
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 5, 1995                   TAG: 9507060043
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SAULT STE. MARIE, ONTARIO                                  LENGTH: Short

20 YEARS LATER, BELL IS RAISED

The bell of the Edmund Fitzgerald was raised Tuesday from the bottom of Lake Superior, 20 years after the ship sank in a gale and carried 29 crewmen to their deaths.

A diver brought the bell to the surface after a three-hour dive to the most famous shipwreck on the Great Lakes. About a dozen relatives of the victims looked on as as the bell was brought aboard the Canadian Navy's HMCS Cormorant.

``It was quite a cheerful moment,'' said Larry Elliott, a spokesman for the mission.

The ship, immortalized in Gordon Lightfoot's ballad ``The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,'' lies 538 feet deep in Whitefish Bay.

It was on its way to Detroit from Superior, Wis., with a cargo of 26,000 tons of iron ore pellets when it sank Nov. 10, 1975. None of the 29 bodies ever was recovered.

The bell was raised by a diver in a pressurized suit, with the help of two Canadian Navy mini-submarines. It is to be presented to the sailors' families at a ceremony Friday in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich. It then will become the centerpiece of a memorial at the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society Museum at Whitefish Point, Mich.

The memorial is to be dedicated in the fall with family members and Lightfoot as guests.

A final dive has been planned to replace the bell with a replica engraved with the names of the Fitzgerald crewmen.

The project, sponsored by the shipwreck society, is a partnership among underwater photographer Emory Kristof of the National Geographic Society, scientist Joe MacInnis of Toronto and Cormorant.

by CNB