secrets

She floats motionless in Eagle Harbor, just a few feet from the rhythmic comings and goings of the Bainbridge Island ferries. Her car decks are empty, but long-abandoned tables and chairs are visible through the windows upstairs. Her name, painted over years ago, is tougher to see. If you look closely, though, you can just make it out. Elwha.

The Elwha was born in 1967, the last of the Super Class ferries. (The Kaleetan and the Yakima are her only siblings still in service.) She spent an uneventful youth plying the Seattle-Bainbridge route, serving as a maintenance relief vessel and carrying travelers to the San Juans. In 1983, the Elwha celebrated her 16th birthday. That was the year she went berserk.

That October, Captain Billy Fittro was piloting the Elwha through the San Juan Islands while simultaneously entertaining a female passenger in the wheelhouse. Ever accommodating, Fittro decided to detour the ferry and its 100 other passengers to give his guest a view of her waterfront home. Unfortunately, the side trip took the Elwha over a reef near Orcas Island, where she ran aground. The collision caused $250,000 in damage and led to the dismissal of Fittro along with ferry chief Nick Tracy.

The Elwha returned to service with a seemingly insatiable appetite for mayhem. Over the ensuing years she left a path of destruction in her wake, running over submerged obstacles, bashing into ferry docks and causing tens of millions of dollars of damage.

Finally, her wild life caught up with her. She was permanently retired in 2019 with terminal steel corrosion and eventually found her way to Eagle Harbor. WSF Public Information Officer Ian Sterling said that a deal to sell the Elwha for scrap is pending and that she could be towed away as soon as the next few months.

BY GEORGE SOLTES