Great Lake Storm Survivor Pays Tribute
There in the November dark, the cold water ripping into the doomed boat, Lloyd Belcher -- a man who would cheat death three times -- didn't lose hope.
He found his reason -- a spiritual compass for an entire life to come.
Now, almost 65 years to the day the sailor survived one of history's most disastrous Great Lakes storms, Belcher will ring a mariner's bell once, for a soul lost decades later, during another, even more famous sinking. He will help mark the loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald -- sent to the bottom 30 years ago tomorrow, with a crew of 29, which weren't as blessed as Belcher.
Now 86 years old, the Canadian mariner was a young wheelsman aboard a lesser known freighter, the SS Novadoc, when it was caught in a Nov. 11, 1940, gale on Lake Michigan. This month of the calendar has always been feared among Great Lakes sailors. In sudden fits, the waters can swell to take down grand ships and tough, seasoned men.
Just as it was when the Edmund Fitzgerald was taken during a Lake Superior storm on Nov. 10, 1975. Just as it was when Belcher's long, lean ship -- carrying coke from Chicago -- ran aground on a sandbar near Pentwater, Mich., 35 years, less a day, earlier.
Back in 1940, winds shifted, and plans by the Novadoc's captain, to outmanoeuvre and outsmart the waters, failed.
"I no longer had control of the wheel," recalls Belcher.
"I turned (the wheel) in one direction -- nothing. The captain, told me to swing over to the other direction -- still nothing. It had us."
They ran aground, still far out into the water. They dropped anchor, and retreated to the far ends of the ship, as the back broke and water rushed into the crew's quarters. He and 16 other men spent 36 hours in the carcass of their Patterson Steamship Lines freighter, as it shattered around them.
"No light, no food and no water, we waited," the Mississauga grandfather recalls -- newspaper clippings of the day, fanned out on a nearby table. "So I prayed. And I found the Lord."
Hundreds of people gathered on the shore when the Novadoc hit. They watched in horror, because the weather was deemed too rough for the coast guard to venture out the 300 metres to save the stranded men. Townspeople even pulled up automobiles near the water's edge, to blink their lights. A sign of humanity -- near, but just out of reach.
On the day the Novadoc ran aground, two other ships also sank in the same storm. Only Belcher's vessel would yield survivors, after three brave crew members of a local fishing boat -- the oldest in the area, powered by an aging car engine -- launched a rescue mission of their own. The storm dragged 59 men under, including two from the Novadoc.
He swore he wouldn't sail again. But water gets in the blood.
Belcher went into the navy, to serve during the war. Later, he married a good woman, Barbara, had three sons and held down a career at A&P Food Stores.
Novembers came and went. The survivors of the Novadoc, and even the fishermen who saved them, have, apparently, died off. Leaving just the young man at the wheel that day.
During decades to follow, few knew the colourful history of the former sailor. That he survived a Great Lakes disaster -- one of the few men living who can now say that. He didn't talk about that, or a 1942 car accident that killed three men who were travelling with him. Or losing the better part of his hearing, during the D-Day invasion of 1944, when a glider bomb struck the frigate HMCS Matane. Belcher was five metres away from the bomb when it exploded.
After each, near-death experience, he thanked his God, and promised to sing his praises in everything he did. To appreciate the life given back to him -- three times over.
Tomorrow, at Whitefish Point Light Station, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, he will do that again, as he rings the bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Helped by other survivors, it will be rung 29 times for each man lost on the ship, made famous in a Gordon Lightfoot ballad. Then, a 30th chime will be sounded, for all mariners -- including those souls lost during the great Armistice Day storm of 1940.
Among those who will be there to listen to the bell -- recovered 10 years ago from the wreck of the legendary steamship -- will be family members of the Fitzgerald sailors who perished. (You can find information on watching the memorial live, via the net, by logging on to shipwreckmuseum.com).
Belcher, as he rings the bell once for a lost sailor, will be thinking about that man -- knowing, better than most, what he may have felt like. A comrade of November storms past.
And he will be thinking about what he did with his own life. How he spent the gift of the past 65 years.
"He's made good use of the years since then," says Barbara, as Lloyd takes the stairs -- slowly -- to see me out.
He says he knows -- has never forgotten -- what was given to him, and what was taken away from his peers on the Fitzgerald and all the other ships on the bottom.
How -- as a daily tribute to their memory -- he's tried to honour the pact he made in a prayer, whispered inside the hulk of a ship in its death throes.
How, for 50 years after, he sang in the church choir. And has followed the compass given to him all those years ago.
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