[1][2] The ship was designed by Samuel Hartt, and fabricated in parts at Pittsburgh in the last half of 1842, transported overland and assembled at Erie.

[2] When, about 1905, the ship finally changed from kerosene lights to electric, a special engine for the dynamo had to be constructed to operate on the low pressure steam.

Early in 1863, Lieutenant William Henry Murdaugh, CSN, planned to lead a group of Confederate naval officers to Canada where they would purchase a small steamer, man her with Canadians and steam to Erie to board Michigan and use her against locks and shipping on the Great Lakes.

In March, Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles ordered Michigan to be "prepared for active service as soon as the ice will permit."

Led by Acting Master John Yates Beall, 20 Confederates embarked on the steamer Philo Parsons as passengers and soon seized her.

However, Commander Carter discovered Cole's duplicity and had him arrested before Beall reached Johnson's Island on Philo Parsons.

When the prearranged signals from shore were not made, Beall reluctantly abandoned his plan and retired to Sandwich (now Windsor, Ontario) where he stripped and burned Philo Parsons.

[1] After the Civil War, Michigan remained in U.S. Navy service, and was the ship which intercepted and interned the army of the Fenian Brotherhood as it returned from its invasion of Canada near Buffalo in 1866.

[citation needed] In mid-1920, when the U.S. Navy adopted its modern alphanumeric hull number system, she was classified as a "miscellaneous auxiliary" and designated IX-31.

[1] In 1927, Wolverine's hulk was pushed up onto a sandbank in Misery Bay on the Presque Isle State Park Peninsula and loaned to the city of Erie, Pennsylvania, as a relic.

But when fund-raising efforts failed to acquire sufficient money for her restoration and preservation, she was cut up and sold for scrap in 1949 to the Ace Junk & Salvage Company.