USS Michigan was a side wheel steamer built during the last half of 1842. It was the Navy's first iron-hulled warship. After a most interesting career, she was renamed Wolverine in 1905. Decommissioned in 1912, she was turned over to the Pennsylvania Naval Reserve and saw duty until 1923. In 1927 she was pushed onto a sandbank in Erie Harbor and loaned to the City of Erie, PA. In 1948 she was sold to a historic preservation group. The group failed to raise sufficient funds for her repair and Michigan was sold for scrap in 1949. She was but one of several ships lost to posterity through a lack of interest and funding by the Navy in the 1940s and 50s.