The main deck also featured a bar—located near the engine—toilets and a restaurant. Joinery work throughout the vessel was by Robert Bragg. Ukiah was powered by a single-cylinder vertical beam steam engine with a bore of and stroke of , built by the Fulton Iron Works of San Francisco. The NRHP states that the ship was originally fitted with four direct flue return tube boilers; again, however, contemporaneous newspaper reports differ, stating that steam was originally supplied by two steel boilers; these had a length of and shell of , and operated at a pressure of . Ukiahs paddlewheels were in diameter, and each fitted with 24 buckets having a width of . The ship was launched in San Francisco Bay on Saturday, May 17, 1890, at 10:40 pm, witnessed by a crowd of about 800 people, many of whom had arrived by a special train from San Rafael. Service history Early service The ship originally carried people between San Francisco and Tiburon during the day and hauled railroad freight cars at night. On April 16, 1907 she sank at the foot of East Street, San Francisco due to errors in handling the off loading of railroad cars. She was later raised. In 1907, Ukiah was re-routed to the Sausalito–San Francisco Ferry Building route by its new owners, Northwestern Pacific Railroad. As automobiles became more common, motorists wanted to "drive across the bay". Since there were no bridges on San Francisco Bay at the time, Ukiah was able to meet this demand via a refitted lower deck designed to handle vehicles. The deck above (also enclosed) was expanded for passengers. World War I and subsequent rebuild During World War I, Ukiah carried munition-filled rail cars for the war effort. Overloading of the ship caused hull strains so severe that the government paid for complete rebuilding of the ship. Shipwrights at the Southern Pacific yard labored for two years—eventually replacing all of its structure above the waterline. This kind of reconstruction was called "jacking up the whistle and sliding a new boat underneath." The refurbished ferry was christened Eureka in honor of the Northern California city, which also happened to be the new northern termination of the Northwestern Pacific Railroad. As a passenger ferry, she could carry 2,300 passengers and 120 automobiles. At that time, she was the biggest and the fastest double-ended passenger ferry boat in the world— long, with