Tag Archives: ferryboats

Places

Crossing the Danube at night

Selected photos taken at the Galati ferryboat crossing over the Danube River, in Romania. The atmosphere, the lights, the machinery, it all makes it look and feel like an otherworldly experience — a sensation which is all the more pressing if you’ve just been driving all day and you are exhausted.

While it’s interesting to ride on ferryboats every once in a while, it’s not fun to arrive at the crossing point and to find out they’ve closed for the night, or to pay ever-increasing fees so you can cross. This is not a comment on the Galati ferryboat crossing in particular, but a general observation on the nature of the ferryboat business. If you want reliable travel, you need a bridge, period. You may not be able to stop and take in the sights and sounds of the river, but you’ll get home on time.

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Thoughts

Another point of view about ferryboats

Nowadays, people think a ferry is a romantic way to get over a river, but in the 1930s, during the Great Depression, people used to think otherwise.

A ferry ride

A ferry ride

For a great look back in time, watch “Bridge Ahoy“, a Popeye cartoon released on May 1, 1936. In it, Bluto overcharges passengers for rides on his ferry, so Popeye, Olive and Wimpy decide to build a bridge and let people cross the river for free.

You see, when you’re the only way to get across a river, you’ve got a monopoly. You control the market and set your own price. Before monopoly laws, it’s probably what happened with ferryboats, and it didn’t sit well with the cash-strapped folks of the mid-1930s. If we had only ferryboats to get across rivers nowadays, we’d no doubt share the same feelings.

Things worked out in the cartoon and the three delivered a bridge made to order. Everyone was happy except Bluto, the ferryboat owner, which was as expected.

Of course, if we carry this solution over to modern times, it breaks down right away. You see, we get charged to go over bridges nowadays. Kind of makes the point of building a bridge to avoid ferry tolls moot, doesn’t it?

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