Terrence Tysall was carrying everything he needed to stay alive on his back one September day in 1995 as he jumped into Lake Superior and started his death-defying descent, traveling more than 500 feet through dark, 34-degree water to the bottom.

When Tysall and his diving partner, Mike Zlatopolsky, made it to the clay floor of Lake Superior, their high-powered, cave-diving lights illuminated the port side — the left side of the ship facing the front — of the wreckage that was once the SS Edmund Fitzgerald .

The Edmund Fitzgerald — a 729-foot-long freighter, once the largest on the Great Lakes — sank about 17 miles northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan during a violent storm on Nov. 10, 1975 . All 29 crew members on board died. Their bodies were never recovered.

Once he reached t

See Full Page