I love The Wreck of the Deutschland too, Edith - I haven't read it for a while, thank you for the reminder.
A distant branch of my family left Germany because of the same anti-Catholic Falk Laws which expelled the nuns who perished on the Deutschland.
This may seem like a big leap, but there's a song by the Canadian songwriter Gordon Lightfoot ['If you could read my mind' is his best-known song] which is about a ship that sank in Lake Superior in 1975, with the loss of all 29 souls on board.
It always makes me think of the Wreck of the Deutschland, it places you in the middle of the disaster,
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
and the little human detail of
When suppertime came, the old cook came on deck
Sayin', "Fellas, it's too rough to feed ya"
At 7 p.m. a main hatchway caved in
He said, "Fellas, it's been good to know ya"
Here's more of it:
........
The captain wired in, he had water comin' in
And the good ship and crew was in peril
And later that night when his lights went out of sight
Came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald
Does anyone know where the love of God goes
When the waves turn the minutes to hours?
The searchers all say they'd have made Whitefish Bay
If they'd put fifteen more miles behind her
They might have split up or they might have capsized
They may have broke deep and took water
And all that remains is the faces and the names
Of the wives and the sons and the daughters
......
In a musty old hall in Detroit they prayed
In the Maritime Sailors' Cathedral
The church bell chimed 'til it rang twenty-nine times
For each man on the Edmund Fitzgerald
....
Gordon Lightfoot - The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald Lyrics & Meaning