Not so long ago, commuting wasn't just a matter of adding a few bucks to your Clipper card. If you lived across the bay, you sailed to work.

For the better part of a century, legions of Bay Area city-dwellers relied on ferries to get where they needed to go. The first ferry service began in 1850, with just two little ships running twice-weekly trips from San Francisco to what's now the Oakland Estuary.

Over time, ferry companies popped up and their routes proliferated, altering the very landscape of the cities they served. Ever wondered what that huge, now-unused pier jutting out from West Berkeley was for? It was built and owned by the Golden Gate Ferry Company, according to the city, and was used to run ferries across the bay until 1936.

Smaller ferry firms were soon absorbed by the massive Southern Pacific Railroad corporation, which had a monopoly on transbay service until a plucky competitor began offering five-cent rides to Oakland. That forced down the price, and the 'nickel ferry' became the transit option of choice for the unwashed masses – or, as one San Francisco Call reporter in 1910 put it, "a mild and harmless form of slumming" for those who could afford a nicer ride.

Vince Maggiora/The Chronicle

It was not an especially quick trip, at least by modern ferryboat standards. The ships were still steam-powered until the advent of diesel engines in the 1920s. But many of the ferries served (quite good!) food, and some had bars, shoeshines and even barbers onboard — you had to kill time somehow.

Until the Bay Bridge came about, the ferries were a transbay commuter's only choice. After the bridge opened in 1936 — followed by the Golden Gate Bridge, which opened the next year — ferry lines began to vanish and ridership plummeted. The final Southern Pacific ferry sailed in 1968, six years before the Transbay Tube opened. The Eureka, the last ship to run the San Francisco-Sausalito route in 1941, is still anchored at Hyde Street Pier. (The Chronicle accompanied her on her final voyage, calling it "one of the most memorable alcoholic mob scenes ever recorded in the Bay Area." Some sentimental riders tried to take pieces of the ferry with them.)

But ferry fans need not despair: In recent decades, the idea of getting to work by sea has made a bit of a comeback, particularly after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake took the Bay Bridge temporarily out of commission. It remains to be seen if San Franciscans' mounting frustration with BART and parking-lot-esque bridge traffic will lure them back to the docks en masse, but private companies like Tideline Marine Group have begun offering smaller-scale transbay trips.

Back to the history: Older East Bay locals might remember the last gasps of the Key System, the sprawling transbay rail network that preceded BART.

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The Key System, so named for the key-like shape of its routes, began in 1903 as a series of streetcar lines meant to carry bay-crossers from their Oakland homes to the docks. As it expanded across the East Bay, it evolved into an integrated rail and ferry system – only to ditch the ferries for transbay rail cars once the Bay Bridge opened. The cars were powered by electricity from above, not unlike today's Muni trains.

The Bay and Golden Gate bridges made a dent in the Key System's ridership, but in 1945, when gasoline was rationed during World War II, Key trains carried more than 26 million people across the Bay.

So what happened? The automobile fad turned out not to be a fad, and in 1960, Alameda-Contra Costa Transit (AC for short) and its behemoth bus lines succeeded the Key System. Ever since, it's been shipping commuters from the East Bay and back at all hours of the day and night. Construction began on the futuristic Bay Area Rapid Transit system four years later, but the Transbay Tube wasn't finished until late 1974, nearly $50 million over-budget.