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The
relics were discovered by a carpenter in 1975 along the shore in
Michigan's Upper Peninsula. There were no survivors when the ore
carrier perished in a tremendous storm and plunged 535 feet (163
meters) to the lake bottom.
“I'm dumbfounded,” longtime owner Larry Orr, 77, said. “I never
believed in a million years it would go for that much money.
Shocked.”
Orr was curious about the shipwreck and found the life ring and
a wood piece from a lifeboat while taking a break from his job,
eight days after the “Fitz,” as it was known, went down.
The sale was handled by DuMouchelles, a Detroit auction house
and art gallery that sits a block away from Mariners’ Church,
where a bell solemnly tolls on each anniversary of the sinking.
The name of the buyer was not disclosed.
Canadian singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot memorialized the
ship in 1976 with an iconic ballad, “The Wreck of the Edmund
Fitzgerald.”
For decades, Orr, who lives in Yulee, Florida, had allowed a
Michigan museum to display the artifacts. He said he decided to
sell them because he needed money.
Orr recently had agreed to give them to the state of Michigan as
part of a $600,000 settlement in a completely unrelated
misconduct lawsuit against state police. But the state agreed to
return them after The Associated Press wrote about the strange
deal. The amount of Orr's settlement didn't change.
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