WtJL 



USS Michigan 



The Navy's first iron-hulled warship. She was fabricated in parts 

 by Stackhouse and Tombinson of Pittsburgh in 1842 and carried 

 overland to Erie where whe was assembled. Secretary of the 

 Navy A. P. Upshur had selected iron for her hull "to use the 

 immense resource of our country in that most valuable metal" 

 and "to ascertain the practicability and utility of building 

 vessels, at least for harbor defense, of so cheap and indestructible 

 a material." Michigan operated on the Great Lakes out of Erie, 

 Pa. throughout her career. In 1889 she commenced a 12-year 



intermittent survey of the Great Lakes. Renamed Woh-erine in 

 1905, she was retired from active service in 1923 following a 

 casualty to her machinery plant. In 1927, she was pushed up on 

 a sandbank in Erie Harbor and loaned to the city of Erie as a 

 relic. When a fund-raising drive failed to acquire sufficient funds 

 for her restoration and preservation, she was cut up and sold for 

 scrap in 1949. In 1950 a monument to the "Iron Steamer" was 

 erected in Erie featuring her actual bow and cutwater. 

 Length: 163' 3" Displacement: 685 tons 



USS Thetis 



A 1,250 ton steam whaler built by Alexander Stephen and Sons 

 of Scotland and purchased by the Navy in 1884 to search for the 

 survivors of Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greeley's Arctic Expedi- 

 tion. In 1S87 she was fitted-out as a gunboat and was engaged 

 primarily in survey operations off the waters of Hawaii and 



California. Thetis was transferred to the Tieasury Department in 

 1899 for revenue cutter service. Sold in 1916, she operated with 

 a sealing fleet out of Newfoundland until broken up in 1950. 

 Her figurehead is retained in St. Johns, Newfoundland. 



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