Back when I had a blog on forgotten things in the Pacific Northwest, this was one of the more popular stories. Here it. The Top of the Ocean: The restaurant ship that wasn’t a ship Every so often, I get an inquiry about the strange looking “ferry” in postcards parked on the Tacoma waterfront. Where did it sail, people ask, and what was it doing in Tacoma? The answer is, it never sailed anywhere. The Read more…
From ferry to building… Not looking too different, at least not yet, the Elwha at the Everett Shipyard undergoing conversion to offices and floating warehouse. The long-lived Ballard… Whether she was the Golden Anchors of the Four Winds, the old ferry Ballard was a popular venue in Seattle, right up until the time she sank. Unfortunately, this seems to be the fate of most floating restaurants, the Princess Louise in Los Angeles being a notable Read more…
Oh, where does one start… How about the Wenatchee conversion fiasco? Yes, fiasco, because the 8-9 month project will take 22 by the time it is over with, and when it comes back into service, there won’t be anything to plug it into, anyway. Oh, and did I mention it cost way more than they figured to do the work? Like $36 million more? Surprise! Said no one, ever, when it comes to retrofitting one Read more…
Captain Peabody had pulled the same trick nearly twenty years earlier: taking the hull of a vessel, stripping it down, and completely rebuilding it into a completely new ferry. When he did this in 1935 the vessel that emerged was the Kalakala, a vessel whose function as a ferry had always been secondary to its use as the symbolic flagship/excursion vessel–though up until the 60’s, she worked pretty well as a ferryboat as well. In Read more…
They have run the gamut, from elegant dining rooms that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a trans-Atlantic ocean liner (the pocket liners operated by Canadian Pacific) to the galleys fitted out with surplus plastic fast food restaurant fittings (the original Issaquah Class galleys.) Black Ball ran all over the place, from the elegant fittings in the Rosario and Quilcene to the large, but utilitarian lunch counter on the Enetai and Willapa. Washington State Read more…
The Elwha pulling into San Francisco on her journey northward in 1968. Note the lower car deck windows are boarded up and the false bow (left end of photo) to break waves. Author’s photo. Going nowhere fast Debacle–noun– A sudden, disastrous collapse, downfall, or defeat; a rout; A total, often ludicrous failure;The breaking up of ice in a river. Okay, I admit I didn’t know about that last definition (files it away for future use) Read more…
We have a final design! This is how the new as-yet-unnamed class of ferries will look. And again, please no “Electric Olympics” or something lame like that. They different enough from the Olympics (which, I’m sorry, for me when I hear “Olympic Class” I’m always going to think of the White Star Line trip of Olympic, Titanic and Britannic. Sorry, but White Star got there first.) I suppose you could name the class after the Read more…
Over at WSF What’s that old saying? The more things change, the more they stay the same? WSF did the same thing several years ago when tendering the bids for the new hybrid electric ferries. This led to delays and a change in the law to bid the contract out nationwide. Well, the good news is, we FINALLY are out to bid. WSF is hoping multiple yards bid so we can get two boats by Read more…
To diesel or not to diesel… That is the question. While the Seattle Times editorial board and even several of the candidates for governor are calling for at least two diesel Olympic Class ferries to be built while we wait for the first hybrid electric ferries to appear, there’s a real problem with that, as the new head of the ferry system points out. The previous providers of the propulsion system for the Olympics, seemingly Read more…
Indianapolis, the smallest of the three Great Lakes steamers was the first to arrive on Puget Sound, arriving at Port Townsend 10 February 1906. She has been fitted with temporary sails to assist her trip via the Strait of Magellan, as there was no Panama Canal to utilize. The Puget Sound Navigation Company, owner of the steamer, put her on the Seattle-Port Townsend-Victioria run, but with the arrival of her larger near sisters, the Indianapolis Read more…