Whitefish Point shipwreck museum
— where the Fitzgerald's bell came home.
Not only on a wall.
Whitefish Point shipwreck museum, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
Each tile ships in a kraft box, tied with cream ribbon, with a handwritten note from the studio if you'd like to add one.
Three or five different vistas, hung together — a chapter of places you've been, or want to go.
“The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum shares the point with the old light. At its centre, in a dark room behind a brass railing, hangs the bell from the Edmund Fitzgerald, raised from 530 feet of water in July 1995 and returned to the families. The cases around it hold artefacts from a coast that has taken more than 240 ships.
The place, in three passes.
The Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum stands on Whitefish Point in Michigan's eastern Upper Peninsula, on the grounds of the 1861 lighthouse and the former 1923 Coast Guard lifeboat station. The museum opened in 1986 and is operated by the Great Lakes Shipwreck Historical Society, a Michigan nonprofit founded in 1978. Exhibits fill the restored keeper's quarters, the surfboat house, and a purpose-built gallery. Eleven miles of coast south of the point hold at least 240 documented wrecks, more than any comparable length of Great Lakes shore.
The museum's centre is the bell of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, raised from 530 feet of Lake Superior on July 4, 1995, by a joint expedition of the historical society, the Canadian Navy, and family members of the lost crew. A replica bell engraved with the twenty-nine names was lowered in its place. Each November 10, on the anniversary of the 1975 sinking, a memorial service rings the original bell twenty-nine times, once for each crewman and a final time for all mariners lost on the lakes.
The museum opens daily from May 1 through October 31, from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., closing in early autumn as Lake Superior weather turns. Admission supports the lighthouse restoration and ongoing maritime archaeology. A combined ticket covers the museum, the keeper's quarters tour, and the surfboat house. The complex sits at the end of Whitefish Point Road, eleven miles north of Paradise; the parking lot is paved and the main galleries are step-free. The November 10 Fitzgerald memorial service is open to the public.
