Coulter -- The San Rafael On the Drydock -- January 14, 2024

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.