Saturday, June 14, 2014

USS Michigan/USS Wolverine






Above from Dwight Boyer,  Strange Adventures of the Great Lakes.  (Dodd, Mead & Co., 1974).

According to her Wikipedia entry:


"USS Michigan was the United States Navy's first iron-hulled warship and served during the American Civil War. She was renamed USS Wolverine in 1905. 
In 1927, Wolverine's hulk was pushed up onto a sandbank in Misery Bay on the Presque Isle State Park Peninsula and loaned to the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, as a relic. She was sold to the Foundation for the Preservation of the Original USS Michigan, Inc., on 19 July 1948. But when fund-raising efforts failed to acquire sufficient money for her restoration and preservation, she was cut up and sold for scrap in 1949 to the Ace Junk & Salvage Company. Sam Tanenbaum, proprietor, donated the prow back to the city of Erie.
In 1950, Wolverine's prow was erected as a monument in Wolverine Park in Erie, near the shipyard where she had been built. On 22 February 1988, the prow was moved to the Erie Maritime Museum for restoration. Today it can be viewed inside the museum."

Sad that efforts to preserve her failed.

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