The state of Michigan is giving up ownership of a rare relic from the famous Edmund Fitzgerald shipwreck , just weeks after it strangely obtained it through a settlement in a lawsuit that was completely unrelated to the doomed freighter.

Larry Orr is getting one of the ship’s life rings back — and the state will still pay US$600,000 to settle his lawsuit over police misconduct.

“I feel a whole lot better,” Orr, 77, told The Associated Press this week.

In 1975, eight days after the Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior, killing all 29 men, Orr said he found the life ring and a piece of a lifeboat on shore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“There was an eerie feeling. Maybe someone had survived,” he recalled. “I looked around for footprints or any other sign of life for a while and never found

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