MSHP staff recently traveled to Traverse City to pick up an interesting piece of institutional history: a 15-foot wooden boat originally built to accompany the reconstructed sloop Welcome!
In the early 1970s, the Mackinac Island State Park Commission decided to reconstruct Welcome, a trading vessel originally built in the mid-1770s for the Michilimackinac merchant John Askin. Work began in 1972 under the supervision of Ted McCutcheon, Sr., and proved a very popular attraction for visitors to Michilimackinac. Welcome was launched in 1980, and served as a floating museum in Mackinaw City. The sloop was transferred to the Maritime Heritage Alliance of Traverse City in 1992. The group maintained and sailed Welcome to ports around the Great Lakes for several years before transferring the vessel to Emmet County to serve as part of a proposed museum. The county museum never materialized, but today Welcome remains on display in downtown Mackinaw City.
While Welcome was being reconstructed in the 1970s, McCutcheon also built a small boat to accompany the sloop. The original Welcome carried a similar boat, and Alexander Harrow, the sloop’s captain from August 1779 to July 1781, regularly mentioned using the little craft in his logbook. Sailors used the boat to transfer passengers and cargo to and from shore, as well as to scout ahead in confined waterways. The original Welcome also occasionally ran aground, especially in the shallows of Lake St. Clair, and the sloop’s boat served to help free her.
The reconstructed boat remained in Mackinaw City even after the Maritime Heritage Alliance acquired Welcome. For many years displayed in the Colonial Michilimackinac Visitor’s Center, it was finally reunited with the sloop approximately 20 years ago. Like Welcome herself, the Maritime Heritage Alliance used the boat to help interpret the early maritime history of Michigan. In November 2024, the Maritime Heritage Alliance offered to transfer Welcome’s boat back to MSHP.
Welcome’s boat is now back in Mackinaw City, where it was built nearly 50 years ago. We would like to thank the Maritime Heritage Alliance for their care and stewardship of this unique piece of history, and look forward to using the boat to interpret Michilimackinac’s 18th century maritime heritage!
P.S.- If you would like to know more about the history of the original Welcome as well as the modern reconstruction, a new publication about both vessels is in the works and should be available in 2025. Check our museum stores the next time you visit!
