I was watching CBC News: The National tonight, and a story came up about a guy finding what he thinks is a life tube from the SS Edmund Fitzgerald. Some think it is a hoax, though, because it was found on a shore about 300(ish) miles west of where the Fitz sank. You can watch tonight's The National by going to The National website. When I last checked, though, it was not posted. They also showed an official Fitz website on the program. It is called SS Edmund Fitzgerald Online. It is a very fascinating site.
When I do find out more, you guys will be the first ones to know.

[ August 08, 2007, 00:48: Message edited by: Nitro Joe ]

http://www.woodtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=6899650

Edmund Fitzgerald life ring found
Updated: Aug 8, 2007 02:37 AM EDT

Video: Brett Thomas looks back at the Edmund Fitzgerald in 2000

Video: Perspective of found Edmund Fitzgerald life ring

Slideshow: The Edmund Fitzgerald

By RACHAEL RUIZ

CONKLIN -- Joe Rasch and his two daughters, Emily and Elizabeth, were looking for agates on the Lake Superior coastline last Friday. Instead, they found a piece of history - a life ring from the Edmund Fitzgerald.

Rasch admits he didn't realize what he found when he first saw the orange ring lying under a white pine tree that had fallen. Only when his daughter Emily read the words on the ring, it hit him.

"It was pretty hard to read," Emily said. "I saw the Ed pretty good, then Fitz, so."

They made the discovery near the Keweenau Peninsula, about 200 miles from where the Edmund Fitzgerald sank in November 1975. Rasch said he gets chills whenever he carries the ring, and doesn't believe it was a coincidence.

"It was time for it to be found," he told 24 Hour News 8, "for people to be reminded of all 29 people who went down and the power of Lake Superior. It wasn't that long ago."

Rasch, an apple farmer, took the ring to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum. The director said he has no reason to believe it is not the real thing.

"We've had a lot of questions, but the life ring isn't talking, telling any stories," Rasch said. "We get all kind of responses (from people). Mostly their eyes bug out, and their jaw drops, and they're 'No kidding, no way.'"

Rasch and his family plan to donate it to the museum, which already has one ring from the ship. Elizabeth learned the Fitzgerald "carried iron ore and stuff."

They are thinking of bringing the life ring to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum on November 10, the 32nd anniversary of the Fitzgerald's sinking.

On the Net:
Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum

more to add to T.G's article from Mlive.com
http://www.mlive.com/newsflash/busin...ess&thispage=1

Family finds life ring that could be from Edmund Fitzgerald
8/8/2007, 3:33 p.m. EDT
By JEFF KAROUB
The Associated Press

DETROIT (AP) — An apple farmer and his family believe they've found a life ring from the Edmund Fitzgerald roughly 200 miles away from where the famed ship sank in Lake Superior 32 years ago.

No definitive tests had yet been conducted to prove it's a piece of the ore carrier that sunk in a vicious storm, killing 29 men off the northern shore of Michigan's Upper Peninsula. But the director of a shipwreck museum says it matches in many ways another ring in its Fitzgerald collection.

"I saw it, photographed it and ... compared the two," said Tom Farnquist, executive director of the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, which owns the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum at Whitefish Point, the nearest spot on land to the ship's gravesite 17 miles northwest. "It's identical in size and configuration. ... Is it possible? Certainly it is."

The orange preserver is worn by the elements and mice or other critters chewing on it. But it reads "Edmund Fitzgerald" in faded but mostly legible white letters.

Joe Rasch, a farmer from Conklin, about 15 miles northwest of Grand Rapids, said he was vacationing with his family last week in the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan's far north. Hunting for agates and other rocks along a remote beach, he saw an overturned tree where the beach meets the forest.

Hoping to find some stones underneath, he instead spotted the life ring nearby. He rolled it down to his daughters, who noticed the writing. Knowing well what it could mean, they took it to the museum.

Still, there are a few differences between the discovered ring and the one on display. The one Rasch found has no "S.S." before "Edmund Fitzgerald," as the museum's ring does. And the newly found ring reads "Duluth" on its back side. It's puzzling, Farnquist said, but not without a plausible explanation: The Milwaukee-based ship spent its winters in Duluth, Minn.

Of course, there are skeptics to such discoveries — especially when it's so far from the Fitzgerald's grave site and so many years later. It also adds to a story that is the stuff of Great Lakes legend — spawning a well-known song by Gordon Lightfoot, "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald," and decades of debate as to the circumstances of its sinking.

"I am smelling a rat," Frederick Stonehouse, maritime historian and author of a book on the wreck, told The Daily Mining Gazette of Houghton. "It's probably a hoax."

He said he finds it hard to believe that someone could find a life ring laying out in the open 30 years later. Anything is possible, but he would not accept it as legitimate until it's properly examined.

Rasch said Wednesday he doesn't believe it's a hoax, nor did he consider it "out in the open" — finding it as he did off an already off-the-beaten path.

Rasch said he offered to leave the ring at the museum, but Farnquist said he encouraged him to take it home and cherish it. They agreed Rasch will return it in time for the museum's annual memorial service marking the anniversary of the sinking in November.

"There's a million questions. ... The ring isn't talking, so we don't know," Rasch said.

"I have no reason to doubt. If anybody wanted to pull a hoax, they would have put it where somebody would find it."

Farnquist believes the time delay and distance from the wreck shouldn't dash hopes it's legitimate. Winds change often on the unpredictable lake, he said, and it's not uncommon to find debris a couple hundred miles from where ships sink.

On the emotional side, he knows it would be significant for people who lost loved ones in the wreck. He said he already has heard from two women who were "quite moved and excited about the possibility" that the ring is from the ship.

"Of the 6,000 ships ... lost on the Great Lakes, the Fitzgerald is the Holy Grail of all the shipwrecks," Farnquist said.

"It's an incredible story. Everyone hopes that it's the real thing. But only time will tell and the evidence will need to be acquired."