Retired and notorious ferry Elwha finds a port in Everett

When the Elwha was taken out of service by Washington State Ferries in 2019, a collective sigh of relief could surely be heard across Puget Sound.

The super-class ferry, which had space for 2,000 passengers and 144 cars, was built in 1968, and had a bit of attitude, if that’s possible for a steel machine.

It tore up ferry docks. It rammed rocks. Finally, it rusted out and gave up the ghost.

Destined for a scrap heap in Ecuador just last year, the retired state ferry is now planned to be a floating office and warehouse for Everett Ship Repair, which purchased the boat for $100,000 and had it towed to its new home Thursday morning.

“The Elwha has been part of Washington State Ferry history since 1968, and we’re excited to see one of our ferries with so much history and memories for millions of passengers is being repurposed locally,” WSF chief Steve Nevey said in a statement. “It won’t be the Elwha we’ve all come to know and appreciate but I’m confident it’s in good hands with a local shipyard.”

Gavin Higgins, the shipyard’s CEO, said it will take a couple of weeks to get the boat hooked up to water, electricity, sewage lines and “most importantly, the heating system.”

When complete, it will be “a hub, a center for our operation” of 100 employees, with offices, as well common areas and lockers for the company’s journeymen workers. Currently, the company is spread out among trailers.

Higgins – who also runs Nichols Brothers Boat Builders, the only Washington-based company interested in building the next fleet of electric-powered ferries – said he was pleased the boat was staying whole, at his local shipyard.

“Here we get to repurpose something,” he said. “The noose was around its neck.”

The state ferry system has worked with the shipyard and its dry dock since 2020, most notably for repairs to the Cathlamet, which crashed into pilings near the Fauntleroy dock in West Seattle in July 2022, sustaining heavy damage. But this is the first time a ferry has gone there to stay.

The Elwha nearly made it out of the Salish Sea in August. Nelson Armas, of Ecuador, paid $200,000 for it and the Klahowya and planned to tow them to South America where the steel company Adelca would cut them up, and melt them down to reuse their steel.

But the tow failed, the South American crew was detained by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents due to lapsed work visas and, following allegations that the crew was mistreated, the state canceled the sale.

At the time, it seemed the Elwha had found one last curse to cast, to add to its annals of atrocities.

Its life began quietly, as it served the Seattle-Bainbridge route and acted as a backup vessel.

In the 1980s, it was assigned to the interisland route connecting Anacortes to Lopez, Shaw, Orcas and San Juan Islands, where the boat began to earn its reputation as the “most notorious” vessel in the fleet, according to Evergreenfleet, a website tracking local ferry history.

On Oct. 2, 1983, the Elwha had just departed Anacortes, helmed by Capt. Billy Fittro, a veteran pilot with more than three decades of experience.

After a stop at Lopez, he steered the 382-foot Elwha off course so Peggy Warrack, a passenger he’d invited upstairs, could see her house at Grindstone Harbor. Fittro didn’t the see the shallow reef, which tore into the boat’s hull.

A failed steering component was blamed at first. But within a week, the truth was out and Fittro lost his job. So did WSF’s chief.

The collision caused $250,000 damage to the Elwha, but was music to the ears of some islanders. The Island City Jazz Band made the front page of The Seattle Times on Nov. 9, 1983, for its Dixieland “toe-tapping spoof” of the incident, called “Elwha on the Rocks.”

In Friday Harbor, The Electric Company tavern concocted a new drink called the Elwha, made of equal parts Myers’s Rum Cream liqueur and Myers’s Rum.

Within a decade, the reef that Fittro missed had a new name as well, thanks to the Washington State Committee on Geographic Names, which made the official change to Elwha Rock.

Already infamous, the Elwha had more life – and misdeeds – left in it.

In December 1990, as hurricane-force winds raced through Puget Sound, the Elwha broke free of its moorings and slammed, again and again, into a concrete pier, pulling it out of service for a year as repairs were made.

In September 1999, a computer malfunction led the Elwha, laden with 158 passengers and 37 cars, to ram into the Orcas Island dock. Witnesses described hearing the low sound of a foghorn, and splintering cracks of the dock’s pilings.

The big old boat kept sailing. Beginning in 2010, it plied international waters between Anacortes and Sydney, B.C. But the top-heavy vessel was unstable in the violent, autumn waters of the Haro Strait and was taken off the route.

In 2019, while in dry dock on Lake Union, inspectors found extensive steel corrosion estimated to cost $25 million to repair. Another $10 million was needed to fix the boat’s auto deck, and the Legislature decided not to repair the vessel.

The Elwha was officially retired on July 28, 2019. Two of its sister boats – the super-class vessels Kaleetan and Yakima – are the same age, and remain in service.

Two other out-of-commission boats, the Klahowya and Hyak, remain in WSF’s hands, at Eagle Harbor Maintenance Facility on Bainbridge Island and at the Kingston dock, respectively. They’re still for sale.

So the Elwha’s days as public transit are done. But with its reprieve to float on Puget Sound waters for a bit longer, who knows what more damage it can do.