Fish Tales Story Time
2025-06-30 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-07 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-14 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-21 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-28 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-08-11 10:30 - 11:30 (America/Detroit) | Michigan Maritime Museum, 260 Dyckman Avenue, South Haven, MI, 49090, United States
Join us at the Michigan Maritime Museum at 10:30 am every Monday June through August as we read a maritime-themed story from our maritime children’s book library! These story times are perfect for young families and included with regular museum admission.

Fish Tales is a collaboration with the Michigan Maritime Museum, the American Association of University Women, and the South Haven Scott Club.

Maritime Makers
2025-07-01 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-08 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-15 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-22 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-07-29 10:30 - 11:30, 2025-08-12 10:30 - 11:30 (America/Detroit)
Join us at the Michigan Maritime Museum every Tuesday throughout the summer for a make-and-take arts and crafts program! Participants will create their piece of maritime-themed art at this drop-in program while educators provide assistance and exciting information related to that day’s theme.

These programs are geared towards children, but anyone can participate! Included with general admission.

Maritime Makers is proudly sponsored by Clark & Cathy Carmichael

Hands-On the Harbor Day Camp
2025-07-03 10:30 - 12:30, 2025-07-10 10:30 - 12:30, 2025-07-17 10:30 - 12:30, 2025-07-31 10:30 - 12:30, 2025-08-14 10:30 - 12:30 UTC
Hands-On the Harbor is a weekly Day Camp that is offered Thursdays June – August, starting June 12th, from 10:30am to 12:30pm. You can drop your camper off to enjoy Museum educator-led immersive and hands-on activities, exhibit tours, and fun at the Michigan Maritime Museum! Campers will participate in a variety of maritime-themed programs exploring both inside the Museum’s Jerry Mason Learning Center and out on our waterfront campus.
Registration is $10 per student per day, $7 for Museum Members. Capacity for each camp is limited to fifteen students, so register today! To sign up or for questions, contact leslie@mimaritime.org or (269) 637-8078 ext. 205.

Purchase Tickets Here

23rd Annual Fish Boil Fundraiser
2025-07-12 17:00 - 20:00 (America/Detroit)
Join the Michigan Maritime Museum for our 23rd Annual Fish Boil! This old-fashioned Great Lakes fish boil dinner includes traditionally boiled local lake fish, potatoes and onions covered in a butter sauce, with a roll, coleslaw, and ice cream for dessert! There will also be a 50/50 raffle and a cash bar with beer, wine, and soft drinks. Join us for a delicious meal, great company, and the best harbor views!
Just about everything from the fish to the napkins is donated through the generosity of businesses and organizations in our community. Please come out to support the Museum and enjoy a Great Lakes tradition!

Tickets will be available at the door until we run out of fish! Take out option is available.
$20 per person, $10 children (12 and under)

Fish Boil Supporters:
Star of the Lake Masonic Lodge
South Pier Creamery
Phoenix St. Cafe
Barden’s Farm Market
Clementine’s
Bob’s Processing
MyTown Ace Hardware
South Haven Public Schools

Lunch & Learn: "Save a Walleye, Spear an Indian"
2025-07-16 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Detroit)
Lecture Series is proudly sponsored by the Nielsen-Wells Grand Fund and Mike & Susan Smith

The Michigan Maritime Museum is proud to showcase South Haven middle school student Hayden Washegesic for his History Day competition performance presentation of “Save a Walleye, Spear an Indian,” based on his research of the Wisconsin Walleye War of the 1980s and 90s, a tumultuous time in the history of the Native American rights movement. Hayden brings those voices to life as his presentation calls attention to a significant moment in the history of the Lac du Flambeau and Lac Courte Oreilles bands of the Ojibwe Nation.
Hayden Washegesic is a South Haven student. A longtime member of his school’s History Club, this will be Hayden’s third year competing at Nationals for History Day. He chose to focus on this topic as it highlights an aspect of Native American history that isn’t widely discussed. This is also personal for Hayden, as his grandfather came to South Haven to work with his father on the gillnet fish tug Elsie J. as a commercial fisherman. Hayden wanted to pursue this topic not only for its broader historical importance but also as it relates to his personal family history.
This lecture is part of our year-long programmatic series Whispers Across the Water that showcases and celebrates the invaluable contributions of minority communities to Great Lakes maritime history and heritage

Sweetwater Film Showcase
2025-07-24 10:30 - 15:30, 2025-07-25 10:30 - 15:30 UTC
This event is proudly sponsored by:
The Horton Family in honor of Gary Horton
The Michigan Maritime Museum is proud to present the Sweetwater Film Showcase. This two-day event will feature short and full length documentaries about Great Lakes topics that highlight the connections, contributions, and stories of underrepresented and minority communities and persons to Great Lakes maritime history and heritage. The Showcase is a part of the Museum’s Whispers Across the Water series.
2025 Documentary Selections
Members- $15 per person/per day
Non-Members $20 per person/per day
Get Tickets

STEAM Camp
2025-08-04 09:30 - 12:00, 2025-08-05 09:30 - 12:00, 2025-08-06 09:30 - 12:00, 2025-08-07 09:30 - 12:00, 2025-08-08 09:30 - 12:00 (America/Detroit)
The Museum offers a STEAM focused summer camp for students grades 3-5 (ages 8-10). The camp runs for one week in the summer and is open to 15 students. The STEAM curriculum focuses on Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Math. The day camp, held on the Museum campus in South Haven, features a maritime themed program through engaging STEAM activities and lessons. The camp includes hands-on activities, lessons aboard our tall ship Friends Good Will, interactive exhibit tours, and a paddle on the Black River in a voyageur canoe.
For more information visit the STEAM Camp webpage.

STEAM Camp is proudly sponsored by Ruth Wiser

Lunch & Learn: Sailors, Keepers, Racers, and More: Women on the Great Lakes
2025-08-13 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Detroit)
Proudly sponsored by the Nielsen-Wells Grant Fund and Mike & Susan Smith
The Great Lakes have a long and fascinating history of women involved in maritime life at every level, from cooks to captains. Join Chicago Maritime Museum curator Madeline Crispell as she explores the evolving roles women have played on the Great Lakes over centuries. Learn about trailblazers who worked as lighthouse keepers or led female racing teams, but also about everyday women who helped keep life on the Great Lakes afloat.
Madeline Crispell is the curator of the Chicago Maritime Museum. Her exhibitions, walking tours, and public programs across Chicagoland have focused on a range of subjects, from American travel history to the Thorne Miniature Rooms to Chicago’s alleyways.
This lecture is part of our year-long series Whispers Across the Water celebrating the diverse and often underrepresented voices that have contributed to Great Lakes maritime heritage.

Rock the Boat 2025
2025-08-22 19:00 - 22:00 (America/Detroit)
Join the Michigan Maritime Museum at our 4th annual Rock the Boat concert. Come rock out at an evening of fun, food, music, and definitely dancing on the Museums waterfront campus. Proceeds benefit the Michigan Maritime Museum.
Back by popular demand, The 1985 Band will surely get you up on your feet and jammin’ to some sick beats. Featuring the best of what 80’s music has to offer, The 1985 combines lights, videos, costumes and more to create a totally immersive music experience.
Proudly sponsored by Scott & Julia Robbins and Clark & Cathy Carmichael.

PURCHASE TICKETS HERE

Lecture Series-Manistee River Lake Sturgeon: 20 Years of Restoration
2025-09-17 18:30 - 19:30 (America/Detroit)
Fisheries biologist Corey Jerome will sharing an overview of 20 years of Little River Band of Ottawa Indians (LRBOI) Big Manistee River Nmé restoration efforts. This plan incorporates both cultural and biological criteria for establishing goals for restoration of the Big Manistee River nmé population. An LRBOI Cultural Context Task Group, composed of Tribal members and Tribal government staff, addressed the cultural context. Tribal biologists developed the biological criteria to be consistent and ultimately driven by the cultural context. Through the implementation of the Nmé (Lake Sturgeon) Stewardship Plan an overview of where Big Manistee River streamside stocking has been over the years, documented juvenile/adult recruitment, and characterization of the adult spawning population.

Corey Jerome is a Fisheries Biologist with the Little River Band of Ottawa Indians Natural Resources Department and has been leading lake sturgeon restoration and rehabilitation within the Manistee River and the 1836 ceded territory for Little River Band of Ottawa Indians since 2012. Was first introduced to the rehabilitation that Little River was conducting during the summer of 2007 as a summer seasonal technician while completing bachelor’s degree in Fisheries Management at Lake Superior State University.

Adults $10, Museum Members FREE

Whispers Across the Water Lecture Series is proudly sponsored by the
Nielsen-Wells Grant Fund and Mike & Susan Smith
Reserve Tickets Here

Dan Seavey: Confessions of a Great Lakes Pirate
2025-10-10 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Detroit)
Special Preview Performance
Dan Seavey: Confessions of A Great Lakes Pirate
Starring Tom Kastle
Directed by Francisco Torres
Dan Seavey: Confessions of A Great Lakes Pirate is a one man play written and performed by actor, musician, and tall ships sailor Tom Kastle for adult and young adult audiences.* It looks, both comically, and seriously, at the life of THE Great Lakes pirate of all time; Dan Seavey, who lived from 1865 to 1949. He was a lumberman, businessman, bureaucrat, Navy veteran, saloon keeper, Klondike gold rush miner, sailor, bootlegger, and law enforcement officer, but his biggest claim was that of… Great Lakes pirate.
Like literary contemporaries such as Long John Silver, this production treats Seavey as a charming character, a colorful character, and a flawed character, as well. A man who has done some terrible things but, in the end, you want to cheer for him and wish him well, as he sails off into the sunset.
About the performer
For years, Tom Kastle traveled the world, collecting and performing maritime songs and stories and sailing tall ships on the Great Lakes. These days, his passions are even more diverse and include theatrical projects, from Man of La Mancha to Shakespeare to God Help Us! with the legendary Ed Asner; film projects, like Francisco Torres’ Delight In the Mountain; and television, where he hosted a short documentary on the Bicentennial Battle of Lake Erie that was nominated for an Emmy Award. His captain and relief captain credits include the tall ships around the Great Lakes. Kastle was Relief Captain of the Michigan Maritime Museum’s own tall ship Friends Good Will in 2006 and Captain in 2007.
Tickets: $10 per person, $5 Museum Members
*This play is not for children. Dan Seavey contains examples of drinking, violence, and mild language. In other words, actual adult pirate behavior
Purchase Tickets Here
