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Old 08-09-2007, 12:44 PM   #1
Gord H
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A farmer in Michigan has apparently found one of the life rings from the Edmund Fitzgerald... the lettering is obviously faded but can still be read.

http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/244685
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Old 08-09-2007, 05:56 PM   #2
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Thanks Gord - glad to see you're still with us !

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Old 08-09-2007, 09:15 PM   #3
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Can someone tell me where exactly the Fitzgerald life ring was found?

Not sure where in relation to the Shipwreck Museum in Paradise, Michigan it was found.
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Old 08-09-2007, 09:57 PM   #4
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here is another article. It is very thorough on what has happened and who has said what thus far.
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."
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Old 08-10-2007, 01:55 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally posted by BILLW:
Thanks Gord - glad to see you're still with us !

Bill
Thanks Bill W... ya I'm still here just haven't had anything worthy to say or post until now
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Old 08-12-2007, 08:25 PM   #6
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Nitro Joe,
What is a Holy Grail?
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Old 08-13-2007, 06:24 AM   #7
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gwen,

The meaning of the word has also been variously explained. The generally accepted meaning is that is given by the Cistercian chronicler Helinandus (d. about 1230), who, under the date of about 717, mentions of a vision, shown to a hermit concerning the dish used by Our Lord at the Last Supper, and about which the hermit then wrote a Latin book called "Gradale." "Now in French," so Helinandus informs us, "Gradalis or Gradale means a dish (scutella), wide and somewhat deep, in which costly viands are wont to be served to the rich in degrees (gradatim), one morsel after another in different rows. In popular speech it is also called "greal" ...

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/06719a.htm

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Old 08-15-2007, 12:03 AM   #8
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Default Re: Edmund Fitzgerald Life Ring Found

Thank you Bill, I couldn't of explained it any better.
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Old 07-06-2010, 08:19 AM   #9
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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 -Â 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 with 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... and his family plan to donate it to the museum, which already has one ring from the ship... on November 10, the 32nd anniversary of the Fitzgerald's sinking.
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Old 07-06-2010, 08:58 AM   #10
charlene
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Default Re: Edmund Fitzgerald Life Ring Found

in 2007 it was determined it was NOT from the Fitz.
That life ring from the Edmund Fitzgerald found a few weeks ago? Well, it's not.

The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum confirmed the ring is not the real thing, even though they originally believed it to be.

The ring is believed to have been stolen from a cottage in Eagle River a few years ago, and it was those cottage owners who painted the words "Edmund Fitzgerald" on it.

Joe Rasch, who with his daughters found the ring while on vacation earlier this month, said he's disappointed and he'll probably hang it in his shed.
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Old 07-06-2010, 07:00 PM   #11
Mike M
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Default Re: Edmund Fitzgerald Life Ring Found

The ring is not the real thing as a friend sent me this. [On August 8, 2007, a Michigan family discovered a lone life saving ring in a provincial park along the shores of Lake Superior that seemed to be from the Fitzgerald. It was thought to be a hoax because there are considerable differences in the markings of proven rings found at the wreck site. A recent Associated Press article published August 20, 2007 confirms that the life ring was indeed a memorial, not an artifact.]

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Old 07-07-2010, 09:52 PM   #12
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I can understand why there would be people out there who would be skeptical about it being supposedly from the Edmund Fitzgerald, and I happen to be amongst the many skeptics out there. Hoow do we know that they weren't trying to make a fast buck off the misery & grief of the surviving family members?
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Old 07-07-2010, 10:34 PM   #13
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this was all solved 3 years ago...
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Old 07-08-2010, 11:54 AM   #14
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Quote:
Originally Posted by charlene View Post
this was all solved 3 years ago...
oh, i missed the boat on that one

was there a post or thread regarding the resolution? no luck with search

this thread just seems to be left hanging...thanks for revival donaldjeo13 (are there really 13 other donaldjeo's here? )
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Old 07-08-2010, 12:26 PM   #15
charlene
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I found my post somewhere at corfid..can't recall where tho..
it was 'resolved'..
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