Brig Niagara is the biggest, at 198 feet in length, or about two-thirds of a football field. We have dinosaur bones that are right from Lake Superior here."Īmong the tall ships, the U.S. "That's copper culture artifacts, stone artifacts that go back to ten thousand years, and dinosaur bones. "We have underwater wood, we have copper, stone and bone," Mitchen said. The prospect of huge crowds has drawn other attractions like diver Scott Mitchen's $10 million display of recovered treasure, including gold, copper tools and cannon. The festival also will include food and entertainment, including music, and performances of the Pirates of Penzance Opera by University of Minnesota-Duluth students. "With nine ships involved here, you know - three sailing, the others where you can get on board - that should alleviate crowd control or crowd lines," he said. He vows that this year will be very different because the crowd will be spread among more ships. Shaw said a lot more people showed up during a certain period of time than expected. Patrons spent hours in line, with no access to restrooms or food. Visit Duluth also organized that first festival, an event that turned out to be part smashing success and part disaster. "It's going to be an impressive sight, there's no doubt about it," Shaw said, adding it was "probably in the 1800s, the last time we had nine sailing ships inside the Duluth harbor." Hordes of visitors are coming to take in a rare spectacle of ship and sails. "The calls and the inquiries are just non-stop," said Gene Shaw, a spokesman for festival organizer Visit Duluth. For four days, the ships will be on display, open for tours and a limited number of rides for ticket holders.
That allows nine sailing ships to sail to Duluth. This year organizers got lucky as a fleet of the wooden ships is taking part in a race on the Great Lakes. The first Duluth Maritime Festival two years ago was a huge success, drawing more than 100,000 visitors - with just three ships. It opens Thursday with a grand arrival of all nine ships. More than 100,000 visitors are expected to flock into Duluth this weekend for the festival, likely to be the city's biggest summer attraction. But as word spread of the ship's presence on Wednesday, a steady stream of camera-carrying visitors began snapping photos of the highly polished ship from the closest dock. The wooden schooner arrived early for the four-day Tall Ships Festival and has been hiding for the past couple of days at a Superior, Wis., boat landing. Three flags flap up to 10 stories up in the pair of high masts rising from the decks of the Pride of Baltimore II.