The Ferry Crossing

The crossing from Bremerton to Seattle takes one hour. It covers thirteen and a half nautical miles across open Puget Sound, through Rich Passage where the water narrows and the current runs, and then across the broader Sound to the downtown terminal. On a clear day, you can watch the Olympic Mountains fade behind you and the Space Needle grow ahead. On a gray day, which is most days, you sit in the ferry's heated lounge with a cup of coffee and watch the water pass.

Washington State Ferries took over this route on June first, nineteen fifty-one, when the state purchased the private Black Ball Line that had been running it. Before the state system, before the Black Ball Line, the Sound was served by the Mosquito Fleet: a swarm of small private steam vessels connecting dozens of waterfront communities that had no other reliable connection to the outside world. Bremerton, before the automobile era and the roads that followed, was accessible primarily by water.

The ferry was not always a commuter amenity. For most of Bremerton's history, it was the only practical way in or out. The shipyard workers who flooded the city during the Second World War crossed on it. The Navy used surplus landing ships to supplement the regular runs when the volume became too great for the ferries to handle.

Today the route carries more than one and a quarter million riders a year. Many are Bremerton residents who work in Seattle, carrying the familiar economics of a ferry-dependent community: longer commutes traded for lower housing costs. The calculation has not changed much since William Bremer built a city around a naval yard and hoped the workers would keep coming.