The Royaliste at the St. Ignace marina. The tall ships Niagara and Royaliste tied up at St. Ignace Sunday, August 13, on their way to Port Huron for a tall ship festival August 18. They have been among 20 traditionally-rigged vessels participating in the summer long American Sail Training Association Tall Ships Challenge, which ended last weekend in Chicago.

The 71-foot Royaliste, a privately owned reenactment gunboat and bomb ketch from California, will stop at Port Huron on her way to Lake Erie, where she will be prepared for overland shipment back to California. She participates in historic naval battle reenactments and has flown French, British, and American flags from the French and Indian Wars through the Revolution and has appeared in documentaries on the Discovery and History channels.

The U.S. Brig Niagara, 198 feet long with spar, was reconstructed in 1988 as the warship on which Oliver Hazard Perry, September 10, 1813, won the Battle of Lake Erie during the War of 1812. In St. Ignace, she was flying Commodore Perry's battle flag emblazoned with Captain James Lawrence's dying command, "Don't give up the Ship," in a battle lost to the British at Boston earlier that year. In his report of the Lake Erie victory, Commodore Perry wrote his own famous line, "We have met the enemy and they are ours..."

Niagara at the head of the Arnold Dock in St. Ignace. Niagara, owned by the state of Pennsylvania, will be berthed for winter exhibition at Erie, Pennsylvania.

Another Challenge ship, the 1812-era Clipper Pride of Baltimore II, passed through the Straits this week on her way to Port Huron, but will return to St. Ignace for public tours over the Labor Day weekend before heading back toward her home port in Chesapeake Bay. She is owned by the state of Maryland.

The Tall Ships Challenge will be held next summer along the East Coast.