A ferry glides above the surface of Puget Sound, shuttling commuters in half the time it takes the state’s massive car-bearing vessels to ply the same waters.
Sounds pretty futuristic. Tell that to Boeing, which did it in the 1970s and ’80s.
For a little more than a decade, the local aerospace giant brought its jet airplane technology to the commercial passenger boat market, building dozens of hydrofoil ferries used around the world.
The boats — called the 929 Jetfoils — were met locally not just by state ferry officials’ hopes of wider use, but by “hissing island residents” who feared the speedy boats would bring too many people to their quiet redoubts.
It began in 1959, when the company started researching and developing hydrofoil technology.
By 1967, the technology was proven with the Tucumcari, a 75-foot patrol gunboat hydrofoil that the Navy used in the Vietnam War.
The advanced technology of Tucumcari convinced Boeing that its hydrofoil innovations could help deal with “population growth, traffic congestion and pollution” in the world’s major cities, according to a 1971 Seattle Times interview with William Schultz, who led the company’s hydrofoil division.
With that, the Jetfoil was born.
In 1973, the company had sold 10 Jetfoils to four buyers, and promised locally that its boat could carry 190 passengers between downtown Seattle and Bremerton in 18 minutes for 80 cents.
By 1977, Jetfoils were in commercial service in Hong Kong, Venezuela, Hawaii and Japan. Still more were providing demonstration runs between Norway and Scotland, London and Belgium, Dublin and Liverpool and among the Canary Islands.
Locally, the boats weren’t embraced.
In September 1977, the state Toll Bridge Authority, which ran the ferry system at the time, proposed buying two Jetfoils for $28 million, with 80% of the cost covered by the federal government, and using them to connect Vashon Island with downtown Seattle.
The plan was greeted by more “hissing.” A Vashon resident, fearing the convenience would overrun the island, said, “I have a three-word question: Who needs it?”
The next year, a seven-week trial run of the Jetfoil Flying Princess II between downtown Seattle and the Kitsap Peninsula, paid for by the state, was almost canceled when not enough people rode it.
The Flying Princess II was eventually used to connect Seattle with Victoria and Vancouver in British Columbia; the Jetfoils never took hold in Seattle.
Despite tepid local interest, the global market was strong in 1980, said Robert Bateman, who led Boeing’s marine division. Bateman anticipated $750 million in Jetfoil sales in the 1980s. At the time, 26 boats had been ordered — for commercial and military use — of which 11 had yet to be built.
In 1985, Boeing exited the hydrofoil business and sold the license to build its hydrofoils to Japan’s Kawasaki Heavy Industries. Kawasaki built the most recent Jetfoil — called the Seven Island Yui — in 2020, the first to be manufactured in 25 years.
In all, Boeing built eight hydrofoils for the military, and 28 passenger ferries.
