rather than explore the stern. Perhaps the next Bradley trip we can explore the stern which is a little deeper.
Our runtimes were pretty conservative. We kept all 3 dives around the 3 hour mark (170-180 minutes) with approximately 20-22 minutes on the bottom. We all hauled ass down the line to get as much bottom time as possible.
Honestly conditions can change so quickly out on the lake that I think 3-4 hours is a good realistic goal. Would I have liked to stay a little longer? Of course but it ends up for an overall much longer day. You also have to take into account that you’re 23 miles offshore. Things can go pear-shaped very quickly. I personally think it’s a bit stupid to do a 5 hour runtime in the open ocean or Great Lakes but I realize depth will largely dictate that.
Another really nice thing about the bow is that there is in actuality no reason to go below 330-335ft(~100m) there except maybe for bragging rights. The entire wheel house and deck / gunnel level and be seen without dropping below 325-340ft. I think my max depth was 334ft on the Bradley bow. Of course if I wanted to go all the way to mud I could have gone a little deeper but this allowed us to really maximize our time and efficiency for photos.
I think if we plan a trip on the stern at some point I’d be comfortable pushing our runtimes to the 4 hour mark provided the forecast allowed for it and the deco temperatures were warm. I’d love to check out the engine room on the Bradley!
Overall it was an awesome trip! With the exception of the starting sea conditions on the first day we couldn’t have asked for better weather. I realize I am writing this trip report almost 3 months later so I’m sure that I’ve missed some other details. All underwater photos I’ve posted here were from Steve Stauch and Jitka Hanakova with some supreme dive modeling by yours truly. 🙂 
