TORONTO, July 28 -- The Toronto coroner said Thursday that divers researching the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald discovered a body near the ship, which rests 500 feet below the surface of Lake Superior. The body is likely one of the 29 crew who perished when they ship sank nearly two decades ago.
But Dr. Jim Cairns said, given the depth of water, it would be extremely difficult and expensive to retrieve the corpse. 'The question is, can we get it? From a practical point of view it is not possible to retrieve,' said Cairns. Cairns said a University of California team was filming the ship from a mini-submarine when they found the partially decomposed body Wednesday. He said extremely low temperatures would have slowed decomposition and that what remains is 'more than a skeleton.' Cairns said the film crew is sending photographs to his office and to provincial police. He said he will review them when they arrive next week, but that it would be impossible to identify the remains without seeing them and matching dental records. If it is the body of a crewmember that went down with the ship it would be the first discovered since the ship sank in a storm on Nov. 10, 1975. The wreck lies in Canadian territory about 17 miles from Michigan's Whitefish Point. Cairns said in addition to the cost issue, he questions the value of removing the bodies from the lake bottom. 'There is no medical mystery to be solved and family members have said they'd like their relatives to remain in their natural grave,' he said.
