WHITEFISH POIINT, MI -- If people want to know what the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck looks like, there are numerous drawings, photos and models online that show the ill-fated carrier in its final resting place.

Veteran diver Terrence Tysall, however, has seen the looming hull of the famous shipwreck with his own eyes.

“It reminded me of an ice breaker cutting through large blocks of mud and clay,” said Tysall, a Florida diving instructor who is one of two people to ever scuba dive the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, which sank 44 years ago today. He spoke to MLive about his dive in 2015.

"I'm assuming she nosed-in pretty hard."

On Sept. 1, 1995, Tysall and fellow diver Mike Zee, of Chicago, became the first and only people to ever scuba dive the Fitzgerald. The deep-water expedition landed the two men in the technical diving history books - and in hot water with some of the lost crew members' families, who consider the wreck a gravesite.

The Fitzgerald, the best known of all Great Lakes shipwrecks, sank suddenly in a gale on Nov. 10, 1975. All 29 men aboard died, and their bodies are entombed inside the wreck, 530 feet under the surface.

Terrence Tysall

Tysall called diving the ship one of the most significant accomplishments in his lengthy career, which includes more than 8,000 dives for the U.S. Navy, NASA, NOAA and other organizations. He and Zee set a record for the deepest scuba dive on the Great Lakes, and the deepest scuba dive on a shipwreck.

Prior to that, a handful of expeditions -- Jacques Cousteau in 1980 among them -- had involved heavy dive suits, remotely operated vehicles and submersibles. But scuba? Too deep, everyone said. Zee, a student of Tysall's, thought differently.

"We wanted to prove it could be done respectfully," Tysall said.

The two picked a date, arranged a team and drove a small pickup truck from Florida to Michigan, taking turns sleeping on the oxygen tanks in the truck bed. When they arrived in the Upper Peninsula, the weather gave them a window of one morning when the water was millpond calm for the expedition.

All told, it took about six minutes to descend and three hours to ascend from the shipwreck using a "trimix" gas mixture. Between that, Tysall and Zee spent a grand total of 15 minutes on the bottom with the wreck.

On the lake bed, the pair saw a hull towering above them, illuminated by heavy-duty lights they'd dropped on a camera line. The lights gave them about 60 feet of visibility on the bow area and of the iron ore scattered around the bottom. They floated up the hull side, past the words "Edmund Fitzgerald," to the pilothouse.

"Her paint is as perfect as when she went down," Tysall said. "The only time I think I've felt smaller on a wreck was when we dove some World War II wrecks in Guadalcanal."

Due to the strict dive timeframe, Tysall and Zee didn't get as much time as they would have liked to explore the shipwreck. Every minute on the bottom at that depth lengthens the time needed to decompress on the ascent. The duo had a finite amount of breathable gas mixture, and Lake Superior allows little room for error.

Image of the Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck taken during a dive in 1995 to recover the ship's bell. The ship sank in a storm off Whitefish Point in Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975.

Just before leaving, Tysall reached out and grasped the port side rail with two neoprene-gloved hands. It was a reverent moment filled with emotion, he said. For the first time in 20 years, living hands touched the ship.

"It was a connection," he said. "It wasn't disrespect."

"Two people risked their lives to pay respects to those 29 men."

Afterward, the dive team visited the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point. They planned on a full week of diving, but the weather closed in. The one dive was all that Mother Nature allowed.

Family members who were already pushing the Canadian government for a ban on expeditions to the wreck criticized Tysall and Zee in the weeks following the dive. A few months prior, the ship's bell had been recovered during an expedition blessed by family members who wanted a tangible, symbolic memorial on land.

In 1994, an expedition led by Fred Shannon captured video of a preserved body on the wreck. Shannon's intent to distribute the image sparked outrage and, eventually, a legislative ban on photography of corpses on Michigan bottomlands.

Tysall said the dive boat did not anchor to the wreck and the team went through the proper channels for a dive license required by the Ontario Heritage Act. Subsequent amendments to the act have effectively banned diving of any kind on the Edmund Fitzgerald wreck without approval by the Canadian government.

The Fitzgerald dive fueled debate over what proper respect should be shown a shipwreck, with divers and shipwreck hunters likening the expedition to visiting a cemetery and others calling it a macho stunt done in poor taste.

After their accomplishment became known, Fitzgerald family members called Tysall. They were concerned about his footage getting into the hands of tabloid TV shows. Tysall stressed the dive was not a publicity stunt and promised to hold onto the footage, which has never been released despite numerous requests.

"I think they understood the spirit of the dive after that," he said.

Tysall, a military veteran diver, said he's been a part of restricted expeditions before, including a sanctioned dive on the USS Arizona, a Navy battleship that sunk in the 1941 Japanese attack Pearl Harbor with nearly 1,000 men inside. He's helped recover bodies and has dove on sites where shipmates died, he said.

In Orlando, Tysall co-founded the Cambrian Foundation, a nonprofit group that does technical diving for scientists, archaeologists and governmental agencies. He led the team that recovered artifacts from the USS Monitor, a Civil War ironclad that sunk in 230 feet off Cape Hatteras in 1862.

In an era when people can experience so many things virtually, Tysall said he considers diving a way to maintain a physical connection with history.

"The Fitzgerald was another step in that for me," he said. "I think it was important for us to be there."