BALLARD

BUILT/REBUILT: 1900/1931  

PREVIOUS/LATER NAMES: a. City of Everett, b. Liberty, c. Ballard.  As floating restaurant:Golden Anchors, Four Winds, Surfside 9.

OFFICIAL NUMBER: 127487

L/B/D: 155 x 30 x 9 GROSS/NET TONS:  226/154 PASSENGERS/AUTOS: 250/40

PROPULSION: Washington Estep Diesel, 650 HP 

NAME TRANSLATION: From the city of the same name; named for Capt. William Rankin Ballard, who settled the area in 1882.

FINAL DISPOSITION: Retired as a ferryboat in 1944 to become a floating restaurant on Lake Washington. Later moved to Lake Union. After sinking twice at Lake Union, the former floating restaurant was finally broken up in 1973.

HISTORY

The ferry Ballard is probably remembered more for her stint on Lake Union as the “Four Winds” restaurant and later as the “Surfside 9” where she sank not only once, but twice.

Constructed in 1900 as the City of Everett, the passenger steamer was stripped down to her hull and rebuilt as the Liberty in about 1924. She worked for the Kitsap County Transportation Company, who eventually changed her over to a diesel ferry and renamed her Ballard.

As the Ballard, she worked on the Suquamish-Indianola-Ballard route for many years. Quite unrecognizable as the former trim Mosquito Fleet steamer, the ferry nevertheless had touches of elegance built into her. After taking over for KCTC, Black Ball pulled the Ballard from service and removed her diesel engine for use on the Rosario.

Sold off by Black Ball, she later opened as the upscale “Golden Anchors” and later the “Four Winds” and was a top-rated restaurant.  Later, after the World’s Fair was over, she became the kitschy “Surfside 9” complete with a leering oversized pirate attached to her roof.

Then one morning in July 1966 the cook arrived and found the dining room, kitchen and bar flooded with water that reached table-top level.  A police patrol boat and the Seattle fire department were called in to pump the boat dry.

Meanwhile a piano floated like an iceberg in the bar and the tropical fish in an aquarium stayed “dry” just inches from the lake water. She had settled upright in 24 feet of water after Seattle City Light had cut off the power for non-payment of the electric bill. The pumps in her bilge, which had been keeping her dry, stopped and the water filled the hull and the boat sank. The restaurant sued and the case ended up in the state supreme court, which ruled that City Light was within their rights to shut off the electricity for non-payment of the bill.

Dried out, the venerable ferry was purchased by Youth Adventures Inc and was about to be converted to a youth center when literally hours before she was to be moved into drydock on May 13,1967, she sank again, this time on an uneven keel at a 45-degree angle.

Raised a second time, the old ferry was finally broken up in 1973.

The rumor is that the policy at Seattle City Light has been to leave the power on to vessels despite delinquent bills ever since—figuring it better to rack up debt than to be the cause of sending a vessel to the bottom and creating a costly clean up mess instead.