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Lake Washington Passenger Steamers
Target One - Elfin.
- Intro - Target 1 - Target 2 - Target 3 -
Location
Target one is located straight out from Houghton (present day Carillon Point) in 125 feet of water.
Chart showing locations of Targets 1 & 2
Target one is 55 feet long and rises approximately 10 feet off the bottom. Based on our research and video documentation, we believe the target is the remains of the passenger steamer Elfin.
Elfin at dock in Kirkland
History.
The small passenger steamer, Elfin, was built at Pontiac in 1891 by E. F. Lee for Captain Frank Curtis. She was 55 feet long with a beam of 13 1/2 feet. When the Elfin was launched in April 1891, the Lake Washington steamers Kirkland and Mary Kraft came just offshore to greet her. On July 4, 1891, the Elfin carried its first passengers. Captain Frank Curtis was the commander, and the crew consisted of his sons, Al Curtis and Walter Curtis, mate and deckhand respectively, and Irving Leake, engineer. The Elfin could run 12 miles per hour, carry 35 passengers, and transport 2 1/2 tons of freight. The Elfin carried passengers and freight between Kirkland, Yarrow Bay and Madison Park. The schedule of six round trips a day started at 7:10 a.m. from Northup’s Landing (renamed Yarrow Bay), Kirkland, and Houghton on the east side of Lake Washington to the foot of Seattle’s Madison Street on the west side of the lake, for a fare of 10 cents each way. During the first year or two of operation, the most passengers she carried in one day was 180. During the first half of 1892 the Elfin averaged 1,070 passengers a month. In 1896, the Elfin was repowered and a pilot house was added to the upper deck. The Elfin burned and sank off Houghton on December 2, 1900. At that time, fire was a major risk for small wooden vessels powered by steam. Their skippers were often tempted to push the boilers in these ships to obtain more speed, which increased the risk of fire
Discovery.
When SCRET divers visited the remains of the Elfin, they found an empty, charred hull, sitting upright on the bottom. As the Elfin burned, her cabins were destroyed, allowing the hull to rise higher in the water. The fire continued to burn as the vessel rose in the water, destroying the interior of the vessel and leaving only an empty hull.
SCRET diver Mark Tourtellot on stern of Elfin 2002
The entire hull of the Elfin is still substantially intact, from bow to stern. This made identification of the vessel relatively easy through comparisons of the hull with historical photographs of the Elfin.
Bow of Elfin - 2002