I don’t believe in luck, good or bad. I don’t believe in anything much. Although something did happen once.
My father was a fisherman. He ran a trawler out of Whitley Reef. One night, late, he was coming back from being on the water for more than a month. He was out beyond the reef, out near Spivey Point. Glancing windward, he saw a brig under shortsail, heading right for him. He radioed, but there was no reply. Nothing moved on deck, but she held her course.
My dad and two of his hands, they boarded the brig, the Risa Jane. No one was on board. There was food on the table, and a hot, steaming cup of coffee. But underneath, the tin cup was rusted to the table. And then something caught my father’s eye. It was a gold doubloon–minted in Spain in 1867. My dad picked up the coin, put it in his breast pocket, and zippered it up.
When my father came home, he was visibly shaken. Carefully, he told me the story. Looking down into his cup of coffee, he unbuttoned his pocket to show me the coin.
It was gone.
~Taken from the screenplay ‘The Fog’
Known as the graveyard of the Great Lakes mostly because of the dangerous shoals in the region, Lake Superior is renowned for its tales of shipwrecks, superstition, and spirits. Indeed, since the beginning of regular navigation, seventy major shipwrecks have occurred on the lake–including the wreck of the legendary Edmund Fitzgerald.
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