How Puget Sound's Last Pirate Gave Us a Creaking, Sinking Ferry System

That was Capt. Alexander Peabody (1895–1980), a severe, inflexible autocrat equally resented by his unions and his customers. Inheriting a family business with roots dating back to 1817, he ruthlessly consolidated ferry lines during the 1930s, profited during the booming World War II years, then sold an overburdened, rickety franchise-in-decline to the state, which expected to replace it soon thereafter with a cross-Sound bridge.

Onto us, the taxpayers, he dumped a leaky, old fleet in need of replacement. Onto us he dumped artificially low, war-regulated fares that couldn't be maintained. Onto us he dumped postwar expectations of freedom, car-based mobility, and suburban sprawl—that we should be able to travel wherever we want, whenever we want, for little more than the price of gasoline.

Like Noah Cross in Chinatown or Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood, Peabody made his fortune feeding our greed. Then he left the table just when our transportation lust led to an audacious bridge plan that would greatly devalue his franchise. We never got the bridges, and we're still stuck with the ferries. Some bargain.

If Peabody wasn't a swindler, he was a briny genius with perfect timing. He sold us a problem—for all of $5 million!—that has since cost hundreds of millions to maintain. And now, as the latest governor to inherit this perennially unhappy, mismanaged, gas-tax-subsidized system proposes to spend $100 million on three new boats, Peabody can be heard laughing from the grave.

The Black Ball Line

We always want to believe that robber barons come from someplace else, preferably back East or overseas, with an accent, monocle, or eye patch. But like Bill Gates, Alexander Peabody was born into a local family of good standing. A fourth-generation mariner, he learned the ropes under his father, Charles Peabody, who established the Puget Sound Navigation Company in 1897. Young Alexander grew up on Capitol Hill, studied at Cornell, and later served as a seaman during World War I before returning home to the family fleet.

During the early 1920s, the Peabodys' company basically hauled freight and people, not vehicles. (That distinction would later prove critical to its business model.) Puget Sound was crawling with boats under every flag, from small "coasters" delivering commuters and farmers to Vashon and Bainbridge islands to large steamships bound for Vancouver. Big corporations—especially the railroads—owned much of the waterfront. With its base at the Colman Dock, the Peabody ferry system was a profitable, well-run business, spilling foot passengers onto downtown streets where the first private automobiles were beginning to appear.

Assuming leadership of the company, owned by the family and outside shareholders, in 1928, Alexander Peabody quickly availed himself of the old and new. He dusted off the family flag from the Black Ball Line, which was first flown on the Atlantic during the early 1800s, before the family ventured to the Pacific, Canadian waters, and finally Puget Sound. At the same time, he began converting some boats to handle car traffic by ripping off the superstructure above the hull, then adding flat decking to park Model Ts and Model As. (When cars later got bigger, so, too, did the ferries.) Then a new raised cabin was built above that—essentially the same design employed today.

At the time, Capt. Peabody—as he was universally known—faced the competition of two other ferry companies. But as a 1959 university study of his business would later note, he was a fearsome competitor:

He was, and is, a large-framed man with a forceful bass voice and a strong personality. Impatient with formalities, Peabody had a deep dedication to the free enterprise system. Many Seattleites who knew him saw in Peabody, with his homburg, his prominent if not meticulously maintained moustache, his expensive cigars, and his individualism, some resemblance to the captains of industry of earlier days.

By 1936, he had a monopoly on Puget Sound, as rivals succumbed to labor woes and even a few sinkings. Critically, he was able to expand his fleet even during the Depression with the cut-rate purchase of 17 used car ferries.