On the morning of November 10, 1975, John Lufkins of the Bay Mills Indian Tribe and his brother-in-law Pat Kinney, set out from Whitefish Bay to collect gillnets near Tahquamenon Island.
Lufkins and Tinney were in a 16-foot boat powered by an outboard motor. The weather that morning was fairly calm. As they went past the island to collect the nets furthest away, they were greeted by heavier seas.
Around noon the weather worsened. Temperatures dropped and the waves became too much to handle. Lufkins described it as the largest and most violent waves he’d ever seen.
Lufkins and Tinney took refuge on the tiny Tahquamenon Island. Luckily, they found an abandoned tarpaper shack for shelter.
Inside was a cot and an old stove with two inches of oil in the bottom. Lufkins brought sleeping bags in case of emergencies. They lit the stove and had a thermos of hot coffee.
Suddenly the door flew open. A fellow fisherman had capsized in the freezing waters of Lake Superior. His partner was still in the water, so the trio rushed into the wash to pull him to safety.
Lufkins spotted two others capsized further out to sea. He and Kinney jumped in their boat to rescue them.
They lost sight of the sailors as they fought the storm, but as Lufkins powered over a wave, he found the sailors clinging to their capsized boat.
Lufkins and Tinney rescued those men from the water. They barely made it back to the island amidst what they guessed was 15-20 foot waves.
All the men sheltered in the small shack for the night. That following morning the weather cleared, and they turned on a small radio to hear the news that the freighter Edmund Fitzgerald had gone down in the storm.
As they boated back to shore, Lufkins couldn't believe they’d been spared.
