Ships that pass into history
Published 3:14 pm Tuesday, January 6, 2015
Washington residents don’t like saying goodbye to pieces of their maritime heritage. But they have a harder time finding the will and the money to preserve those pieces of history.
After a long, expensive and torturous effort to preserve it, the Kalakala, the silver-skinned art deco ferry that served Seattle and Bremerton from 1935 to 1967, is scheduled to be scrapped next month.
Washington ferries generally are fondly regarded, at least when they’re running and on schedule. They are the poor man’s yacht for many of us. When family and friends visit from out of state, a ride on a state ferry is the go-to outing, along with the trips to Space Needle and the Pike Place Market.
The Kalakala, even for those who never went on what was a rattling, clanking ride, was even more fondly regarded for its quirk factor. It’s gleaming streamlined hull fit the “future is now” aesthetic of Seattle’s 1962 World’s Fair. And it was easy to root for its rescue when, after it was sold and towed to Alaska to serve as a floating seafood processing plant, it was brought home, worn and rusted, to Washington waters in 1998 to be refurbished and used as a tourist attraction.
Instead, waiting for the funding that would refurbish the ferry, it drifted from moorage to moorage until it was tied up finally in Tacoma. Its current owner has spent about $500,000 to mothball it and will likely spend another $500,000 to have it scrapped. A Port of Tacoma commissioner estimated it would cost $25 million to refurbish the Kalakala.
Western Washington has a mixed record in terms of preserving its maritime history. The Historic Ships Wharf at Seattle’s Lake Union is home to the Virginia V, the last remaining steamer of Puget Sound’s Mosquito Fleet ferries; the Swiftsure, a lighthouse tender built in 1904; the Duwamish, a Seattle fireboat built in 1909; and the Arthur Foss, a wooden tug built in 1889.
The Wawona, the largest three-masted schooner ever built in North America, hauled lumber along the Pacific Coast and was used for cod fishing in the Bering Sea. In its retirement it was brought to Seattle in 1964 with the goal of restoring it. But the cost to save it, as is now the case with the Kalakala, was too great and it was scrapped in 2008.
Meanwhile, Everett’s own Equator now floats somewhere between preservation and destruction. The two-masted schooner built in 1888 carried author Robert Louis Stevenson on a voyage between Hawaii and Samoa in 1889. It was abandoned here in 1957. The Equator bears the distinction of being the first artifact in Everett to earn a spot on the National Register of Historic Places in 1972.
The Equator’s hull now sits beneath a shed roof on Port of Everett property near the 10th Street boat launch.
Not every piece of history can be saved. The Kalakala was given more time than most to generate interest and a fundraising campaign. Even with a roof above it, the elements may determine how much time the Equator has.
