Duluth, Minnesota - July 19, 2005

A crew of adventurers who made the astounding discovery of a once long lost Lake Superior vessel were rewarded with $1,000 from Lake Superior Magazine today, Tuesday, July 19, 2005 - bringing to a close the nearly 100-year-old question of where the Benjamin Noble went down. They asked that the money be given to the Great Lakes Shipwreck Preservation Society so that it will go toward the application process to put this vessel on the National Register of Historic Sites. That designation will preserve the wreck intact and should prevent claims and actions to take materials from it.

Since 1987, the magazine publisher has offered a reward for location of Benjamin Noble, a steel steamer that went missing along with all crew members on April 28, 1914. Although it was believed that the vessel went down some 20 miles outside  of Duluth, Minnesota, the site of its final resting place has not been found, until now.

The crew of Jerry Eliason and Randy Beebe, of Duluth, Minnesota; Ken Merryman of Fridley, Minnesota; and Kraig Smith of Rice Lake, Wisconsin, using a side-scan sonar device developed by Jerrod Eliason, found a vessel that they eventually would determine was Benjamin Noble in more than 300 feet of water. Ironically, the group has located three vessels within the past two years, none of which have been the Robert Wallace, the wooden vessel for which they are actually searching.

The story of how the team verified this wreck as the Benjamin Noble for the reward is in the current August/September issue of Lake Superior Magazine in Jim Marshall’s column, “Lake Superior Journal.” The magazine publisher also recently released a second edition of Shipwrecks of Lake Superior, which includes some information about the Noble as well as about major lake wrecks such as the Edmund Fitzgerald and the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Mesquite and several essays about diving in Lake Superior.

Lake Superior Magazine, a full-color consumer publication, is printed six times a year in Duluth, Minnesota. The magazine is available by subscription, at newsstands and from the publisher's office at 325 Lake Avenue South, Suite 600, Duluth, Minnesota 55802. For information, call 888-BIG LAKE (888-244-5253) or see www.lakesuperior.com.