Just a few years ago, there were still quite a few ferryboats around the Sound that were not purpose-built for Washington. This made things more colorful for the observer than now where there’s a family resemblance between most of the vessels. Some days the Edmonds-Kingston route resembled the San Francisco Bay scene before the Golden Gate and San Francisco-Oakland Bay bridges were opened because so many of the vessels running had been brought north by the Black Ball Line to serve additional years on Puget Sound.

In those days one aficionado called the allocation of sister ships to the same route “festivals.” To the ordinary traveler this wouldn’t have meant a thing, but to dedicated ferry nuts they were special occasions.

I can’t find the exact date but in the very early 1970s on a Saturday morning, Tillikum was called away from Kingston to run as a relief vessel at Seattle-Winslow. Illahee, a steel electric, moved up to first spot, and all three of the old wooden electrics were put on the route to assist. These vessels were originally built for the Golden Gate Ferry Company Ltd on San Francisco Bay and were later part of the Southern Pacific Golden Gate fleet before joining Puget Sound Navigation Company’s Black Ball flotilla on the Sound. Chetzemoka had been Golden Poppy, Kehloken had been the Golden State, and the Klanhanie had been Golden Age. Chetzemoka was named after an Indian chief, Kehloken means “swan” and Klanhanie means “great out-of-doors” in Chinook jargon. ILLAHEE herself had been Lake Tahoe. So it was an interesting morning with four vessels hauling capacity midsummer crowds of weekenders to the peninsula.

The wooden electrics were built on the cheap in the late 1920s knowing that they would only run a few years before the bridges opened. Their hulls were sheathed with copper but otherwise metal was scarce on them. Kehloken had an unfortunate appearance called a hog. Her bow and stern sagged below her midships level, creating an ugly reverse sheer like a worn-out sternwheeler. She also had no outdoor passenger space, and her lights dimmed and brightened constantly like a haunted ghost ship. In spite of all this these quirks, ships lasted about 45 years and provided economical service all the way from the San Juans to Vashon Island. At times they even showed up on long runs like Edmonds-Port Townsend and Seattle-Bremerton or provided supplementary service from Anacortes. They were getting very shabby by the time they were retired in 1972 and 1973, but they were an economical way to shorten lines at busy times. Typically one or two were sent to different routes for summer extra service, but they held another festival at Edmonds-Kingston on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend, May 26, 1972, coming on line at 90-minute intervals throughout the busy afternoon – Chetzie at 1 p.m., Klanhanie at 2:30 p.m. and Kehloken at 4 p.m., again to assist Illahee while Tillikum was unavailable.

I remember taking Klahanie over to Kingston to vote while I was a student at the University of Washington. Captain Bruce Michaelsen was then a rookie deckhand on his dad’s crew and had to swab the passenger cabin for eight hours while the autumn rain poured through the leaky overheads without a break all day.

Kehloken went up in an arsonist’s flames in 1975 at Houghton at the old shipyard in what is now Kirkland on Lake Washington. Her hulk was then sunk at Possession Point. Chetzemoka sank off the Washington coast in 1977 on her way back to her original home port. Klahanie burned up on the Duwamish in 1990, and her hull was broken up in 1998.

All three wooden electrics ran at Kingston until near the end of their careers with Chetzemoka making her swan song as No. 3 Edmonds-Kingston vessel on Friday, September 28, 1973. It was the end of an era.

The only second-hand vessel the state still operates is Rhododendron, originally Gov. Herbert R. O’Conor from Chesapeake Bay. She now runs from Point Defiance to Tahlequah, but after the Hood Canal bridge opened in 1961 she gave a try as the extra boat at Edmonds-Kingston. She was so slow it didn’t work out very well.

While the old ferries were fun, our jumbo ferries are far better suited to traffic demands and much more comfortable than our old friends, the wooden electrics.