Harry Atkins, now 86, was an Associated Press reporter in Detroit when he was dispatched to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to cover the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald on 10 November 1975. The freighter was carrying iron ore from Wisconsin to Detroit when it encountered a severe storm on Lake Superior. All 29 crew members died, and the exact cause of the wreck remains unknown.
Atkins recounted how a Whitefish Bay resident, described as an “old hermit,” had been listening to radio communications and alerted local stations that the Fitzgerald was in trouble. The ship's last message, sent to the nearby vessel Arthur Anderson, stated: “We are holding our own.” Atkins drove overnight to Sault Ste. Marie, about 347 miles north of Detroit, and arranged a flight with a retired Navy pilot to survey the scene.
From the air, Atkins saw a lifeboat and a life vest, but no bodies were ever recovered. The wreck lies 535 feet beneath the surface, about 17 miles north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan, and is protected as a gravesite under Canadian law. Atkins's lede read: “Rescuers searched Lake Superior’s chilly waters Tuesday for the 29-member crew of the sunken ore-carrier Edmund Fitzgerald but found only an oil slick, empty lifeboats and life jackets.”
The disaster became legendary partly due to Gordon Lightfoot's 1976 ballad, which Lightfoot wrote after reading Atkins's story and a Newsweek article. Atkins later became a sports journalist and said he gets “choked up” whenever he hears the song. He added: “To think that 29 guys were alive yesterday and dead today. I cared a lot about what I was writing.”
Family members and maritime devotees will gather on Monday to mark the 50th anniversary of the wreck.
