BUILT/REBUILT: 1926/1935 Moore Drydock Co, Oakland, CA/Lake Washington Shipyard, Houghton, WA

PREVIOUS/LATER NAMES: a. Peralta, b. Kalakala

OFFICIAL NUMBER:  226244 CALL SIGN: WA6703 

L/B/D: 277 x 56 x 16 GROSS/NET TONS: 1417/963  PASSENGERS/AUTOS: 1943/110 cars (as built 1935, about 65 in 1967)

PROPULSION:  direct drive Busch-Sulzer diesel, 3000 HP SPEED: 16 knots

NAME TRANSLATION: Chinook jargon, “Flying Bird”

FINAL DISPOSITION: scrapped 2015

HISTORY

It is unlikely that there is a more famous Puget Sound ferry than the M/V Kalakala. For years the silver-painted art deco ferry was the most notable icon of Seattle and the Puget Sound area.  It wasn’t that she was  the fastest (she wasn’t) or the most luxurious (that title arguably went to the Chippewa), nor did she sail the longest of any ferry on Puget Sound—but there is no denying she was certainly the most unique vessel to ever sail Puget Sound waters, from her curved art deco design to her double horseshoe lunch counter to her teeth-rattling vibration.

Constructed from the ashes of the passenger ferry Peralta, the Kalakala was seen as more than a mode of transportation she was a symbol of progress and hope in the dark days of the Great Depression.  During the day she the filled role of ferry, transporting thousands of workers to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton.  By night she was an excursion boat, serving as an inexpensive distraction from the events of the day, offering live music and dancing until midnight.

For nearly thirty-five years the Kalakala made her way to and from Seattle and Bremerton, sometimes taking trips up to Victoria or other ports.  Sometimes she made hard landings, sometimes not.  She was both loved and hated by crews who took pride in their unique vessel but hated polishing the miles of brass.  She was also the pride of her officers who knew she was something special, but also feared for her lack of visibility, poor handling and habit of clobbering docks.

She endured an exile in Alaska longer than her service on Puget Sound, and then returned to home waters to face a long decline and ultimate destruction.

Love her or hate her, no one will ever be able to deny the Kalakala her place in history.

The Jinxed ferry of San Francisco Bay

The Kalakala’s   history on Puget Sound is well known, but not many people realize that she started out as an equally beautiful vessel for the Key System Ferries on San Francisco Bay. Built in 1926, the steam-turbine ferry Peralta was the flagship for of the fleet. Her orange livery unmistakable on the Bay, and she and her sister Yerba Buena were noted for the luxury of their fittings and nearly soundless engines.

While the Yerba Buena seemed to have a charmed life, the Peralta had difficulty from the start—an unlucky vessel from the moment of her launch when she got stuck on the ways as she slid down the ramp at the Moore Drydock Company. Scarcely six months in service, the Peralta went on to bash both the Oakland and San Francisco docks. The worst was yet to come, though, when the ferry was involved in one of the worst accidents in the history of the Bay area.

On a routine crossing in February 1928 the Peralta was approaching Oakland when passengers noticed her bow dipping abnormally low. Passengers always crowded to the front of the vessel as to be the first onto the trains. This night, however, an inquiry would later find, the Peralta’s nose slammed into a trough. The lower deck was suddenly awash in as much as five feet of cold salt water, sending terrified passengers scrambling. Over thirty were washed into the Bay.  Five people died in the cold water.

It was never determined if the Peralta’s ballast tanks, used to trim the boat as she approached the dock, were incorrectly filled at the wrong end as many supposed. In the end, it didn’t matter—the tanks were never used again.

The Peralta finished her unlucky career on the night of May 6th, 1933.  The Key System pier was set on fire by an arsonist, and the Peralta, tied up to the pier and shut down for the night, was soon ablaze. Her mooring lines cut, the vessel, completely engulfed in flame, drifted out into the Bay.  By morning, all that was left was a smoldering, twisted mass of scorched metal.    Her hull was still intact, but the ferry was effectively rendered useless.

The Key System decided not to rebuild the ferry.  The insurance company wrote the Peralta off and the hulk was offered for sale or scrapping. Captain Alexander Peabody, who was looking to build a new flagship, was alerted of the sale of the Peralta and purchased it.

Still sound below the waterline, Peabody knew that the most expensive work was already done, and that grafting a new superstructure on the hulk would be an easy task.

The only question to be answered was what form the new vessel would take.

Building the Kalakala

Captain Alexander Peabody, president of the Puget Sound Navigation Company, was looking to build a new company flagship, something unlike anything ever seen before. In the darkest days of the Depression, the vessel would not only be a productive addition to the fleet, but also be a symbol of hope and would demonstrate the advancements in shipbuilding.  A functional vessel, the ferry would also provide a distraction from the bleak reality of the 30’s by providing dances on board and social cruises. Early drawings that appeared in Pacific Motorboat magazine, however, showed that Peabody’s new ferry to be anything but original. In fact, the first drawings of the Kalakala show her looking not too different from her original incarnation as the Peralta.  Whether this was done on purpose by Peabody to make the vessel’s debut even more startling or not is up to debate.

Towing the hull up to the Lake Washington Shipyard in 1934, the first indication that the ferry would not end up looking like a pared down, single-ended Peralta was when the hull was shaved down to 55 feet. The superstructure that started to emerge from the hull was anything but traditional. For starters, there were no rivets being used—the new house was going to be completely smooth as electro-welding was to be used—a first for any ferry in the world.

The process of electro-welding was in its infancy in 1934. Most of the Atlantic floating palaces of the era were still riveted. The new vessel became the first on Puget Sound to use the technology.

As she began to take shape, her revolutionary design became evident. Everywhere on the Kalakala were curves—from the large portholes that flanked the rounded stern of the ferry to the elegantly curved ladies lounge, to the bench seats on the passenger decks.

Entering Service and Sailing for the Black Ball Line 

Making her official debut on 3 July 1935 the Kalakala proved to be every bit as successful as Captain Peabody and the stockholders of the Black Ball Line had hoped.  People marveled at the double horseshoe-shaped lunch counter located amidships on the upper passenger deck. The stylish galley had a full wait staff and cooked meals to order. In the corners of the galley were triangular tables for additional seating.

While the cafe was a gathering place for passengers, it also seemed to be the focal spot for the ferry’s notorious teeth-chattering vibration.  No one made comment on it that day, but as time went on waitress would only fill coffee cups half full to avoid the spillage.   No one is exactly sure what caused it. Everything from a possible misalignment of the engine, the propeller, to the design of the vessel itself was blamed.

Aft of the galley was the Palm Room, an open-air space filled with cane furniture. Such rooms were common on North Atlantic “floating palaces”; and the presence of such a room on board the Kalakala not only set her apart from the rest of the ferries in the fleet, but gave her a touch of elegance.

For Black Ball she was used primarily on the Seattle-Bremerton run, making Moonlight Cruises to the sounds of the Flying Birds orchestra led by Joe Bowen.  For a dollar, passengers could dance to swing music broadcast live from the boat. The cruises were an enormous success and made the boat the most popular in the fleet. A few short years later, however, the war would intervene and the Moonlight Cruises would stop. The Kalakala‘s primary duty—hauling passengers to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard became far more important than diversionary cruises and swing music.

Unfortunately for the Kalakala it was also a period of vandalism during WWII. Sailors and yard workers, having perhaps one beer too many in the Art Deco tap room below decks, took to throwing furniture, life rings, rope (a precious war-time commodity) and other materials overboard. When a fire was set under the seat of a sleeping passenger, Black Ball had enough. The first major alteration to the boat was made: the tap room was shut down, never to open again. The heavy wooden chairs, plushly upholstered in thick velvet, in the bow of the ship were removed. Two rows of curved bench seats were welded in. The cane furniture in the Palm Room was taken out and seats identical to the ones in the passenger cabin replaced them.  In addition, and perhaps the longest lasting alteration to the Kalakala and all the other ferries—liquor sales on Puget Sound ferries were suspended until the State of Washington began to sell beer again in 1974.

After the War, the Kalakala would return to duty on the Bremerton run, but Black Ball would also run the ferry on excursions to Victoria while maintenance was being done on the Iroquois.  The glamorous new “Night Boat” to Victoria was under construction, however, and the Kalakala, once the darling of the Black Ball Fleet, would soon find itself demoted from company flagship.  After 1947, all the new publicity from the Black Ball Line would feature the Chinook, though the Kalakala would still prove to be a tremendously popular vessel.

The Washington State Ferries Years

After the State took over operations in 1951, there were some immediate cosmetic changes to the ferry. She had a green stripe painted around her guards and funnel, and her interior was repainted in white and green enamel paint. All the seats were reupholstered in green, and the balustrades on the stairs were painted green.  Washington State Ferries kept her on the usual Seattle to Bremerton route, although when Black Ball Ferries Ltd. of Canada suddenly withdrew the Chinook from the Victoria to Port Angeles run, WSF assigned her to that route in the summers from 1955 to 1960.

Still the most popular ferry in the fleet, early publicity from Washington State Ferries promoted the Kalakala heavily.  On schedules and brochures were drawings or images of the famous streamlined ferry.  In an effort to stabilize her, they fitted her with a five-blade prop which helped smoothed her out somewhat.

When the Evergreen State appeared in 1954 the Kalakala once again found herself deposed as the company icon.  Still, at the time of the World’s Fair in 1962, the nearly 30-year-old vessel was rated as the number two attraction behind only the Space Needle.

From an economic standpoint for the State of Washington, however, the early 1960’s found an aging vessel of light steel construction that was deteriorating rapidly.    As early as 1960 the ferry system was considering retiring the ferry. Her 55-foot beam limited her car capacity, and her huge 3000 hp Busch-Sulzer diesel was increasingly expensive to maintain and operate. However, ridership on the ferries was continually going up, and even if only about 50 cars could be put on the ferry, that capacity meant that there would be 50 fewer cars left at the dock. The ferry went into Todd shipyard for another major overhaul and upgrading. Her hull was found to be very sound, but the steel in her passenger cabin was showing obvious wear and needed extensive repairs.

While at Todd, the ferry very nearly went up in flames again when a massive fire swept through the shipyard. High and dry in the dock, the Kalakala was a sitting duck until some tugs arrived and pulled the floating drydock into Elliott Bay. This time the ferry was safe from the flames and lived to sail another day.

Washington State Ferries, in an effort to modernize the fleet, simply could not run the Kalakala cost-effectively. With the addition of the Super Class ferries, time finally ran out for the old streamliner. She made her last run on 7 August 1967. For the last year or so of her life, her bow doors were removed and her forward opening widened to allow her to unload and load at the new Colman Dock. The removal of the doors gave the streamlined vessel the look of a perpetual yawn.

She was withdrawn from service and moved to Eagle Harbor and put up for sale, a large advertisement placed in the Seattle papers.  Speculation ran high as to what would happen to the ferry next, including keeping her in Seattle as a floating restaurant or attraction of some sort, but in the end she would end up in much less glamorous service.

Decline in Alaska, a Triumphant Return, and Scrapping 

Sold in October of 1967, the Kalakala was moved to Ballard and throughout the fall, winter and spring of 1967-68 had most of her interior gutted. Cannery equipment was installed, and she was readied for her long trip to Alaska.

From 1968-1971 the Kalakala operated as a floating processing vessel, moving under her own power.    In 1971 the engine blew a piston.   Her owners tied her up at the Kodiak dock, but constant winds threatened to snap the mooring lines.  Her owners soon found out what the State of Washington had—her big diesel engine was expensive to operate.  Rather than repair the vessel, a decision was made to beach the ferry at Gibson Cove and make her a stationary processing plant.  Oozed into the mud, the former pride of Puget Sound became a building, processing shrimp and crab until the early 1980s.

The last of the cannery operators went out of business in the early 1980s. Whatever could be taken off and sold was done so at auction in 1984. The Kalakala lay abandoned in the cove, the elements slowly destroying her.

In 1986 Seattle sculptor Peter Bevis while working as a fisherman, caught sight of the ferry stuck in the mud on Kodiak Island. Shown around the boat by her caretaker, Gil Reel, Peter knew the boat had to be saved and returned home.  It would another six years before the Kalakala Foundation would be formed, and several more years of work removing over 300 tons of concrete and cannery material, but Bevis would see his dream come true—the Kalakala returned to Seattle after an absence of 30 years.

After several months on the Seattle waterfront, the ferry was moved to Lake Union.  While trying to raise funds for complete restoration, Peter Bevis organized work parties on board to help keep the Kalakala from further damage.  Once a month the vessel was opened for tours, which took in donations and educated people unfamiliar with the ferry on what a remarkable history the vessel had.

After struggling for years to raise the money, and despite all the best efforts of Bevis and the volunteers, the Foundation filed for bankruptcy.  The ferry was sold at auction.

In a continuing surprising twist to her history, the person who was high bidder on the boat was unable to come up with the funds to pay for her. The Kalakala went to the second highest bidder, who also couldn’t come up with the funds to pay for her. Finally, she went to the third highest bidder. Owner Steve Rodriguez tried for months unsuccessfully to move her from Lake Union where she had more than worn out her welcome.  Finally, on March 9th she began her journey to Neah Bay, where the Makah Tribe had graciously offered to give the historic vessel free moorage, an offer that soon soured when the Kalakala damaged the pier she was moored to.  The Makah sued as did the Department of Natural Resources. The lawsuits were later resolved.

On September 24th, 2005 the ferry was moved to Tacoma and there Kalakala slipped further into decay.  Finally, Rodriguez lost the vessel and it was taken over by the owner of the property on which she is moored.

After nearly sinking on 26 March 2011, the Coast Guard ordered the ferry to more secure moorings.  The new owner secured her, but she had so deteriorated it was feared she couldn’t be moved safely to drydock.

After years of false hope and varying degrees of efforts to save her, the end finally came.   On January 6th, 2015, the Kalakala‘s final owner Karl Anderson announced that the ferry would require some $25 million to be totally restored.  With that kind of fundraising all but impossible, the old Seattle icon was scrapped in late January of 2015, passing into the pages of history.