WHITEFISH POINT, Mich. — The bodies are 17 miles out and 500 feet below the surface of Lake Superior. But even as relatives of the 29 victims prepare to observe the 25th anniversary of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald on Friday, they do not consider their loved ones totally at rest.
The relatives fear that as diving technology improves, the Fitzgerald — once the largest and fastest ship on the Great Lakes and now a pop culture legend thanks to a 1976 folk ballad by Gordon Lightfoot — will become an irresistible trophy even for casual divers.
They are supporting proposed Canadian legislation that would allow the wreckage to be declared off-limits to all but government-approved researchers.
All but unreachable at the time it went down in Canadian territory, carrying a load of taconite pellets on the night of Nov. 10, 1975, the remains of the Fitzgerald have since been visited several times by diving teams using high-tech submarines and sophisticated deep-water dive suits.
One such team, with the blessing of the sailors' families, removed the ship's bell for the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum and replaced it with a replica bearing the names of the dead.
Another team, however, brought back images of at least one body found on the bottom, a move sharply criticized by other divers and the Fitzgerald family members.
"We feel that as more technology becomes available, there will be more divers going down there and picking it apart," said Ruth Hudson, a North Olmstead, Ohio, resident whose only son, Bruce, 22, was a deckhand on the Fitzgerald.
John O'Brien, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., businessman whose father, Eugene, 50, was at the helm when the Fitzgerald went down, agreed.
"Pretty soon the weekend diver is going to be able to go down there," O'Brien said. "People are going to have little submarines just like the WaveRunners we have today. We don't want that. It should be left alone."
David Trotter, a diver who said he has found about 70 wrecks in the Great Lakes, acknowledged that the Fitzgerald would be an attractive treasure. But he said its depth, not to mention the temperature of Lake Superior, was going to keep most divers away for a long time.
Trotter said legislation protecting wrecks would be ill-conceived, arguing that much of the history of Great Lakes shipwrecks has been written by "avocational divers" like himself.
The 729-foot Fitzgerald — launched in 1958 and named for an insurance company executive who died in 1986 at the age of 90 — sits in two pieces on the bottom of the lake.
The memorial service, scheduled for Friday, will include a ceremony at Whitefish Point, followed by a concert nearby featuring the folk singer Lee Murdock.
Another memorial is scheduled for Nov. 12 at the Mariner's Church of Detroit, where 25 years ago the pastor tolled the bell 29 times in memory of each man lost.