SHIPWRECKS: A DEEP LOOK AT THE ORIGINS OF THE SELF-UNLOADERS

The Heritage Museum and Cultural Center, St. Joseph, Michigan. August 2008-August 2010

The history of commercial shipping on the Great Lakes is primarily the story of moving bulk cargoes, especially iron ore, coal, grain, and stone, to supply the industrial heartlands of the United States and Canada. An efficacious way to learn about the evolution of Great Lakes shipping is to venture underwater. Three southern Lake Michigan’s shipwrecks, the scow schooner Rockaway, the steam bargeH.C. Akeley, and the pioneer self-unloading steamerHennepin represent key stages in that evolution of freshwater naval architecture. This exhibit uses these shipwrecks as a means to illustrate not only the technological progression of ship design on the lakes, but also the profound and revolutionary changes in bulk cargo-handling that accompanied this progression.