Santa Rosa was a Steel Electric Class ferry

Steel Electric Class ferry

The Steel Electric Class ferries became part of the Washington State Ferry System when Puget Sound Navigation Company was acquired in 1951. They were built on San Francisco Bay for service on Southern Pacific and Northwestern Pacific Railroad routes across that bay.-History:The Steel Electric...

 built in Alameda, California

Alameda, California

Alameda is a city in Alameda County, California, United States. It is located on Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, and is adjacent to Oakland in the San Francisco Bay. The Bay Farm Island portion of the city is adjacent to the Oakland International Airport. At the 2010 census, the city had a...

, for Northwestern Pacific Railroad

Northwestern Pacific Railroad

The Northwestern Pacific Railroad is a regional railroad serving California's North Coast. The railroad currently runs on 62 miles of the 462 mile main line, stretching from Schellville, California to Eureka, California...

. She started out serving Southern Pacific Railways on their Golden Gate Ferries line on San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay is a shallow, productive estuary through which water draining from approximately forty percent of California, flowing in the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers from the Sierra Nevada mountains, enters the Pacific Ocean...

.

She was purchased by the Puget Sound Navigation Company

Puget Sound Navigation Company

The Puget Sound Navigation Company was founded by Joshua Green in 1913. It operated a fleet of steamboats and ferries on Puget Sound in Washington and the Georgia Strait in British Columbia...

 in 1940, and moved to Puget Sound

Puget Sound

Puget Sound is a sound in the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected marine waterways and basins, with one major and one minor connection to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Pacific Ocean — Admiralty Inlet being the major connection and...

. Puget Sound Navigation Company, believing that a single ended ferry would be more economical and faster, replaced her engines and converted her to a single-ended ferry, effectively making her no longer a true Steel Electric Class ferry. She was also renamed the MV Enetai, which is the name she kept when she was later acquired by Washington State Ferries

Washington State Ferries

Washington State Ferries is a passenger and automobile ferry service owned and operated by the Washington State Department of Transportation that serves communities on Puget Sound and in the San Juan Islands. It is the most used ferry system in the world and the largest passenger and automobile...

 who took over operations in 1951. The ferry was returned to San Francisco after her sale in 1968, but sat largely unused until purchased by Hornblower Cruises

Hornblower Cruises

Hornblower Cruises & Events is a San Francisco-based charter yacht, dining cruise and ferry service company.-History:The company began in 1974 in Berkeley, CA. In 1980 the original owner, Ward Proescher, sold the business to Terry MacRae and P. Michael Watson...

in 1989. Hornblower restored her aft wheelhouse in an attempt to make her look like her original profile from 1927, however the passenger cabin retained the remodeled outline from her conversion to a single ender back in 1941. She is currently moored at Pier 3 in San Francisco, where she serves both as office space and as a rental facility.