SS Asbury Park
SS Asbury Park was a coastal steamship built in 1903-04 by William Cramp and Sons of Philadelphia for the Jersey Central Railroad. With a speed of over 20 knots, she operated during the summer season between the north Jersey Shore and New York City. However, her size and speed made her ill suited to the route, and she lacked manoeuvrability in the congested waters of New York harbour. With the decline in traffic during the First World War she was laid up during the 1917 and 1918 summer seasons.[1]
In August 1918, she was sold to the Monticello Steamship Company of San Francisco, and extensively modified to become the commuter ferry SS City of Sacramento crossing San Francisco Bay between San Francisco and Vallejo. In 1925, she was refitted and more passenger deck space was added, and in 1927 she came under the ownership of Southern Pacific-Golden Gate Ferries following a series of mergers of the ferry companies operating on the Bay.
The opening of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge in 1936 and the Golden Gate Bridge in 1937 put most of the ferry services on San Francisco Bay out of business, and in 1941 the City of Sacramento was sold to the Puget Sound Navigation Company (PSNC) and moved to Puget Sound. There she operated between downtown Seattle and Bremerton, site of the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, one of the United States Navy's main centres for building, maintaining, and repairing warships during the Second World War.
In 1952 the vessel was transferred to the PSNC's Canadian affiliate, Black Ball Ferries, and was refitted with diesel engines and rebuilt to become MV Kahloke. From 1952 to 1962 she operated along with the MV Chinook II crossing the Strait of Georgia between Nanaimo and Horseshoe Bay in West Vancouver.
In November 1961, Black Ball Ferries was purchased by BC Ferries, which had commenced operations in June 1960 as a division of the British Columbia Toll Highways and Bridges Authority, a Crown corporation of the British Columbia provincial government. In 1964, MV Kahloke was renamed MV Langdale Queen and moved to the Horseshoe Bay-Langdale route, where she continued to operate until 1976.[2]
After being retired by BC Ferries, new owners renamed her MV Lady Grace. Under a succession of further changes of ownership, storms and a semi-submersion at her berth damaged her beyond repair. In 1988 her superstructure was removed, and her hull found service as a barge until it was finally scrapped in 2005.[3]
