A dramatic account of three centuries of people and ships that sailed the Great Lakes

A popular history of navigation on the Great Lakes and life on their shores, The Long Ships Passing brings us aboard the crafts that have plowed the waves of the treacherous "five sisters" carrying the grain, lumber, and minerals that fed and built the cities of America. Walter Havighurst paints vivid pictures of life—and death—on the lakes, mysterious accounts of wooden ships and iron men that sank to freshwater graves, especially along the immigrant route where the wrecks lie thick. In rich and marvelous detail, this classic history recounts the saga of an inland marine empire.

A longtime professor of English at Miami University, Walter Havighurst (1901-1994) grew up in Wisconsin and was a prolific and passionate writer of regional history and fiction.