Join us for the exhibit opening of the new temporary exhibit: Ballast Technology: Saving Ships, Lives, and the Environment. Light refreshments will be available and attendees will have the opportunity to meet with the exhibit designers. This event is free with museum admission, members are free.

Ballast Technology: Saving Ships, Lives, and the Environment:

Since ancient times, sailors have known that keeping a ship upright requires a heavy bottom and not too much unbalanced weight above water. Modern principles of ballast system designs developed with the advent of steel hulls, steam power, powerful pumps and water ballast in the nineteenth century, but engineers now have to design new ballast management systems to prevent the transport of invasive organisms. The exhibit traces the history of ballast technologies from stone ballasts of antiquity, through the Eastland disaster in 1915 that caused the loss of over 800 lives, to the newest “salties” with ballast treatment systems. Included with museum admission. The exhibit will run through August, 2017.