CITY OF BREMERTON

BUILT/ REBUILT: 1901, Everett, WA. Converted to a ferry in 1921.

PREVIOUS/LATER NAMES: a. City of Everett, b. Majestic, c. Whatcom, d. City of Bremerton

OFFICIAL NUMBER: 93135 

L/B/D: 169 x 48 x 14 GROSS/NET TONS: 510/346 PASSENGERS/AUTOS: 1500/60 cars

PROPULSION:  triple expansion engine  

NAME TRANSLATION: for the city of Bremerton. Bremerton was named for William Bremer, a German immigrant who platted the town, and later sold the land to the US Navy for the Navy Yard.

FINAL DISPOSITION: Scrapped, 1938.

HISTORY

There are probably few people living in Bremerton today that realize there was once a vessel carrying the name of their city on her bow.

Another of early pioneers in auto service on Puget Sound, the City of Bremerton was one of Black Ball’s converted steamers and became something of a prototype for the company.  A string of other vessels with familiar names would soon go into the yard and all have the same work done:   sponsoning of the hull, an expanded, if somewhat boxy superstructure for the passenger cabin (though often quite plushly fitted out), and, in the early days of travel, a Barlow steam elevator which would lift cars up onto docks not yet built to accommodate automobiles.

Launched as the Majestic in 1901, the vessel was a fairly typical passenger steamer of the era with nice lines and a single, soot-belching smokestack.  Her time serving her original owners was short. The fierce competition on Puget Sound led her to become the property of the increasingly dominant Puget Sound Navigation Company.

Painting her long, oblong funnel crimson, the company renamed her Whatcom in 1904.  Under this name she sailed mainly on the Seattle-Bellingham route until replaced by the Kulshan.

With the automobile becoming the preferred mode of transportation, the need for multiple stops on the smaller docks was not needed: people were driving to the bigger ports to be picked up by waiting steamer, or, as provided, onto ferries.  One by one the routes to more rural areas were dropped.

The Whatcom went into the yard in 1921 to be rebuilt to carry vehicles. The steamer emerged from the yard with the same oblong funnel and the same wheelhouse, but all resemblance to the trim steamer she had been were gone.  Now very much a ferryboat, Black Ball renamed the vessel City of Bremerton.

One piece of equipment acquired for the City of Bremerton was greeted by some as an insult. The fine old stern wheeler Bailey Gatzert, retired from the Bremerton route, gave up her melodious 5-chime steam whistle to the City of Bremerton.

Serving her namesake route for many years, Black Ball was able to retire her as the newer, more economic diesel-powered ferries came on line. With the Chippewa and the new Kalakala on the route the uneconomical City of Bremerton was no longer needed.

In 1936 she was withdrawn from service and lingered for a time at the Black Ball yard with a flotilla of other discarded steamers–diesel had won the day for cheap transport on Puget Sound. After being unused for two years, the City of Bremerton was sent to the breakers in 1938. The chime whistle was saved, but everything else from the City of Bremerton was cut up for scrap.