Ferry Service
The Santa Fe maintained and operated a fleet of three passenger ferry boats (the San Pablo, the San Pedro, and the Ocean Wave) that connected Richmond, California with San Francisco by water. The ships traveled the eight miles between the San Francisco Ferry Terminal and the railroad's Point Richmond terminal across San Francisco Bay. The service was originally established as a continuation of the company's named passenger train runs such as the Angel and the Saint. The larger two ships (the San Pablo and the San Pedro) carried Fred Harvey Company dining facilities.
The rival Southern Pacific Railroad owned the world's largest ferry fleet (which was subsidized by other railroad activities), at its peak carrying 40 million passengers and 60 million vehicles annually aboard 43 vessels. Santa Fe discontinued ferry service in 1933 due to the effects of the Great Depression and routed their trains to Southern Pacific's ferry terminal in Oakland. The San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge opened in 1936, initiated a slow decline in demand for SP's ferry service, which was eventually discontinued circa 1958; starting in 1938, Santa Fe passenger trains terminated near San Pablo Avenue in Oakland/Emeryville, with passengers for San Francisco boarding buses that used the new bridge. See also Ferries of San Francisco Bay.
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Famous quotes containing the words ferry and/or service:
“And my eyes are blue;
So ferry me across the water,
Do, boatman, do!”
“Step into my ferry-boat,
Be they black or blue,”
—Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830–1894)
“We too are ashes as we watch and hear
The psalm, the sorrow, and the simple praise
Of one whose promised thoughts of other days
Were such as ours, but now wholly destroyed,
The service record of his youth wiped out,
His dream dispersed by shot, must disappear.”
—Karl Shapiro (b. 1913)