In a segment broadcast Wednesday on TVO, a former second engineer described how last year's incident involving a freighter carrying taconite to Algoma Steel persuaded him to forever leave the seafaring trade.
Kent Knechtel was working on the 208-metre Michipicoten on June 8, 2024 when it started taking on large quantities of water near Isle Royale in Lake Superior.
At one point, the 72-year-old boat listed 15 degrees and Knechtel told a panicking crew member: 'You get your s*** together, or you die today."
Non-essential crew members were transferred to the Edwin H. Gott with assistance from U.S. Coast Guard rescuers, and the crippled Michipicoten then sailed to Thunder Bay under its own power, escorted by both the Canadian and U.S. Coast Guards.
The Michipicoten's chief engineer had only joined the crew a few days earlier so Knechtel was essentially in charge of keeping the boat floating.
An 13-foot crack was found in the Michipicoten's hull, even though it was a calm day in June and it was not believed to have made contact with the lake bottom.
The last straw for Knechtel was when he was instructed to take the patched ship under its own power to Wisconsin for repairs.
He believed the ship should be towed, not sailed to Duluth and refused to continue with it.
"Not me. Not after what I went through. I'm not doing it," he said.
The Michipicoten is now at a Wisconsin shipyard, its future uncertain.
Here's the video piece, prepared by a partnership of TVO and Detroit Public TV's Great Lakes Now.