Devon turned in the rain and looked up at the white bow of the ferry as she slid against the pilings, and read the green letters at the top. M V Ingrid Solberg. Then his eyes dropped to the small black plate below the name, and he read it aloud with the water running off his orange hood. “Named in honor of Ingrid Solberg. First woman deckhand in the Washington State Ferries, nineteen sixty nine. She saved forty one passengers in the Elliott Bay fog collision.” The commuters at the rail lowered their phones. I am Ingrid Solberg, seventy eight years old, and I sat on the bench with the little silver ship bell pinned to my raincoat.
In 1969, I was twenty one years old, a girl from Ballard with a union card, and the ferry service did not know where to put me. The captain said a woman could not handle a line. I handled it for seven years. In the winter of 1974, a fog came down on Elliott Bay and a freighter struck our ferry in the dark. I stood at the rail with a hand lantern and walked forty one people, one at a time, to the lifeboats. When the service gave me my silver bell pin, I used it for a bookmark, and later I became a school librarian.
The old deckhand who had been coiling a rope, Gus Larsen, seventy years old, came across the dock with his orange rain slicker streaming, and took off his cap in the downpour. “Miss Ingrid,” he said, in a voice thick with feeling. “I was the new kid on the Walla Walla when you came aboard. You taught me to splice a line. I have been waiting forty seven years to say thank you.” The fisherman in the wool cap came over. A woman with an umbrella lowered it so the rain fell on her own shoulders and not on mine. The brass band, waiting for the ceremony, stopped tuning.
A silver ship bell on a raincoat gave one retired librarian the length of a rainy morning to bring a young deckhand back to the ferry in Seattle.
I gave my terms from the bench, with a hand on the arm of Devon. “Young man, I am not going to report you. You are twenty four, and you help old men with canes onto the boat in the morning, and I saw that. You thought you were protecting the benches for those who paid. That is a small mistake. I would ask only three things. Walk me aboard the ferry that bears my name, because I have not been on a deck in forty years. Learn the names of the women who followed me. And ring the ship bell for the departure, since I would like to hear it once more.”
Devon stood in the rain, and tears ran together with the drops on his face. “Mrs. Solberg, my mother is a cleaner at the terminal,” he said. “She told me about a woman who used to work on the boats. I did not believe her.” He wiped his cheek with a wet sleeve. “I told you the bench was for ticketed passengers. I told you that your pin was a tourist trinket. I read the name on this ferry every day for a year and I did not know it belonged to a living woman.” His voice dropped. “I am so sorry.”
But shame will make a young man hasty. Devon suddenly stooped, unpinned the silver bell from my raincoat, and ran along the dock toward the terminal building, saying he had to match the date on the rim to the crew rolls. He ran fifteen paces. Gus Larsen planted his rubber boots in the middle of the planks. The fisherman in the wool cap swung across the other side. And the brass band, to my delight, marched in formation across the walkway behind him, with the tuba bringing up the rear and a snare drum rolling like thunder.
Devon halted on the wet planks, with the pin held tight and the rain beating on his hood, hemmed in by a wall of brass and umbrellas and orange slickers. The tuba player lowered his horn. The old deckhand spoke in a soft, level voice. “Son, I have seen a lot of men drop a line. I have never once seen a man throw it away. Take it back to her.” Devon looked at the little bell in his hand. He turned, walked back to the bench, knelt on one knee in a puddle, and pinned the silver bell onto my coat as carefully as a man pinning a medal.
The consequences were lovely and damp. Devon walked me up the gangway and onto the deck of the ferry that bore my name, and the band played, and the whole crowd of commuters stood at the rail in the rain. He rang the ship bell for departure, three bright strokes that rolled over Puget Sound. The ferry service invited me to ride on opening day of every season. Devon, who is a hard worker, was promoted to deck lead, and he asked me to teach his crew to splice a line.
In the name of my husband Arne, who passed in 2020, I started the Arne Solberg Fund. It pays for maritime apprenticeships and mariner school tuition for young people, especially young women, and for hot meals for retired mariners, in King, Kitsap and Snohomish counties. In the first year we sent fifteen young people to mariner school and delivered four thousand meals. One was a nineteen year old from Ballard whose grandfather was a fisherman, and who tied her first bowline on a dock in the drizzle and held it up like a trophy.
On a drizzly Wednesday in October, I stood at the stern rail of the ferry with my thermos, watching the Seattle skyline fall away into the gray. The wind smelled of salt and diesel and kelp. Devon came and stood beside me with his hands in his orange jacket. For a long time he said nothing, and neither did I. Then, as the island came up out of the mist, he spoke in a low voice. “Mrs. Solberg, when I was twelve, I wanted to work on a ferry.” I looked at the water. “Then you are a lucky young man,” I said, “because you do.”
