Article from a few years back

[SS San Mateo]

Can't remember which paper this came from (it came out around April Fool's Day):

[Political Incorrectness]

Now that is a great piece

[FNS]

The ferry pictured in the article is of one of the classic Staten Island ferries of years back with beautiful lines.

[Curtis]

Fine Piece of Work. One of the best April Fools Jokes I've heard.

[SS San Mateo]

ferrynutseattle said:

The ferry pictured in the article is of one of the classic Staten Island ferries of years back with beautiful lines.

In this case, the ferry in the article is the Manhattan. I was able to find this picture:

[Mill Bay]

It takes a bit of searching sometimes to find an appropriate thread....
in this case: one with a relevant title.

So it fits in this thread having been originally published in July 1958.



A Wake for the ferries
Charles McCabe

Sunday, October 12, 2008



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It has been noted that to say goodbye is to die a little. If this wry bit of vintage wisdom holds, there will be a little death for thousands of San Franciscans, and their friends across the bay and everywhere else, with the final ride of a Transbay ferry.

At 11:30 p.m. Tuesday, the 240-foot steamer San Leandro - the last of what railroad men have for generations called their "lovely old ladies" - will slither out of her slip in front of the Ferry Building on the last passenger run to Oakland.

Arriving there at 11:50 p.m., she will pick up the last San Francisco-bound load, returning here at 12:30 a.m. and departing again for the Eastern shore, empty. At 1:05 a.m. Wednesday, the old steamer will creak her portly hull into the tired timbers of the Oakland Mole pier, with a final dull thud.

And that will mark the end of the bay's ferryboats. An occasion for bittersweet celebration, for sounding the elegiac note. For remembrance of lovely things past:

Of white clouds scudding in front of the hills of the city. Of gulls and their eerie caw as they circle the boat's white flagpole. Of a particularly well-remembered gull, who had one leg and was known was Peg Leg Pete.

Memories, too, of the steaming corned beef hash on the Key Route boats. And the lilt of a Chaminade dance by the ship's orchestra. And the marvelous huge, white, flaky French rolls on the SP boats.

Of other steamers, other days - the New World, the Senator, the Delta Queen and the Delta King that ran the rivers. With their calliopes hooting across the levees and their flags flying bright and brave.

The old ferryboat passenger knew by the horns how thick the fog was, and by the rings in the pitchers how old the cream.

One oldtimer recently recalled "winter nights, huddled in an overcoat, out on deck enjoying the foghorns, ships' bells, staccato blasts on the whistles, as dock lights died and mist closed in around us."

By midweek, it will be all gone. The smell of coffee and snails from the snack bar, the thud of waves against the hull, the rhythmic pulse of engines.

Children were born on the boats. Men died on them. A dandy murder took place on one.

On a cold November evening in 1870, boarding house keeper Laura Fair stepped to the upper deck and put a bullet through the heart of A.O. Crittenden, a wealthy lawyer who would not make an honest woman of Laura. The case rattled the town's teacups for years.

Robert Louis Stevenson spent what he called the unhappiest days of his life in a flea-bitten hotel on Bush Street in 1880. But his days were brightened by ferry rides.

Jack London opened "The Sea Wolf" with a bay ferry crash, cribbed from the 1901 crash of the San Rafael and the Sausalito in a heavy fog. London loved the ferries, called them "little old Queen Victorias."

The bay, before man flung his three spans across the dividing waters, was a collection of ferry towns for nearly 100 years.

Before the white man, the bay was crossed by Indians in rafts. The first ferry was operated in 1826 by John Reed, who used a sailboat. The breezes were not amenable. The Indians could paddle faster than he could sail, and ran him out of business.

Eleven years later, Capt. W.A. Richardson, trader, operated two schooners between Sausalito and San Francisco. In 1860, Charles Minturn started a steamboat service for freight and passengers from San Francisco to San Quentin and Lakeville.

In later years, the railroads developed the ferry service to connect with their Marin County trains. In 1907, the great days of the ferry began with the consolidation of earlier ferries into the Northwestern Pacific, which was taken over by SP in 1928.

Remember 1930? SP's fleet of ferryboats then numbered 43. They carried almost 40 million people between San Francisco and the Oakland and Alameda piers.

When the San Leandro goes Wednesday, that is the end.

We are left with the twinges of memory and the prospect of an immobilized Eureka on the sands of Aquatic Park, a gently mocking memento of glory past.

For the others, the long line of river boats that served the Bay Area: "Good night, sweet ladies; good night, good night." {sbox}


This article, excerpted, first appeared in The Chronicle on July 27, 1958.

This article appeared on page N - 45 of the San Francisco Chronicle