Passing of the Big Transfer Boat
After service of more than a quarter of a century the steamer Tacoma to be driven off the Columbia by the march of improvement

The Sunday Oregonian
July 26, 1908
By Mrs. J. A. Hyde

With the completion of the bridge at Vancouver in June and the one across the Willamette at an early date will go the Northern Pacific's transfer boat Tacoma at Kalama, at least as far as transferring freight and passengers across the Columbia is concerned. Time and modern methods eliminate many things but none hardly more imposing, useful and majestic than this transfer boat, and yet the building of these two great bridges at Vancouver and St. John renders her a useless thing to be cast aside as an impediment to modern progress.

Built and put into commission more than a quarter of a century ago she has faithfully responded to the will of man for all these years, never hindered by some outside agency.
Day after day and night after night has this beautiful carrier of human freight made her trips, the traffic ever increasing, till during the Lewis and Clark Fair her capacity was tested to the utmost. Not waiting on either side of the river a minute over the actual time it took to unload the trains, her three crews were kept busy one train over and bringing another back.

The time consumed in making this trip of two miles was cut down to the limit and where, heretofore, 20 minutes had been consumed to cross the Columbia, but ten were now used. A freight or passenger was always waiting for a chance to cross and not many minutes was the boat idle from the opening to the closing of the fair. To the citizens of Kalama she is a thing of life, a factor entering into the daily routine of the town. 

The little city has always known her and many of the younger generation were born and reared in hearing of its whistle. They know no more familiar sight than her smokestacks looming up at the slip of her steaming across the Columbia, and when the first faint intimation was breathed that two great bridges were to be built that would carry traffic 40 miles to the south and that time had come when the transfer would be no more, there were none to believe; it could not be. It was impossible that a thing that had cost so much and had spent on it so much for repairs, could be given over for the sake of cutting down the time to Portland some 20 minutes.

But time went on and rumors were rife. Although but rumors they had an ominous sound to those interested in the welfare of Kalama, and it was put down by every inhabitant of the city that it was a dream never to be realized. The river was too wide, too deep and too swift. The government even would not allow it and no franchise could be had for a right of way across. The interest on the money used to build the bridges would keep the transfer in repair and pay all expenses for years to come. 

But all this argument was useless. The cutting of 20 minutes from Seattle to Portland was a great thing, and the hauling of wheat over the North Bank, over these bridges into Portland was greater, and while traffic was increasing by leaps and bounds and the freight handled from the Inland Empire alone was so great that the transfer would, in a few years, be wholly inadequate.

Finally huge timbers were being shipped through Kalama for Vancouver. Great rocks, all of uniform size, filled flat cars, all speeding to the city to the south. Then the first iron structural work of the bridge passed by and Kalama began to realize. Some, too, had been to Vancouver and came back saying that work had actually begun on the bridge. Not it could not be; and not till the third pier was well under way did the citizens of the little town believe that is was so. 

Then they woke to the realization that the transfer was doomed, a thing that was a part of their daily life, of their very sustenance was to wrested from them as a result of the onrushing tide of improvement and advancement, and this realization spurred the citizens of the place to action, that something had to be done to take the place of this great hulk of machinery that supported half the people in town. They rose to the occasion and how well they met this obligation was a credit to the place; but that is another story. Be it said however, that other industries will spring up that will more than compensate the loss of the ferry.

But two captains have had charge of the transfer since it was put into commission. Captain Gore was its first master and served as such more than 20 years. He died just before the Lewis and Clark Fair, the new captain, Thomas Popham, taking charge just as the heavy travel began to the fair in 1906. This was the heaviest business done during the lifetime of the boat.

As many as 40 trains were handled a day. The passenger trains were run in two sections consisting of 12 cars each, running about one-half hour apart. This gave the ferry time to cross with the first section and return before the second section arrived. This was so planned that trains leaving Portland arrived at Goble, about the time the Eastern trains arrived at Kalama, so that the ferry after landing the first section of the eastern train, brought back the first section of the Portland train, thus loading four trains of 12 cars each in the space of one hour, a total of 24 trains every 24 hours and a total of some 15,000 passengers. 

Besides the passenger trains there were the freight trains and fruit express which made up a total of 40 trains a day amounting to 550 cars handled in a single day. In all this time no accidents of any kind occurred, and no train was delayed beyond the actual time it took to cross the river. During the flood of 1894, when the track between Portland and Goble was inundated, a train was put temporarily on the transfer and trips were made between Kelso and Portland, the passengers being transferred to the train on board the ferry and then again to the trains at either end of the route, the distance being 52 miles between the two stations.

The advent of the transfer daily at its dock in Portland brought out the people by the hundreds to view the strange sight. No accidents occurred during this time, although on June 2, 1894, a cyclonic wind hit Portland just as the transfer was due to leave. The hundreds that were watching the boat as it swung from her moorings and headed down stream expected to see her driven against the bridge but Captain Gore took her safely through, although the wind was blowing a gale never before experienced in Portland. These trips continued during all the flooded period which lasted four weeks, when the train was taken off and the boat, she resumed her old course between Kalama and Goble none the worse for her daily trips amounting to over 100 miles a day.

Although no accidents of a serious nature have ever happened to the boat itself, there have occurred accidents of different kinds both freight and passenger trains while stationed on it. Several years ago one engine of a freight train was shoved off the ferry into the river, but no one was hurt. Several months later another engine was shoved off in like manner, the fireman who was supposed to be feeding the fire at the time, going off with it. A great scar on the forehead showed he was probably killed before falling into the river. 

The engine was afterward recovered. Boxcars have been pushed off on one or two occasions, but the death of the fireman was the most serious accident ever occurring on the Transfer. Captain Popham has three bright children and when he took command of the ship he was obliged to spend all his time aboard. He therefore moved his family onto the vessel, giving up a neat home on the hill for one on the water. The children thus exchanged a playground of grass and gravel for one of comparatively cramped quarters on the ferry, where hard steel rails, three tracks of them, drew down the hot sun in summer and the damp blasts of winter.

There are not many children that live in two different states continuously as these three do. They attend school on the Washington side, but when at home their time is equally divided between two great states. They may begin their dinner in Washington and finish in Oregon. They may go to bed in Washington and cross over several times before they awaken. If the school bell rings in Washington and the ferry is in Oregon, 10 chances to 1 they will be late, but provision is made for this and they are not counted tardy.

To look at the vessel as it lies at the slip she appears a dingy hulk of broad dimensions and almost 400 feet in length. One would not imagine she held anything but machinery, but there is a kitchen, a dining room where hundreds are fed every week, and several living rooms and quarters for the men employed on the boat. The Captains quarters are spacious, well lighted and catch the fresh breeze from the river. These cozy rooms are in direct contrast to the rest of the boat, which is built for utility and usage of the hardest kind, and only thin partitions separate the cold outside from the cozy interiors.

To most housekeepers the larder is the most interesting of all on the boat. One entire side from floor to ceiling is given up to canned goods, fruits canned on the boat in two quart glass jars, and from fruits bought of the farmers living nearby. Hams by the dozen. Sugar and beans by the sack, crates of eggs and lard by the barrel shows there is always a plenty at hand as is also everything else in the line of cooking and housekeeping.

Thomas Popham, master of the Tacoma, was born in Ireland. He came to the coast in 1873 and lived awhile at Coos Bay. He has spent the past 30 years on the Columbia on various vessels being on the Tacoma 17 years. He is having built a substantial residence at 13th and Hancock Streets in Portland and will go there when his services on the Transfer are no longer is needed. The crew of the Tacoma consists of 23 men. There are 4 engineers and 5 firemen; master mate, first and second officers and 11 deck hands. It is reported the Transfer will be sent to the Puget Sound in August.