When Randy Flood, psychotherapist and Director of the Men’s Resource Center, received “The Gales of November” by John U. Bacon as a gift, he says he “absolutely devoured” it. Bacon’s book resonated with Flood not only because of his family’s history with Lake Superior or because he could immediately hear Gordon Lightfoot’s haunting song honoring the lives lost in his head. It resonated because the book provides lessons in how masculinity is performed in context and how that can impact lives. “This isn’t just a shipwreck story. This is a story about men, about courage, about competition, about hierarchy. It’s about how strength was understood in a particular moment in history and what happens when that definition is pushed beyond its limits.” For this solo Revealing Men segment, Flood uses Bacon’s book and Lightfoot’s song to offer a blueprint for how masculinity might be better expressed and lived.
Excerpts of Flood’s review and reflections on the book are below (edited for length and clarity). Look for the complete podcast on your favorite platform.
The Power and Truth of Myth
Most of us know the Edmund Fitzgerald through the song “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It’s almost mythic at this point.
“The legend lives on from the Chippewa on down of the big lake they call Gitche Gumee.”
That opening doesn’t feel like a song. It’s much more than that. It’s an invocation.
I want to begin today by honoring that myth because myths carry truth even when they leave things out. That song shaped how many of us remember this tragedy. But the story beneath it is more complicated. There’s something about the song itself that I think matters.
A Relationship Between Power and Restraint
Gordon Lightfoot once said that the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald didn’t arrive all at once. It had been hovering around him for a while. He’d pluck pieces of it on his guitar between other songs: A phrase, a melody, a mood. Eventually, during a rehearsal, a band member suggested, “Why don’t we just record it?”
What we all know—the version that’s become almost sacred—was the first take. They recorded it again and again and again. But none of the later versions had the same weight, that same pull, that same authority. As if the song arrived whole, and the moment you tried to improve it, something essential slipped away. That matters. Because it tells us something about power and restraint, even before we talk about ships or storms.
We Carry Our Ancestors’ Experience Within Us
And there’s another reason this story has stayed with me. Some experiences don’t just live in our memories. They live in our families, sometimes as stories, sometimes as instincts, sometimes as a pull we can’t fully explain.
Psychology might call this transgenerational transmission. Biology might talk about it as epigenetics. Spiritual traditions might say the soul keeps trying to get something right. Different languages. Same intuition. Same gut feeling that this sounds familiar. It resonates.
Multi-faceted Masculinity
On my father’s side of the family, water, ships, and long passages aren’t abstractions; they’re lineage. And later in my own life, Lake Superior became part of my family’s story, too. …. Our roots trace back through shipping routes out of Newfoundland. Water, ships, long passages, this kind of work runs in our lineage. My grandfather, Orin Flood, worked on the Great Lakes car ferries. He was a cook on the Spartan. The Badger still runs today between Ludington [ed., MI] and Manitowoc [ed., WI].
My dad, Larry, worked on those ships, too, for a while. But he eventually left the shipping industry. Not because he couldn’t do the work. He left because he didn’t want the cadence of being gone from his family seven to nine days at a time. That decision has always stayed with me. Because it reminds us, it reminds me, that masculinity isn’t just about what a man can endure, but what he ultimately chooses to give his life to.
When Masculinity Becomes Compulsive
The Great Lakes shipping industry of the 60s and 70s was a deeply masculine world. Young men signed on, knowing they’d be away from home for long stretches. Ships became closed ecosystems: hierarchy, discipline, pride, endurance, performance, and even the good old camaraderie.
This wasn’t toxic masculinity. It was context-dependent masculinity. Highly effective, deeply honorable in many ways, and dangerous when it couldn’t adjust to the changing conditions. A masculinity calibrated for endurance, output, and hierarchy, but less nimble when restraint, flexibility, and adaptation become a matter of survival. No one embodies this tension better than Captain Ernest McSorley of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Captain McSorley had a long, successful career working on the Fitz. He set records: cargo tonnage, speed, efficiency. That kind of achievement is deeply masculine. It builds pride, identity, respect, and legacy.
McSorley was known for establishing a good culture on his ship. He ran hard, but he didn’t dominate his men. He expected a lot, but gave a lot. But here’s the paradox: some men don’t damage relationships directly; they damage them indirectly by refusing to slow down. McSorley’s compulsion wasn’t about controlling people. It was about dominating conditions, the lake, the schedule, the tonnage, the competition, and the money. When masculinity becomes compulsive, when it must prove itself by pressing forward, it can fracture the very structures that support life, including steel.
Gaining a Competitive Edge and Increasing Risk
On that November run, several freighters were pushing toward the Soo Locks as the storm intensified. Captain Ernest McSorley, along with the others, chose the sheltered route, extending their trip by about 14 hours along the Canadian shore. That matters because this wasn’t recklessness. But there’s another technical piece of this story that matters.
The waves on the Great Lakes are very different than ocean swells. In the ocean, waves are longer, more spaced out. Ships rise and fall with them. On Lake Superior, waves are closer together, shorter periods, packed tightly by wind and distance. That means a ship can have one wave lifting the stern and another lifting the bow. At the same time, when that happens, the middle of the ship isn’t supported. It sags. Again and again.
Now add this. By the 1970s, competition was fierce. Margins were tight. More cargo meant more money. So ships were pushed closer to their limits and sometimes quietly beyond them. Ballast water could be drained before inspection. A ship could be tipped slightly to one side. The water line would look acceptable. Pass inspections at the Soo Locks, perhaps. The ballast then could be restored. Cargo increased often amid ships where stress was already the greatest. Nothing dramatic, nothing reckless. Incremental, kind of normalized, even rewarded. The inherent risk was borne by the men, but the financial rewards mainly flowed upward to the corporations.
A More Evolved Masculinity
Of the three ships turning along the Canadian coast for shelter, one eventually took refuge at Thunder Bay [ed., SS William Clay Ford]. The Anderson stayed in the storm, but slowed down. She adjusted. She jibed with the waves instead of driving through them.
McSorley continued on toward the Soo Locks, effectively racing as conditions worsened. He did eventually slow the Fitzgerald, but it was too late. His final words say it all. “We are holding our own.” That wasn’t bravado. That was competence. Right up until competence was no longer enough. Masculinity doing what it had always done: carrying more than the structure was designed to hold until the moment required something different.
Here we come to one of the most important moments in this entire story. Aboard the Anderson, the storm intensified. Waves climbed toward 40 feet. Captain Cooper ordered more speed, perhaps to pace with the Fitzgerald. And then something extraordinary happened. The chief engineer, Ashcroft, defied the order. Not out of ego, not out of rebellion, but out of allegiance to a higher authority, the sea itself. He didn’t do it blatantly. He acted as though he was complying, but he didn’t increase the speed, and apparently, the captain never noticed.
But Ashcroft understood something crucial. Slowing down wasn’t quitting, yielding wasn’t weakness, and adjusting wasn’t failure. It was wisdom in his good old engineer brain and sense of how to get through this mess of a storm. By reducing speed and synchronizing with the waves, he saved every life on board. He violated the male hierarchy and defied the order, but he was honoring something bigger. He was honoring humanity. And here’s the redefinition. This was not less masculinity. It was a more evolved masculinity.
With Great Loss Comes Understanding
After the Fitzgerald sank, the shipping industry changed. The captain’s macho mentality gave way to sober risk assessment. Protocols changed. Load limits changed. Decision-making changed. In the half-century since the Edmund Fitzgerald went down, not one commercial ship has sunk in the Great Lakes. The industry learned. Which raises a sobering question for us. Why are men in our systems so slow to learn the same lessons in our homes, in our relationships, in our communities?
Masculinity Recalibrated
Imagine what a broader recalibration of masculinity could do. Not weaker masculinity, not diminished masculinity, but masculinity that can read conditions and respond. Masculinity that can read social context and respond appropriately.
- Domestic violence: What if strength meant regulating oneself instead of merely overpowering another with the storm raging inside us?
- Relationships: What if courage included vulnerability, strength of restraint, as well as assertion?
- Leadership and war: What if yielding to reality or diplomacy was seen as wisdom instead of questioned as weakness or caving to fears only?
At the Men’s Resource Center, we don’t discard strength. We expand it. We work on that calibration, social intuition, and emotional intelligence. Strengths that preserve relationships. Courage that tells the truth. And power used in the service of others. In 12-step programs, men learn that survival, sometimes, begins with surrender — not to weakness, but to reality.
Ashcroft didn’t lose authority when he yielded to the sea. He found it. And that may be the deepest lesson of the Gales of November. When strength submits to wisdom, lives are saved. When masculinity yields to something larger than ego, men come home, sometimes on the first take.
Lightfoot ends the song by turning away from the Lake and back toward the people, toward the families, the parents, the wives, the sons, and the daughters. He leaves us with a theological question about where love goes in tragedies like this. And I don’t think that question is meant to be answered quickly. But I do think love shows up in the lessons that are finally learned, in the humility that comes too late for some, but just in time for others.
Recognizing and Reclaiming Masculinity
If you want to expand the many ways in which you can express your masculinity and enrich your life, reach out to the Men’s Resource Center online or call us at 616-456-1178. We offer a range of services, including men’s support groups, in-person and remote counseling. Don’t wait to begin to live your life to its fullest.
Thank you for this grounded reflection on masculinity! Balance, respect, & mindful presence!!