History | |
---|---|
Name | Malaspina |
Namesake | Malaspina Glacier, Yakutat, Alaska |
Owner | Alaska Marine Highway System |
Port of registry | United States |
Builder | Lockheed Shipbuilding, Seattle, Washington |
Launched | 1963 |
Refit | 1972 |
Homeport | Juneau, Alaska |
Identification |
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General characteristics | |
Class and type | Malaspina-class mainline ferry |
Displacement | 5,552 long tons (5,641 t) |
Length | 408 ft (124 m) |
Beam | 74 ft (23 m) |
Draft | 16 ft 9.96 in (5.1298 m) |
Decks | One vehicle deck |
Ramps | Aft, port, and starboard ro-ro loading |
Installed power | 8,000 hp (5,966 kW) |
Speed | 16.5 knots (30.6 km/h; 19.0 mph) |
Capacity |
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MV Malaspina, colloquially known as the Mal, is a mainline ROPAX ferry and the original Malaspina-class vessel for the Alaska Marine Highway System. Malaspina is named after the Malaspina Glacier, which, in turn, is named after Captain Don Alessandro Malaspina, an Italian navigator and explorer who explored the northwest coast of North America in 1791. Malaspina is nearly identical to her sister ship, MV Matanuska.
Malaspina was designed by Philip F. Spaulding and Associates, constructed in 1963 at the Lockheed Shipbuilding yards in Seattle, Washington, and elongated in 1972 at the Willamette Iron and Steel Company in Portland, Oregon. As a mainline ferry, she serves the larger of the Inside Passage communities, such as Ketchikan, Petersburg, and Sitka, but her route spans the entirety of the Inside Passage, beginning runs in either Bellingham, Washington, or Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada, and running to the northernmost Alaskan Panhandle community of Skagway. Since the late 1990s, Malaspina has operated mostly during the summers as a "dayboat" in the upper Lynn Canal, making daily round trips between Juneau and Skagway with stops in Haines.
Malaspina's amenities include a hot-food cafeteria, a solarium, forward, aft, movie, and business lounges, 54 four-berth cabins, and 29 two-berth cabins. She formerly had a gift shop, but it was closed in 2014 as a cost-saving measure. [1]
Southeast Alaska, colloquially referred to as the Alaska(n) Panhandle, is the southeastern portion of the U.S. state of Alaska, bordered to the east and north by the northern half of the Canadian province of British Columbia. The majority of Southeast Alaska's area is part of the Tongass National Forest, the United States' largest national forest. In many places, the international border runs along the crest of the Boundary Ranges of the Coast Mountains. The region is noted for its scenery and mild, rainy climate.
The Inside Passage is a coastal route for ships and boats along a network of passages which weave through the islands on the Pacific Northwest coast of the North American Fjordland. The route extends from southeastern Alaska in the United States, through western British Columbia in Canada, to northwestern Washington state in the United States. Ships using the route can avoid some of the bad weather in the open ocean and may visit some of the many isolated communities along the route. The Inside Passage is heavily travelled by cruise ships, freighters, tugs with tows, fishing craft, pleasure craft, and ships of the Alaska Marine Highway, BC Ferries, and Washington State Ferries systems. Coast Guard vessels of both Canada and the United States patrol and transit in the Passage.
The Chilkoot Trail is a 33-mile (53 km) trail through the Coast Mountains that leads from Dyea, Alaska, in the United States, to Bennett, British Columbia, in Canada. It was a major access route from the coast to Yukon goldfields in the late 1890s. The trail became obsolete in 1899 when a railway was built from Dyea's neighbor port Skagway along the parallel White Pass trail.
The Alaska Marine Highway (AMH) or the Alaska Marine Highway System (AMHS) is a ferry service operated by the U.S. state of Alaska. It has its headquarters in Ketchikan, Alaska.
Lynn Canal is an inlet into the mainland of southeast Alaska.
This article discusses transportation in the U.S. state of Alaska.
M/V Taku is a Malaspina-class mainline vessel built for the Alaska Marine Highway System. The ship has been retired and was sold to a Dubai-based company for $171,000. The owner sought to sell the ferry internationally, and was unsuccessful, and it was last seen beached in Alang, India, to be scrapped.
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MV Queen of Prince Rupert was a roll-on/roll-off (RORO) ferry operated by BC Ferries that provided the main surface transport link between the Queen Charlotte Islands and mainland British Columbia, connecting Skidegate with Prince Rupert across the Hecate Strait. The vessel also ran on the Prince Rupert–Port Hardy Inside Passage route during the low season.
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