Christopher Winters, Milwaukee, Wisconsin is the staff photographer at Discovery World Science and Technology Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a freelance photojournalist, and maritime historian. Smitten at the age of nine with the lore of lakeboats and the legend of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Chris has dedicated his professional life to chronicling Great Lakes maritime history and culture. His award-winning books “Centennial,” documenting life aboard the century-old lake steamer St. Mary’s Challenger, “The Legend Lives On,” a definitive commemoration of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and “Schooner Days,” the official history of Wisconsin’s flagship the S/V Denis Sullivan were published in 2008, 2015, and 2017 respectively. “Centennial” received the 2010 Steamship Historical Society of America’s C. Bradford Mitchell Award, and “Schooner Days” received the 2018 Gold “IPPY” Award for regional non-fiction.
Chris has served as a four-term board member of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, a trustee of the Wisconsin Marine Historical Society, and was recipient of the 2017 Great Lakes Historian of the Year award from the Marine Historical Society of Detroit. He enjoys sharing his love of the Great Lakes with daughters, Ryerson and Sullivan, and his long-suffering former flatlander wife Jessica.