Ten-year-old Miles Kofron peered through the forward-facing, rain-spattered windows of the pilothouse of the SS William Clay Ford at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum on Belle Isle. From it, he could see the vessels on the Detroit River.

He could hear, by way of live radio broadcasts, maritime chatter.

And for a moment, the boy could imagine what it must have been like nearly 50 years ago for Capt. Donald Erickson and his crew to brave a gale-force storm to search for survivors of the doomed SS Edmund Fitzgerald .

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