The Ford Rouge River plant has been used to produce 28 vehicle models, and continues to be used -today manufacturing aluminum Ford F-150 bodies. But, little remembered today, the factory was not originally built to make automobiles, but to manufacture ships for the US Navy.
On November 26, 1914 the battleship HMS Bulwark was moored in the river Medway, part of a fleet assembled in anticipation of a possible raid against London by the Imperial German fleet when, without any warning, as one witness reported, “there was a flash, a cloud of smoke, and the ship vanished.”