The Dossin Great Lakes Museum is an historical

maritime museum A maritime museum (sometimes nautical museum) is a museum specializing in the display of objects relating to ships and travel on large bodies of water. A subcategory of maritime museums are naval museums, which focus on navies and the militar ...

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

. Located on The Strand on

Belle Isle Park Belle Isle Park, known simply as Belle Isle (), is a island park in Detroit, Michigan, developed in the late 19th century. It consists of Belle Isle, an island in the Detroit River, as well as several surrounding islets. The U.S.-Canada border ...

along the

Detroit River The Detroit River flows west and south for from Lake St. Clair to Lake Erie as a strait in the Great Lakes system. The river divides the metropolitan areas of Detroit, Michigan, and Windsor, Ontario, Windsor, Ontario—an area collectively refe ...

, this museum places special interest on Detroit's role on national and regional maritime history. The museum features exhibits such as one of the largest collection of model ships in the world, and the bow

anchor An anchor is a device, normally made of metal , used to secure a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the craft from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ''ancora'', which itself comes from the Greek ἄγ ...

of the SS ''Edmund Fitzgerald'', which went down in a storm in 1975.

History

This was founded in 1949 as the City Maritime Museum aboard the ''J. T. Wing'' wooden

schooner A schooner () is a type of sailing vessel defined by its rig: fore-and-aft rigged on all of two or more masts and, in the case of a two-masted schooner, the foremast generally being shorter than the mainmast. A common variant, the topsail schoon ...

, the last commercial sailing ship on the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes ...

. The museum closed by 1956, less than a decade later, because of the deteriorating condition of the schooner. With $125,000 in donations from Detroit's Dossin family, and a matching subsidy by the city's historical commission, the Dossin Great Lakes Museum broke ground on Belle Isle on May 21, 1959, near the former mooring of the ''J. T. Wing.'' It was opened on July 24, 1961. William Edward Kapp was the lead architect for the firm of Smith, Hinchman & Grylls. The Dossin Museum went through a 10-week renovation ending March 24, 2007 after over $100,000 in refurbishments, added four new exhibits.

Permanent exhibits

*The ''Miss Pepsi'', one of the fastest

hydroplane racing Hydroplane racing (also known as hydro racing) is a sport involving racing hydroplanes on lakes and rivers. It is a popular spectator sport in several countries. Racing circuits International professional outboard hydroplane racing The Union Int ...

boats of all time, and the first boat to qualify for a race at a speed of over 100 miles per hour, owned and sponsored by the Dossin Family, one of the largest bottlers of

Pepsi-Cola Pepsi is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by PepsiCo. Originally created and developed in 1893 by Caleb Bradham and introduced as Brad's Drink, it was renamed as Pepsi-Cola in 1898, and then shortened to Pepsi in 1961. History Pepsi was ...

in the United States. *The massive bow anchor of the SS ''Edmund Fitzgerald''; the Fitzgerald had lost the anchor in the Detroit River *The SS ''William Clay Ford'' Pilot House, where visitors can "be the captain" of one of the city's most noted freighters *The restored smoking lounge of the SS ''City of Detroit III'', which transports visitors back to the golden age of lake steamers *One of the largest known collection of scale model ships in the worldAbout Dossin Great Lakes Museum
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