Into the deep: One man’s descent to the Edmund Fitzgerald

PARADISE, MI — Ric Mixter of one of only a few people who can say they’ve seen the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald with their own eyes.

On July 4, 1994, Mixter spent almost two hours on the bottom of Lake Superior in a submersible as part of “Expedition ’94,” a controversial private dive to the wreck 18 years after the sinking. The dive was financed by businessman Fred Shannon.

The project, controversial from the start, would become a turning point in how the public — and maritime law — view the Great Lakes’ most famous shipwreck.

Mixter produced and directed a one-hour documentary on the expedition, which made use of a yellow submersible, the Delta, which had been used only months earlier by ocean explorer Robert Ballard on a dive to the sunken ocean liner Lusitania.

Descent into Darkn