South Haven's tall ship fought in the War of 1812

On a summer afternoon you can stand on the Black River in South Haven. Watch, and a square-rigged sailing ship slides out toward Lake Michigan, sails filling. She looks like something that wandered in from two centuries ago. That’s Friends Good Will, the tall ship of the Michigan Maritime Museum. She earns the costume. She’s a working replica of an 1810 Great Lakes merchant sloop, and the original had a genuinely dramatic life.

The first Friends Good Will was an ordinary cargo boat. She hauled goods around the lakes until the War of 1812 caught her up. The British seized her, armed her, and put her into Royal Navy service. She fought under the British flag until September 1813. That’s when Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry recaptured her at the Battle of Lake Erie. It was the fight that broke British control of the upper lakes. Within the hour, Perry sent off the line every schoolchild used to memorize: “We have met the enemy and they are ours.” The sloop in his tally of captured ships was this one. She finished the war in American service. She ferried General William Henry Harrison’s troops across the lake for the invasion of Ontario.

The museum that keeps her sits right on the Black River near downtown. It’s gathered around the working waterfront rather than a glass case. Friends Good Will is the flagship of a small fleet. In the height of summer she sails daily from South Haven, taking passengers out for a turn under real canvas. You can crew her if you want to learn the ropes literally.

It’s a fitting home. South Haven grew up as a Lake Michigan port. Its river was once thick with passenger launches running picnickers up to the parks. The maritime museum keeps that water-bound history alive. The easiest way to feel it is from the deck of a ship that once changed sides in a war.