Seamen of the Great Lakes Statue

Superior, Wisconsin

"I challenge the deep with God as my helmsman," begins the inscription on the six-foot granite pedestal of the Seamen of the Great Lakes statue. Sculpted by William Bradford Frost and Debra Anunti of the University of Wisconsin, it was unveiled on August 18, 1979.

The bronze 12-foot-tall seaman has been tarnished and stained by decades of maritime air and seabirds. He wears a bulky rubber immersion suit, boots, and mittens -- making him look somewhat superhuman -- and holds a contorted ship's line in his hands, which the artists have stylized into what appears to be a writhing snake.

The statue was supposedly the idea of a University of Wisconsin professor, who was inspired by the Great Lakes freighter Edmund Fitzgerald, which had departed Superior on November 9, 1975, and sank a day later leaving no survivors.