Gangways have retracted, ropes cast off and the propellers now churn. You’re on deck to fully enjoy sailaway, but what can be seen on shore as you glide from the docks?
Sitting pretty on Puget Sound, Seattle has a wealth of shoreside sights, many of which are not immediately obvious but nonetheless contain centuries of stories or fascinating facts. Here’s the highlights.
An Urban Rearview
If your cruise departs from downtown Bell Street Cruise Terminal (aka Pier 66), you’ll immediately get a view of famous Pike Place Market. A little way along is award-winning Olympic Sculpture Park. Look closely and you can see artworks such as Alexander Calder’s vast red Eagle. Much harder to miss is the Pier 86 Grain Terminal, where dozens of 160-foot-high silos store grain carried by train from across the continent.
We’re now at Smith Cove Cruise Terminal (aka Pier 91) from where your cruise may depart and where Seattle first started shipping grain 100 years ago. Look beyond the piers to the grand Queen Anne neighborhood, one of the city’s most salubrious areas and home to fictional psychologist Frasier Crane. You can’t miss the Space Needle, built for the 1962 World’s Fair. Those elevators you can see are traveling at just over 9 mph.
Leafy Queen Anne blends with equally verdant (and affluent) Magnolia, home to 534-acre Discovery Park, where visitors enjoy nature trails and sweeping vistas (you’ll know you’re sailing past the park when you spot the tree-topped bluffs). At the park’s tip you’ll pass the squat white West Point Lighthouse which began shining its powerful light — reaching 18 miles over the water — in 1881.
Ferries and Farther
So far, we’ve focused on all the action on the starboard side, but there are also sights to be seen to port. Cast your eyes in that direction as you sail beside Discovery Park and you’ll be looking at Bainbridge Island, linked to Seattle by white-hulled Washington State Ferries. Bainbridge Island is Suquamish land and the ferries land at the point where this tribe once had a village called Eagle Harbor. In 1792, at the southern end of the island, Captain Vancouver anchored his ship while surveying Puget Sound. Towards the island’s north are the formal gardens and ornamental trees of Bloedel Reserve.
On a clear day you can’t miss the Olympic Mountains in the distance behind Bainbridge Island. Mount Olympus is, at 7,980 feet, the range’s tallest. The mountains are within Olympic National Park where an average 12 feet of rain falls annually — one of the rainiest places in the lower 48. Off the ship’s stern is another snowy peak: Mount Rainier. Although it’s about 60 miles away, this volcano rises 14,410 feet above sea level, so it’s clearly visible if the weather is favorable.
Back to starboard and we’ve now rounded Discovery Park to see the entrance of a waterway. This is the Lake Washington Ship Canal, connecting ocean to lake. The Army Corps of Engineers completed the canal in 1917 and still operates Ballard Locks — among the busiest in the US — today. This waterway is home to the North Pacific fishing fleet’s 400 ships. Stars of.…
By Olly Beckett
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