^{The sole survivor of the first class of ferries built for the state, the Tillikum arrives in a snowy Friday Harbor in December of 2019. Courtesy of Captain Brandon Moser.}

CLASS: Evergreen State

BUILT: 1959/94 Puget Sound Bridge and Drydock Co., Seattle

OFFICIAL NUMBER: D278437 CALL SIGN: WL3377

L/B/D: 310 x 73 x 16 GROSS/NET TONS: 2069/1407 PASSENGERS/AUTOS: 1061/87 

PROPULSION: 2 EMD 12-645-F7B diesels, 2500 HP SPEED: 13 knots 

NAME TRANSLATION: Chinook for “friend”

FINAL DISPOSITION: In service, inter-island ferry, San Juan Islands. (2024)

HISTORY

She is the last of her class still in service.

The Tillikum, once the “big boat” on the Winslow-Seattle run, is spending her twilight years in the San Juan Islands, as her two sisters did before her.

Joining the fleet on 11 April,1959, she took over the number one slot on the Seattle-Winslow run. Her running mate was the Steel Electric ferry Illahee, and for nearly a decade.

The Agate Pass Bridge, which had opened the same year the state took over ferry operations, had created a far shorter route to the Kitsap Peninsula and beyond; when the Hood Canal Bridge opened in August 1961, it opened a direct route to the Olympic Peninsula and Olympic National Park. It was a much quicker trip to take the ferry from Seattle to Winslow or Edmonds to Kingston to get to the bridge.  As a result, traffic jumped on both routes (while continuing to fall on the Bremerton run.)

Summers found the dowagers of the fleet working supplemental service on both runs. The Tillikum and Illahee would find themselves accompanied by the Chippewa or San Mateo. But by the early 1960’s, it was clear that bigger boats were going to be needed, and fast.

The Tillikum held onto the run until 1968 when she was replaced by the much larger Elwha. Even with two Supers traffic on the Winslow run couldn’t keep up and by 1973 they were bumped by the Jumbos.

Meanwhile, the Tillikum was shifted up to the Kingston-Edmonds route, where she was paired with another Steel Electric—most often the Nisqually.

With two Supers freed up, one went to the islands (the Kaleetan) and the Elwha landed alongside the Tillikum. The Evergreen State Class vessel worked the route more often than not throughout the 70’s, filling in at times for the Klahowya and, after the Hood Canal Bridge sank in a violent storm in 1979, on the re-established South Point-Lofall route.

After the arrival of the Issaquah Class, the Tillikum eventually took a permanent position at Vashon, though at times through the 80’s and early 90’s she would work in the San Juans. By the mid-1990’s she was almost exclusively at Vashon.

In 2009, the Tillikum earned her gold stripes on her stack as she celebrated her 50th year in service. Today she can be found sailing the waters around the San Juan Islands in the shadow of Mount Baker on the inter-island route she took over in 2017.