About the Book

When the ore freighter Daniel J. Morrell met her final storm in November 1966, Dennis Hale had the hard to imagine horror of seeing the steel deck of the ship tear apart like paper.  As he states in his book, Shipwrecked:  Reflections of the Sole Survivor, "the ship made a sound like a dying prehistoric creature, creating a scene that will be with me for the rest of my life."  By the time he was on the life raft with three other crewmembers, he was barefoot, wearing only a wool pea coat over his life jacket, and undershorts.  With the ship in half, only the aft end was still under propulsion and continued past the forward end.  The two halves are now five miles apart on the bottom of Lake Huron.

            In Shipwrecked, Dennis speaks of the pain of going through the 30 foot seas and 44 degree water, then being hit by 65 mph winds with an air temperature of 34 degrees.   He also talks of his physical pain, the mental anguish of watching his three shipmates slowly freeze to death in front of him and wondering when it would be his turn to die. 

Dennis tells this amazing story of his incredible survival after 38 hours in freezing weather and watching all of his shipmates perish.  He has spoken about his survival all around the country from school assemblies to corporate functions.