About

About MHSD

The Marine Historical Society of Detroit, a non-profit organization founded in 1944, provides a focal point for individuals and organizations interested in and concerned with the history of the Great Lakes and its maritime heritage.

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Membership includes the Society's monthly publication The Detroit Marine Historian, which offers a variety of articles exploring aspects of Great Lakes shipping past and present. Features include Great Lakes Ships to be Remembered, a look at Marine News from 100 Years Ago, and The Log, a digest of current news concerning Great Lakes shipping.

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Membership also includes an annual, full-color calendar featuring superb photographs of Great Lakes ships of the past.

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In keeping with the Society's objective to further interest and preservation of Great Lakes history, we have published several quality books, including three volumes of Great Lakes Ships We Remember, two volumes of Ahoy & Farewell and GLEW, an illustrated history of the Great Lakes Engineering Works shipyard. Many of the photographs used in these publications are rare and are not available elsewhere.

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In addition, we have also provided financial support to worthy projects around the Great Lakes, among them the Lightship Huron Museum, the Col. James M. Schoonmaker and the William G. Mather museum ship, the Great Lakes Maritime Institute's William Clay Ford pilothouse and Edmund Fitzgerald anchor raising projects. The society has also given scholarship support to The Great Lakes Maritime Academy at Traverse City. Our archival collection has been donated to The Historical Collections of the Great Lakes at Bowling Green, Ohio, where it is available to researchers and historians.

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The Marine Historical Society of Detroit is currently working on multiple initiatives. Among them: Image scanning as part of our initiative to preserve historical images; The creation of a searchable image database that can be easily accessed by our members; Creating an electronic database of the MHSD manuscript collection of logbooks and corporate records for historical research.

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Read more updates on the many initiatives the Society is managing in the current Direction Finder PDF (Requires Acrobat Reader)

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The Society has annually named a Historian of the Year since 1969. The award is voted on by past winners and honors those who have contributed significantly to the research, presentation or publication of Great Lakes ships and the shipping history.

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MHSD has members in the United States, Canada and around the world. We would be pleased to have you join us.