SS Meteor Whaleback Ship Museum

The SS Meteor sits on Barker's Island in Superior Harbor and is the last surviving ship of the whaleback design — a peculiar nineteenth-century Great Lakes hull form where the entire deck curves in a convex arc. Walk aboard and the low, rounded profile makes sense at once: it sheds waves rather than fighting them.

The ship is open as a museum from late spring through early fall. Inside you can see the engine room, crew quarters, and captain's cabin, all preserved from the working era. The adjacent visitor center explains the history of Great Lakes shipping and the short-lived whaleback experiment. Barker's Island itself has a marina and a pleasant waterfront path with views across to Duluth.

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A story
The SS Meteor is the last surviving example of the whaleback design, an odd late-nineteenth-century innovation in which the hull curves smoothly over the deck like the back of a surfacing whale. The design was meant to shed waves efficiently on the Great Lakes, but only 43 whalebacks were ever built — they proved too expensive to load and unload. The Meteor launched in 1896 and carried ore and grain for more than 60 years before retiring to Barker's Island.