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| San Francisco Call, 14-March-1895 |
North Pacific Coast ferry San Rafael is shown in the drydock. She sank on 30-November-1901 when she was rammed by ferry Sausalito on a foggy day.
William A Coulter did many maritime drawings for the San Francisco Call. Click on the image to see a larger version.
SAN RAFAEL DRYDOCKED
A Thing of Graceful Line and
a Model of Marine Beauty
Is She.
Her Trial Trip Was Three
Thousand Miles on a
Freightcar.
For over a dezen years the San Francisco bay people have observed a graceful
white shape move out from its place at the Union ferry landing and slip swift
and swan-like away over the water, passing from view before the wakes from her twin
wheels had dissolved back to tranquillity again.
Only the latest arrival would fail to pick the fleet North Pacific Coast Railroad
steamer San Rafael from her floating contemporaries even before she picked herself
so speedily from their company, so well is she known as the greyhound and prettiest
thing on the bay. But it is on the drydock, when she is lifted clear from the
water, that her beauteous model can best be seen and fully appreciated.
Starting from the stem, the lines fall clear away, gradually diverging till they
pass over the noble swell amidships to come together again at the sternpost.
Then is learned the secret of the speed that makes this $150,000 boat the racer of
the bay craft.
The San Rafael is a perfect model of the old steamer Sausalito, burned at San
Quentin twelve or fourteen years ago. They were constructed in New York by
Fletcher & Harrison, the noted boat-builders, at an individual cost of $150,000, and
were each 205.5 feet in length, 32 feet beam and 9.8 feet deep. The tonnage of the
vessels was about 400, and the San Rafael carries a single-beam engine of 750
horsepower, with 50-inch cylinder and 11-foot stroke.
The twin steamers literally took their trial trips -- though at different periods -- on
a freight train, being brought in sections overland from New York, put together and
launched here.
Her master is Captain John T. McKenzie, one of the oldest steamboat men
on the coast, and in his hands this marine beauty and bay racer is the matchless
craft her designers intended.
