Retired AP reporter helped cement the legend of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald

LANSING, Mich. -- Associated Press newsman Harry Atkins was acold from Lake Superior connected Nov. 10, 1975, “when the gales of November came early." But his quality sum the pursuing time of the infamous wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald helped signifier its legacy.

Atkins, present 86, was a quality newsman successful Detroit erstwhile helium was sent to Michigan's Upper Peninsula to constitute astir the Fitzgerald. The freighter was transporting robust ore from Wisconsin to Zug Island successful Detroit erstwhile it encountered a terrifying storm. All 29 men aboard died, and the nonstop origin of the wreck remains a mystery.

The Fitzgerald was the past large shipwreck connected the Great Lakes, acknowledgment to exertion improvements successful the years aft the disaster. The wreck besides became the astir celebrated of the portion acknowledgment to Gordon Lightfoot's eerie people ballad that has kept it successful nationalist memory.

Lightfoot wrote the ode to the Fitzgerald aft speechmaking Atkins' story astir the wreck and a Nov. 24, 1975, nonfiction successful Newsweek magazine. The opus was released little than a twelvemonth aft the catastrophe successful August 1976.

Family members and maritime devotees volition stitchery Monday to grant the 50th day of the wreck. Ahead of the anniversary, Atkins recounted what helium saw that fateful time successful a caller interrogation with AP, his erstwhile employer.

Atkins, who present resides successful Savannah, Georgia, said helium was moving connected the AP Detroit broadcast table erstwhile the bureau heard thing was wrong. A Whitefish Bay nonmigratory that Atkins described arsenic an “old hermit” was listening to vigor communications from ships connected the h2o and called vigor stations to relay what helium heard.

“He could fig retired that the Fitzgerald was not doing well," Atkins said.

The past connection ever heard from the Fitzgerald was sent to the Arthur Anderson, a vas nearby. “We are holding our own,” the Fitzgerald's skipper said.

Atkins said helium worked up a speedy communicative astir however the vessel was successful occupation and past drove overnight to Sault Ste. Marie, astir 347 miles (559 kilometers) northbound of Detroit. He acceptable up store astatine the Sault Ste. Marie Evening News, a paper that had relayed the connection from the vigor eavesdropper to Detroit.

“I got the Yellow Pages," Atkins said, “and started looking for an airplane.”

Atkins said helium recovered a retired Navy aviator with a four-seat craft “with the wings supra the cockpit alternatively of below,” to alert him and a lensman retired implicit adjacent Whitefish Bay. When they arrived astatine the Canadian broadside of the lake, Atkins said helium could spot 2 two freighters, 2 Coast Guard boats and 1 different vas pointed astatine each different “like the Chrysler star.”

“So we had to fig the Fitzgerald's down determination successful the mediate of wherever each those boats were pointed," Atkins recounted.

From the skies, Atkins said, helium saw a lifeboat and vest. But nary bodies of the unit were ever recovered.

To this time the Fitzgerald remains beneath 535 feet (165 meters) of water, astir 17 miles (27 kilometers) north-northwest of Whitefish Point, Michigan. The wreck is protected arsenic a gravesite nether Canadian law.

Once connected land, Atkins called his colleagues successful Detroit to relay his draught that dispersed the news. He wrote successful his “lede,” the archetypal paragraph of his story: “Rescuers searched Lake Superior’s chilly waters Tuesday for the 29-member unit of the sunken ore-carrier Edmund Fitzgerald but recovered lone an lipid slick, bare lifeboats and beingness jackets."

Atkins went connected to beryllium a longtime sports writer for the AP successful Michigan. He heard Lightfoot's opus from clip to time.

“It’s a haunting ballad,” Atkins said, his dependable heavy with emotion. “I get choked up each time.”

But helium didn’t recognize conscionable however infamous the catastrophe was until 25 years later, erstwhile helium archetypal saw quality sum of the anniversary.

“To deliberation that 29 guys were live yesterday and dormant today,” Atkins said. “I cared a batch astir what I was writing.”