LANSING, Mich.(AP) — Associated Press reporter Harry Atkins was far from Lake Superior on Nov. 10, 1975, “when the gales of November came early.” But his news coverage the following day of the infamous wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald helped shape its legacy.
Atkins, now 86, was a news reporter in Detroit when he was sent to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to write about the Fitzgerald. The freighter was transporting iron ore from Wisconsin to Zug Island in Detroit when it encountered a terrifying storm. All 29 men aboard died, and the exact cause of the wreck remains a mystery.
The Fitzgerald was the last major shipwreck on the Great Lakes, thanks to technology improvements in the years after the disaster. The wreck also became the most famous of the region thanks to Gordon Lightfoot’s eerie folk ballad that has kept it in public memory…