The End of the Kalama

Thanks to Ryan Smith, we have the last chapter of the the Kalama written!

Doing some sleuthing on Google Earth given her last location, Mr. Smith was tracked the former WSF passenger only boat to a beach further down from her last known location. Using the the time-advance feature on Google Earth, you can clearly see in the third and last photo snapped by the satellite on 9 April 2025 shows that the ferry has been stripped down to just about hull level.

It will be interesting to see if on the next updated anything of the ferry remains.

You can find her at: 12°07’25.07″S, 44°25’56.29″E

_{Photos courtesy of Google Earth.}

Wanna Buy a Boat?

The Steamship Ferry Authority will soon be selling the 72-year-old Governor. Folks from Puget Sound will remember this ferry as the Kulshan from the late 1960’s until 1982.

Mostly working the Clinton-Mukilteo route, she did spend some time on Hood Canal after the bridge sank and appeared in a couple of films, most notably An Officer and a Gentleman before being sold to the US Coast Guard for use at Governor’s Island, New York, where she received her current name, Governor. The Steamship Authority picked her up in 1997.

Before anyone suggests that WSF should repurchase the ferry to help with the current lack of boats, bear in mind despite the care that the Steamship Authority has taken with the ferry, it is still older than the Tillikum and according to the article she can’t sail if waves get over 4 feet, which frankly isn’t a a lot.

Cool Collectible!

Seattle’s major league baseball team unveiled a new menu for the upcoming season. In addition to the fish and chips seen above, Mariner’s fans can buy the new Washington State Ferries souvenir ferry boat with crab nachos, crab fries, chicken tenders, garlic fries, and chips with spinach and artichoke crab dip.

Meanwhile, Up North…

The Alaska Marine Highway is once again looking for an American shipyard to build a replacement for the Tustumena. The $100,000,000.00 replacement vessel is expected, unlike WSF’s boats, to be paid for with federal funds.

Replacing the Tustumena has been on the radar for the ferry system for the better part of nearly two decades. The aging vessel has had numerous issues, including a crack in the hull in 2016.

However, it may be a moot point since the ferry system is expected to run out of money by this summer due to “federal chaos problems.” Stay tuned.

Hard to believe…

22 March will mark the 20th anniversary of the sinking of the Queen of the North. I can vividly remember waking up that day and turning on the news (we get most of the Canadian channels here) and the disbelief I felt hearing that the ferry had been lost.

As the news trickled in throughout the day, in became apparent that two passengers were lost in the sinking, making an already tragic situation even worse.

In the investigation that followed, BC Ferries concluded that Queen of the North failed to make the required or any course changes at Sainty Point. The ferry continued on straight on an incorrect course for 4 nautical miles for over 14 minutes until it crashed at 17.5 knots on Gil Island. The investigation found no evidence of a change of speed at any time during the crossing of Wright Sound and came to the conclusion that human factors were the primary cause of the sinking.

The Queen of the North remains on the bottom of Wright Sound, upright and intact at a depth of 427 metres (1,401 ft.)

Maggie the First

People tend to forget that the two-stack Princess Marguerite was actually a replacement for an earlier namesake (and for my money, the better looking of the two) vessel.

Built as a sister to the Princess Kathleen, the first Princess Marguerite was lost in WWII, leaving her near twin alone when she returned to the British Columbia coast. The Marguerite‘s replacement on the triangle route was the two-stack version of the same name, which, with her sister, the second Princess Patricia took over run when they arrived after the war. The vessels were from a pre-war design…and it showed. Beloved as both vessels were, they were already somewhat antiquated by the time they arrived on the west Coast of Canada.

This snapshot was taken sometime in the late 1940’s and has aged to a lovely sepia color. Photos of the first Princess Marguerite are somewhat rare, given her shortened career with Canadian Pacific.

Bremerton, circa 1959

I’ve always wondered why people didn’t take more photographs from the Bremerton side of the Seattle-Bremerton run. This photo taken in 1959 gives a good reason–there really wasn’t a good vantage point to take photos from, unless you were passing another ferry on the way out.

Here we have the stern of the Enetai waiting to take on cars for her next run to Seattle.

And the last photo for this post…

Neat photo of the Kehloken arriving in Seattle in the late 1940’s. One thing I love about Kodachrome–if it was taken care of, it held its color. I miss it.

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