- Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, the community assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming revenue Authority support from Spring Hill Senior Living and the generous support of Thomas b Hagen.

- This is WQLN.

The USS Wolverine was sold to ace junk and salvage company for scrap.

For scrap.

We all go that way one way or another, but for some it seems too soon.

She lived a long and storied life.

There's no doubt about that.

Though, most who remember her don't remember those stories anymore.

Hell, they don't even remember her before she was renamed.

Back in the days when she patrolled our inland seas all summer long, it's time we talked about when she was the steamer Michigan.

She was beautiful and impressive, the only one of her kind and her size on the lakes for years.

And amazing sight to see prowling in the bay to think of this grand warship and all the stories she had ending up used in someone's automobile or toaster or kitchen sink.

It's truly a shame.

Suppose it's time to write all those stories down an obituary of sorts.

The ship with two lives.

It's usually best to begin at the beginning.

The Michigan was born in the aftermath of the war of 1812.

The second war between a young United States and its former ruler, the United Kingdom.

The Great Lakes were of particular strategic importance during the shaky piece - When relations with the, with the British and the Americans began to even out.

Both sides decided that a hostile thousand mile long border was not in either interest.

So in 1817, the Secretary of State, man, by the name of Rush and his British counterpart Bagot exchanged letters.

There was no formal treaty that limited the amount of armed ships on the Great Lakes to basically just one on each side west of Niagara Falls.

So that treaty set the stage for a long period of peace and calm.

- What happens in the 19th century in the US is that about every 20 years, every generation or so, they would have a recession or a depression.

The recession that hit in 1837 had a profound effect on the Lakes region.

And what happened is people were becoming disgruntled.

They started forming what's called the the Patriots Rebellion.

- The Brits build a couple of steamers to show some strength against the brewing rebellion going on.

Well, that alarmed the Americans.

The Senate appropriated a hundred thousand dollars to build this iron steamer.

- They contracted the firm of Stackhouse and Tomlinson down in Pittsburgh to build an armed cruiser for the lakes.

It would be made out of iron.

This would be the first time that the US Navy would build an iron warship.

And Abel Parker Ushure, the Secretary of the Navy okayed this and he also gambled on building a, a substantial warship made of the new material.

- The plates for the ship were rolled in Pittsburgh and the parts of the engine were constructed.

They were then sent to Cleveland for more finish work and then too Erie hauled by oxen cart.

You can imagine how many oxen cart and how heavy those things were.

- And now the reason for doing that, and they learned this in the war of 1812, you don't try and build ships in water bodies that are controlled by your enemy 'cause they can easily just sail in there and then burn your ships and sail off.

- And so when it arrived in Erie, everything had to be assembled.

It was like an Erector Set.

And so at the foot of French Street, they assembled the ship.

Once the ship was built, it was built on a platform and then there was a launch way created to send it down the water.

And there was a crowd of people from Erie.

Erie was not very big at that time, but several hundred people were there, basically kind of waiting to see it go down to the water and sink because it was iron and iron didn't float.

Didn't everybody know that back then?

- And because where they were launching, it was very shallow, shallow angle and it didn't launch and they couldn't get it to launch.

So it was pretty embarrassing - With a lot of effort.

Eventually they're able to push, pry, get her to move.

She said to have launched herself.

I wasn't there.

I don't know - The builder, Samuel Hart.

He was the designer and, and all from start to finish during the night, Hart went back at about five in the morning with nothing but a lamp.

And he was going to just try to figure out what he needed to do.

And he got there and there was no ship.

So he walks down on the water's edge and peers out with his puny little lamp, and he sees a shadow down the bay.

And turns out the Michigan launched itself during the night.

- Now what it was, what they did launch was a very powerful warship.

The most powerful battleships of the line in the United States are named after states.

Upshur knew that this was gonna be a very powerful ship.

And so he named it there.

They named it the USS Michigan.

- So the ship when it was constructed was officially named the United States Side Wheel Barkentine, Michigan.

The Michigan was a transitional ship.

It was not only iron hauled, which was new and innovative.

It had a new experimental steam plant to run its boilers, but it also carried a a rig and it could be powered by both.

It led the way in many ways to acceptance of the concept of building ships made out of metal rather than made out of wood.

- Wind ships have a round shape to 'em like this, and when they're sailing, they like to heal over either way.

And that's fine.

It doesn't matter how far over you heal it, it's just gonna write itself and, and sail fine.

And iron ship is built more like this.

This would've been more the shape of the Michigan very flat sides, very flat bottom, and a very sharp turn of the bilge.

And if it just rolls up like this, it's not gonna sail very well.

So the Michigan was never a good sailor and no iron ships really turned out to be all that great as far as sailing goes.

They didn't care the thing steamed all the time.

- And so the Michigan's first life was underway onto her first assignment, patrolling the lakes.

- The Michigan's time on the Great Lakes was multifold for its duties.

And when it was not on a particular mission, it generally patrolled looking for shipwrecks.

So training, rescue duties, goodwill, and just kind of keeping the flag out there.

- As she goes from port to port along the Great Lakes, she's able to really spread goodwill in many ways because everybody loves a sailor.

- Michigan never fought a battle because it was the only American ship outfitted on the Great Lakes for war.

And it was a super battleship compared to anything that the British put - had on the lakes.

They were well disciplined, they had plenty of guns, they had cannon that they could take off the ship and run onto land.

So there weren't grand battles.

But there were many things over the course of her lifetime that she was there to diffuse or enforce the law - In the Old Northwest.

I mean, we're talking about a place that has towns, budding towns, and there's no police.

So oftentimes the only people they could call on were the Navy.

- The security that Michigan offered is the only real federal government presence on the Great Lakes that could do something about a military action.

- Among the many people coming to the Midwest was one Jesse James Strang, a strange sort of fellow to be sure.

He grew up not too far from Erie on a farm in Western New York.

A lawyer, a newspaper man, a preacher Strang wanted it all.

He eventually befriended a man by the name of Joseph Smith, who baptized Jesse into the church of the Latter Day Saints and moved him West.

Strang quickly rose through the ranks, gaining power and trust as he went.

- Smith sent Strang north to Wisconsin to try to recruit more Mormons to proselytize.

Essentially.

- Unfortunately, that summer, Joseph Smith was lynched in Illinois and the church threatened to break apart.

The greatest part of the church went with Brigham Young.

James Strang, that's what he called himself now, he took Jesse and James and switched them around.

He also claimed that he was the heir of Joseph Smith.

- Strang claimed that he had a letter from Joseph Smith appointing Strang as a successor if anything happened to Smith.

Now, a lot of controversy about that letter.

Recent scholarship seems to indicate that it probably is correct.

It was not a forgery.

- James Strang took the people that were following him and settled in a place called Voree in southern Wisconsin.

Within a couple of years, he had a dream of a place where his people were going to settle and be able to colonize.

And he realized that it was Beaver Island in Lake Michigan.

- They were resented, they were strange outsiders and their religion was used against them.

One of the problems with the Mormons is they, they were so good at what they did.

They were very good economically.

Whenever they showed up, they were successful.

And that created real hardship for them by the indigenous Gentiles, as they would call the outsiders.

Beaver Island had primarily been a fishing hub for Irish immigrants and there were some indigenous natives there.

They all got driven out.

And the Irish mostly went over to Mackinac Island, which was on the other side of the straits.

And the people in Mackinac who were primarily fishermen resented the growing economic power of the Mormons.

- They soon came into conflict.

There was many accounts of fishing boats shooting at each other, chasing each other down, actually attacking fishing villages on the on the coast.

And this eventually brought the Michigan in to the whole freight.

Michigan came in to visit Beaver Island on several occasions to pick up cordwood.

Usually it burnt anthracite coal, but on occasion, if it's running low on coal, it would come in and use Cordwood.

- Strang had created a set of laws with Beaver Island.

Those who opposed him, wanted him and a number of his followers arrested for chasing out the Irishman, monopolizing the fishing trade and some other things.

And they accused him a piracy of murder.

Most of it was completely trumped up.

But the authorities in Michigan got to the Attorney General and Present Fillmore.

They persuaded the Attorney General to use his federal power to send the Michigan up to arrest Strang and his key followers.

Now, the Michigan didn't really know much about, they obviously knew where the island was, but they stopped in Mackinac.

And in Mackinac, the county judge was one of strand's followers and they basically wanted him to accompany them over to Beaver Island, point out strang and help with the arrest.

The judge initially refused.

So the state official who was there opened the window and told the judge to look out.

And there was Michigan in the harbor with its gun ports open and all the cannons pointing at the courthouse.

So the reluctant judge said, okay, I'll go with you.

They sailed over to, to Beaver Island and ultimately arrested Strang and a number of his followers, took them to Detroit, tried them in federal court, and it was such a farce.

And after the first set of charges, he was found innocent on the federal judge declared that all the charters were bogus and sent them back.

Now, Strang is an interesting character because as he, his power grew and as his theology was shaped by what he was doing, he declared himself king, Not king of the United States, but basically king of the island.

There were a lot of apostates.

He excommunicated people, but he basically ruled with virtually absolute power.

Well, after he was acquitted in federal court, he felt the only way that he was going to be able to get around this interference from the state officials was to be elected to the state legislature.

- In 1852, he actually became a representative of that county and immediately separated the Beaver Island from Mackinac Island.

So he thought by setting it as a separate county, everything would be okay because all the judges would be different, all the people would be separate, that it didn't work that way.

The Michigan is more and more drawn into these fights that are going on.

Other ships are too, there's one fight in fact where the Strangites are being trapped on the mainland of Michigan by armed fishermen and driven off from there and sailing out.

And soon to be caught by this, the Strangites and another ship, inter interdicts manages to save these people.

This is happening more and more often.

So the Michigan is visiting more and more often.

- The Michigan was back on that part of the Great Lakes.

They were in Chicago and the captain of the Michigan at the time met with some of the dissidents who insisted that there was mistreatment going on, kind of the same old charges that had been given in the the state court.

So after the Chicago meeting, Michigan's Captain McBlair was very sympathetic to these people that he was convinced were telling him the truth.

And you had this dangerous dictator.

Michigan left Chicago, the rebels went up to Milwaukee.

He landed in Milwaukee a few days later, left again.

But by that time, the rebels had acquired some weapons pistols.

primarily got themselves back to Beaver Island and plotted to assassinate Strang.

So number of days after that, Michigan pulls into the port at Beaver Island and Captain McBlair calls upon Strang to come to the Michigan to discuss some of the problems that were going on.

So ostensibly he was playing federal cop.

So Strang early evening comes down, this is July.

So the, you know, late sun.

And he's walking down the pier and he's accosted by two of these plotters.

- Two gentlemen jump out from the nearby trees and they shoot Strang three times.

So they took him aboard the Michigan and the Michigan surgeon worked on him, but the ship was due to be elsewhere.

So they let Strang off in the care of his flock.

Strang is transported back to Wisconsin and lives for about 30 days before he dies.

- The two assassins run onto the boat.

McBlair gives 'em sanctuary, doesn't let the Mormon authorities either interrogate or arrest them.

Sales over to Mackinac, offloads them in Mackinac.

Mackinac of course, has been hostile to Beaver Island all this time.

The authorities in Mackinac basically put them up in a hotel, have a mock trial.

Each of them is fined a dollar 25 each, and they're let go as heroes.

So there was controversy about what McBlair did.

Was he a conspirator?

What role did he play?

There's no smoking gun on his part.

- I read the, the captain's letters afterwards and his reports, and he was very much, I, I guess, sympathetic to the people that were indeed trying to leave the church.

Even if he wasn't in on the plot, everything that he did allowed the, the plot to happen.

- Within the next week or two.

Beaver Island was invaded by mostly the displaced Irishmen and they ransacked the towns and they rounded up all of the Mormons and basically shipped them off from the island with nothing more than the clothes on their back.

Essentially, after it was all over, the Michigan shows back up and does nothing to quell what had happened.

So it was a pretty dark time when you consider the actions of the captain in the Michigan, it's never been proven that he was directly associated with what happened.

But he certainly was an an enabler.

The watch, the crew McBlair himself, all saw it happening, saw him being approached, did nothing.

- That is not one of the brighter episodes that the Michigan was involved in, but does tell you that people are humans and you know, they're involved in the same sort of kind of craziness that we see every day.

They can be bribed, they can be lied to.

When the Civil War started, of course the North barely had a Navy.

And so they looked into taking the Michigan off the East coast to become part of the, the Union Navy there.

And they found that that was going to be fairly impractical.

Although one of the great things about an an iron ship is that you can actually cut it into pieces, take it to wherever you want and put it back together.

So they thought about doing that, it it was gonna become too hard to get through the Welland Canal.

And they decided to leave the Michigan up on the, the lakes.

- The British had sent 15,000 regular troops into Canada.

And so our relations with our northern neighbors, and remember Canada at that time was a crown province.

It was part of England, was pretty testy.

And so one of the things that the Michigan played a role in was to be an intimidator.

You know, we could control the upper Great Lakes with one ship and it would've made it very difficult for the Brits to take military action.

- England is not as neutral as someone might have thought.

Canada as a part of this becomes a safe haven for confederates and and access to the Great Lakes for Confederates.

- Towards the end of the war, by 18 63, 18 64 Confederate operatives who were going up through Canada were actually outfitting armed ships on lakes to attack the union positions up on the lakes, especially Johnson's Island in Sandusky.

- It was really helmed by two officers, one Captain Cole.

The second officer was John Beal, who was a confederate naval officer.

So Beal would have a group of men that he had recruited.

They would take over a lake steamer, sail it to Johnson's Island where the Michigan was guarding the Confederate prison camp.

So that what they would do was they would seize the Michigan and the prisoners would riot against the guards and they'd all be freed.

There was another smaller lake steamer, they're gonna pile all the prisoners on, arm them and then carry out this insurrection.

So Captain Cole, his part was to pretend to be a physician, would befriend the officers of the Michigan, throw a party for them on board, spike the wine so that you would knock them all out.

Signal the steamer that Beal and his men were on.

They would come up, jump on board, the officers would all be knocked out, cease the ship.

Fortunately for the union, cause they were very good in finding out about these multiple confederate plots.

So when Cole was onboard, the Michigan glad handing all the officers a, another officer boarded the ship and arrested him.

Beal did not get the signal.

His own men on board his steamer, which they all said went going to do this.

And fortunately for them they didn't.

Otherwise they would've been massacred.

So they turned the two steamers around.

Michigan chased them for a bit.

They got back in the Canadian waters.

- It was hopelessly ambitious plot that that never worked.

But had they been able to do that, the Michigan was the only warship on the lakes.

And if it was manned by Confederates, they could have sunk the, you know, every merchant ship up there.

- No ship could compare to the Michigan even after the war.

She was as intimidating as ever served her well.

As tensions grew along the upper peninsula of Michigan, the state, not the ship.

- There was little local authority.

The mining companies owned the towns and most of the miners were recent immigrants.

Most of them, the miners had skipped the Civil War by working up in this wild wilderness.

- After the Civil War, of course, we go into sort of an, an immediate recession.

Government's not paying as much for the mined commodities of copper and iron.

July 3rd, the Michigan shows up to Marquette to find the townspeople down on the shoreline, waving everything that they can wave.

It's shooting off guns.

And so the Michigan pulls in there and they find out that the miners are striking.

And of course there's more than 2000 miners up in the, the iron mines surrounding the town.

So the people are really feeling threatened.

- They had rioted, they destroyed equipment.

The Michigan was called in, it was in the general area.

The mine operators had a small group of, of enforcers, but they were overwhelmed.

There was about 2000 miners on strike in Marquette.

This is 1865, this is summer of 1865.

There wasn't even confirmation that the war was over at the time.

So the Michigan arrives, the captain of the Michigan guy by the name of Roe, organized the crew, took a couple of cannon and advanced toward where the mines were and the striking miners, and he basically intimidated the miners.

And they stood down.

- By a week later, they're over in Houghton Hancock, basically doing the same thing with the copper mines up there.

And the miners were striking because of course their wages were coming down because the mines weren't in so much demand anymore.

- Bottom line was Roe used the ship and his well-trained crew and doing target practice for the public, invited people on board to see everything.

And the copper miners got the message.

And so rather than battling his way up into the mines, they said, okay, fine.

And they settled with the mine operators.

But when that happened, he had to go back to Marquette again.

Same thing was going on as when he arrived, however, the miners had thrown up blockades, especially on the railroad going from the town.

The army had finally showed up with about 200 men, and they essentially blocked off any ingress or egress to where the mines were.

And again, without firing a shot, the miners finally backed down, settled with the mine bosses.

And so the Peninsular War, which is the upper peninsula, took them probably a a total of less than two months.

But they brought order at that time back into the situation.

Certainly it was one of a number of times, especially during the late 18 hundreds into the early 19 hundreds that the government, be it state or federal, had stepped in and took the side of the owners and crushed a strike.

- Ambitious plots and high tensions continued after the Civil War, including from one particular group.

You see a lot of Irish folks escaping the famine and the British made it to our shores, right?

As we ramped up to war, many got signed right into the union forces.

When the British started siding with the Confederates, those old frustrations just continued to build.

While the Irish Republican Brotherhood rose up across the pond, the Fenian Brotherhood brought these Irish American soldiers into the fold.

After the war, the phons had big plans.

Oh, big plans for sure hold the British dominion of Canada hostage until Ireland was free.

- The Fenian's plan of three-pronged attack, they had St. Alban's, Vermont, Potsdam, New York and Chicago, Illinois.

The problem is, is that these border towns are not that big.

And now you have train loads of strangers, Irish strangers, and what's in those boxes they're bringing with them that aren't labeled arms and armament.

So people notice.

And you know, to make a long story short, the only one of the three prongs that actually made any headway was Vermont going into New Brunswick.

But there were also a series of other small distractions that were going on.

And so that brings us here to Michigan.

And, and her part in this, the Michigan was the only federal enforcement agency anywhere near Buffalo at this point.

And so they have to disable her.

And so James Kelly was the chief engineer of the Michigan, at the very least, had sympathy for Fenians, if not an actual Fenian, what's the fastest way to disable a ship, take away her pilot.

And that pilot happened to be Patrick Murphy.

Patrick Murphy went out for a night on the town courtesy of Mr. Kelly.

And so at midnight Commander Bryson, Andrew Bryson was starting to think that maybe it's time to be prepared.

They're organizing, they're trying to cross the river going into Canada.

Maybe we should be ready.

The Fenians actually are crossing over at about 3:30 AM and the pilot is nowhere to be found.

- The Fenian invasion of Canada took about 1500 men across.

They were armed.

But at that point, the Michigan swung into action and kept any more reinforcements from going over.

Also kept supplies from going over the Fenians clashed with the Canadian militia twice.

And the second time British regulars got involved and they got pushed back to around Fort Erie, which is just across from Buffalo on the Canadian side.

And with the Michigan stopping supplies coming over, being in the river, the Fenians' backs were to the river.

They had nowhere to go.

So they surrendered.

And the Michigan helped supervise taking them all out of Canada.

- It seemed like it was this close to bringing Britain and the US to another war.

But it didn't, didn't happen.

The Michigan actually got into action and with the help of the two tugboats, they stopped the phons.

And I think from then on the phons realized, what were we gonna do with Canada anyway?

How do you hold an entire country ransom?

It was a a hair-brained scheme from the beginning, and it was never gonna work.

- I love to talk about Patrick Murphy because his 40 years in the US Navy, the majority of them are spent right here in Erie.

He's part of the first crew of the Michigan.

He claims to have raised the flag when the ship was commissioned in 1845.

He's one individual who merits a medal of honor for his outstanding service, standing to his guns under open fire from both sides.

And still fortunately comes home, returns to Erie.

He comes from Waterford, Ireland.

Actually, I saw a painting of Waterford's Harbor.

It's so evident why when you look at pictures of Erie Harbor, he must have been overwhelmed by homesickness, if nothing else, but a, a sense of home here too with within the Irish community.

And again, marries Bridget Callaghey, a lovely, Erie, Erie girl, makes his home and stays here with this vessel.

He becomes known for his knowledge of the Great Lakes.

There's a Captain McFarland who he had served under who said that in a fog, Patrick Murphy could put a bucket into the lake, draw up the water, taste it with a laddle, and he could tell you where you were.

His knowledge of the Great Lakes was so broad - After the Fenian raids, considering all that had happened before the intensity of the Michigan's action began to tail off.

- For the rest of the 19th century, the Michigan's is involved in doing a hydrographic survey.

One of the problems with the lakes is that it was completely uncharted so you could end up on rocks someplace and not, not really know it.

And and so they aimed to solve that.

So it actually probably saved more ships doing the hydrographic surveys than it did when it actually went out.

- Despite the fact that she really is the, the Great Lakes grand old lady, she's still, her sailors are still being trained state of the art.

You always hear the story about how they are being trained on the newest technology wireless, and we're talking radios here - Is to produce these sounds and silences the dits das and spaces in a swinging kind of rhythm that in time you will learn to feel.

- The Navy pushed a lot of officers through the Michigan over those second half of the 19th century.

You know, people like Gridley and others who would go on to bigger careers.

A lot of very important naval officers served as junior officers or even captains aboard, the Michigan.

- These people are serving where maybe we can't, they're here, they're here to protect us.

You know, who doesn't like a sailor when you get to somewhere in January or so, and the lake and the bay are frozen over?

Well, what, what's a sailor to do?

But socialize.

The sailors in the Michigan and the Wolverine embraced life in Erie.

They found their hearts here, made their homes here, even though they might have come in from somewhere else.

They were part of the social fabric of Erie.

There was a baseball team, there was a football team.

They invite people from Erie onto Wolverine especially.

But there're also a, a part of the community in so many ways.

- Times were changing for the Michigan and the world.

It was then that her second life began - After the turn of the century.

The British who were the most powerful navy in the world created a brand new battleship.

It was like going from a biplane to a jet.

It was called the HMS Dread Knot.

So very quickly, many other countries, including the United States, realized that their NAS were all obsolete.

So the United States decided to build its own class of dread knots.

- They wanted to use state names.

And so the Michigan lost her name was renamed the Wolverine, which is the state mascot for the, for Michigan itself.

So she loses her name, re gains a new name in 1905, - In 1912, the Navy loaned the ship to the Pennsylvania Naval militia.

So the Wolverine in its training role in 1912 was given the opportunity to search Misery Bay.

We knew that they left two ships from Perry's fleet.

And typically how they preserved these ships is they'd scuttle 'em and leave them down there and they'd put a big line around them.

And in the spring they'd pull these things back up because the, it would keep the ice from crushing them and they would be in fresh water, which is another great preservative for these ships.

So they found two hulls down there.

Rumors were that they were Niagara and Lawrence - Probably one of the most exciting events for Wolverine.

Her commander, William Leverett Morrison, felt that this would be an appropriate response to the centennial of the Battle of Lake Erie.

- The captain of the Wolverine, Willie Morrison was basically the supervisor and he was responsible for the concept of seeing it raised.

And the rebuilding gets all the credit as he deserves.

But there's another guy who's kind of an unsung hero, happens to be my great great uncle guy by the name of Billy Jordan.

And he was Harbor master Of Erie at the time.

So when he came to the actual work and hiring the crew and seeing that it was raised, you know, he as harbor master, it was his responsibility.

So I feel very close to that whole process of not only the rebuilding of Niagara, but its connection with the Wolverine.

- They build a restoration replica, probably a little bit of a hybrid here because they use as much of the timbers as they can.

And Wolverine had towed her throughout the Great Lakes.

So the Navy is training in 1915, all of the Great Lakes state naval militias are coming to Erie, our own Wolverine leading the way, the oldest, but the grandest of the vessels.

And so recruitment continues.

When it was good Friday of Easter week in 1917, that Commander Morrison gets the call war is declared.

Our Congress has declared war against Germany.

And the very, very first reserves to be activated in Pennsylvania are the four divisions of the Pennsylvania Naval militia, c and d here in Erie.

And then of course the other divisions at Navy Island off Philadelphia.

These men immediately end up in the Navy's frontline, so to speak.

In World War I.

When you look at the crew lists and the, the family names that change over the years, this is a history of Erie's population too.

The generations of New Americans that we welcome here to this day in Erie, the Irish and the Welsch, we see a strong component of black sailors who are serving the Swedish and Scandinavians involved in the fishing industry, but also our sailors aboard the Michigan.

Just as we entered World War I, they are there and training on the Wolverine.

- And then later on what happens is it, it goes until it has a major breakdown.

They break a piston rod in 1929.

And so it's no longer serviceable.

So it's brought back to Erie and left to just anchor there and becomes dilapidated.

I mean, nobody is fixing it.

Nobody's doing anything.

- One of the problems about preservation is of course, that you have to put a lot of money into it, save it.

And then you have to put it like constantly put money into it.

And if we don't pony up the money and pony up the time and pony up the effort, then we won't have it.

We don't recognize that the thing that we touch every day we'll have, we'll have value in the future, even today.

So the stuff that they touched back then was just stuff that they had.

It wasn't things that they were looking at and saying, oh my gosh, we need to preserve this.

Because it was just something that they had.

So they got rid of it.

It was like we took out the trash.

- They first doctor along, along the public dock, now Dabbin's Landing, and eventually they towed her over to Misery Bay and left her there.

Navy had offered to give it to the city of Erie.

City of Erie thought they were being handed a pile of old junk.

They weren't interested at the time.

And so from 1923 all the way up through World War II, she sat over on the peninsula basically slowly rotting.

- The city, of course is looking at this as an eyesore by this point.

In fact, the, the, the Michigan is known as the mechanical duck by this point, which is, you know, it's really gone down from being a heavy cruiser to a mechanical duck.

- Franklin Roosevelt, who was president, who had previously been Secretary of the Navy, absolutely did not want to see this historic ship just cut up for scrap.

So he had actually blocked the plan to do that.

- Sometimes you need to see this thing, touch it in order to really grasp the history you read about this ship sailing around it.

You don't realize how big and How much aura these things have to them until you're walking the decks on 'em and actually touch them.

And I think that would've been really important.

I think they could have saved the ship at that point, but they didn't.

We got caught up into World War II, of course, and there was all kinds of newspaper articles about how we should scrap the ship and turn it into bombs to drop on Tokyo and all this.

Even that went by the by and they ended up scrapping it in 1949 just to get it out of the way.

'cause it was an eye sore.

- My father, Sam Tannenbaum was the person who purchased the scrap rites for the Wolverine.

So my father was born in 1920 here in Erie, graduated from Academy High School.

My mother was born in Erie, 1920, graduated from Academy High School.

And when he was 21, my mother and father got married.

And so that's 1941.

And they moved to St. Mary's, Pennsylvania.

They had a scrap yard there and they ran it for a long time.

And ultimately they sold it, I think in late, late 43 or early 44.

Scrap metal was such an essential commodity product for the war effort.

He went to Pittsburgh and he learned how to cut so he could cut.

So that's actually germane to the story.

And he worked in a, a shipyard, but then he was ultimately drafted.

So he came back and basically he said he just really wanted to make a living.

He like, he had a family.

So he immediately got into the scrap business, which is something that he knew.

But he did that in Erie and he built a little scrap yard over on 17th and Holland.

So he buys the thing, right?

It's his, they drag it over, he owns it, they towed it from Presque Isle to I think where the Erie Sand & Grave l ultimately was.

The city fathers of the time came back and said to my dad, and they asked him, how much would it cost?

Like how much can we buy this back from you so that we don't scrap the bow, its ornate.

And so my dad said that he was selling 10 feet of the bow for a one pound box of Palaco's chocolates.

So that was, that was the deal for my mom.

And so when they came to get it, dad had cut 20 feet and they gave him two one pound boxes - Right now where Wolverine Park is near there, near where she had spent a lot of her active service.

They placed the prowl, they also raised a monument to her commander, William Leverett Morrison.

- We would go down and see this monument down by the Niagara, which was the practically the defining, you know, artifact of the city of Erie.

And, and here's my dad's sculpture, you know, right next to it.

And it, it gave us a sense of pride and it gave us our, our family a sense of, you know, the responsibility that a citizen feels for the community in which they live.

All right.

And he was very, very, very proud that this thing that he did when he came back from World War II, and he was a young buck of 25 years old.

And I'm thinking, here's my dad - 25.

- I mean, think about like what somebody did at 25.

And, and here's this thing that this kid, you know, father of two trying to make a living back to Erie, Pennsylvania, no college education, high school grad that - Just, - Just did it just worked hard, did it.

And now we still, we have something to talk about today, which is great.

- When the museum opened in 1998, the prow was moved here for protection and to ultimately become an anchor of an exhibit that opened in 2005.

This is Erie history.

You need to recognize these generations of men who served in her.

The inspiration.

she was the Erie men who were inspired by her and join the Navy and serve in the 20th century even after, after she's gone.

You know, we've always said Erie's a navy town and the Michigan is why.

- It takes effort to save something for the person that hasn't been born yet.

A friend of mine does that, I think it's Hurry Hill Farms.

And she said to me, I've never tapped a maple tree for syrup that I planted every tap she's ever driven into a generation or two before her planted that tree.

And I talked to her as she was planting trees that would never be mature enough for her to tap because somebody else would in the future if I would utilize anything it, it's imagine that you're powerful enough to make something happen that can survive you after you're gone and somebody else can benefit from your hard work.

And it's not gonna be you.

- The Michigan was an incredible transition for the Navy.

She was an experiment.

She turned out to be a very successful experiment, but she always did what was expected of her.

But she had good captains, good crews accomplished her missions and she finally wore out.

There's very little that I can think of that could ever be shaped as anything but a positive vision of her lifespan as a naval vessel.

- I'm dancing all around the subject because I don't wanna say that, you know, this was the end, end of the ship and that poor little piece of it that is still there just can't do it justice.

And I'm not sure anything can, it should still be here.

- And that's how it goes for many a ship, whether lost at shore or lost at sea, they live on in the stories and tales we tell of them.

And I would've tailed a Michigan head career out on the lakes patrolling and saving lives.

A retirement in Erie, building a community around her 106 years from launch to scrap.

That's a fair few more than most of us get.

Somehow still seems like not enough.

Those who loved her, loved her for a reason.

May the grandest Lady of the Lakes rest in peace.

I'm sure some of us will remember.

Her - Chronicles is made possible by a grant from the Erie Community Foundation, the Community Assets grant provided by the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority support from Spring Hill Senior Living and the generous support of Thomas b Hagen.

- We question and learn.