The S.S. William Clay Ford provided years of reliable service carrying iron ore and coal from the upper Great Lakes to the River Rouge Steel Plant, a subsidiary of Ford Motor Company. Built in 1953 at the Great Lakes Engineering Works in River Rouge, Michigan as a 647-foot straight-decked vessel, it was lengthened to 767 feet in 1979 and was named for the grandson of Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford. The ship is especially associated with the valor of Captain Don Erickson and his crew on the night of November 10, 1975, when Erickson ordered the vessel out of the safety of Whitefish Bay, where it was anchored, to search Lake Superior for the missing S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald; the Ford survived the storm that claimed the "Mighty Fitz." As freighter technology advanced, the William Clay Ford became less profitable, and in 1987, while the ship was being scrapped, its pilot house was removed and donated to the Dossin Great Lakes Museum by E. Steven Robinson. The iron anchor displayed with it originally served on the U.S.S. Yantic, a Civil War era sailing vessel that later came to the Great Lakes as a training vessel for the Michigan Naval Militia, a volunteer organization composed mostly of college-aged Detroiters recognized for service aboard the auxiliary cruiser U.S.S. Yantic during the Spanish-American War. The anchor was donated to the museum by the Koenig Coal and Supply Co. in 1960. A legend held that the U.S.S. Yantic had been designed as Abraham Lincoln's presidential yacht, but evidence supporting that tradition has not surfaced, and presidential yachts did not begin until the 1880s.