Hooray! Hooray! Today is the day! August 5th, 2026, steel is cut for the Wishkah. WSF’s new ferries are officially under construction! And about time too. We’ve got three boats on borrowed time and/or life support. Governor Ferguson has forged ahead and exercised the option for the third boat because Read more
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 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 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 Read more
No vessel went through such transformation as the Iroquois. With a career that lasted 83 years, that’s probably not a surprise, but the various guises the vessel took on over the years ranged from one boxy, somewhat inelegant rebuild to a transfiguration into one of the weirdest looking vessels on Read more
…or de-evolution depending on how you view the metamorphosis from the Napa Valley to the ferry Malahat. Built as the flagship vessel for the Monticello Steamship company, the Napa Valley went into service in 1910 on the thirty-mile trip between San Francisco and Vallejo. She was to be a modern Read more
I’ve always been fond of this little ferry.She started life in 1923 as the steam powered ferry Whidby for the Whidby Island Transit company, then a subsidiary of PSN, and soon to be totally absorbed by the company, for routes on and around Whidbey Island. She worked in this capacity Read more