Private company

Red & White Fleet

Logo: redandwhite.com3

American tourism company1

Red and White Fleet is a sightseeing and charter tour company operating in the San Francisco Bay Area of California since at least 1892. Based in the US, the site and the audio on the cruise are, as of 2016, available in 16 languages.2 Wikipedia text CC BY-SA 4.0

Last updated Oct 21, 2026.

Overview

Red & White Fleet Harbor Queen coming into Pier 45
Photo: BrokenSphere, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons5

Red and White Fleet is a sightseeing and charter tour company operating in the San Francisco Bay Area of California since at least 1892.2

The story

Thomas Crowley, founder of Crowley Launch and Tugboat Co., the precursor of Crowley Maritime founded the Red and White Fleet.

In the late 1930s, the company started the sightseeing business. In 1997, Tom Escher, the grandson of the founder, purchased the Red and White Fleet from Crowley Maritime. The ferry operations were sold separately and concurrently to the Blue & Gold Fleet.

The company offers scenic tours of San Francisco Bay and is located at Pier 43 1/2 in Fisherman's Wharf. Red and White Fleet also offers land-based tour packages in concert with other suppliers and offers a number of charter packages for corporate events, as well.

The fleet provided commuter ferry operations from 1999 to 2000 from the Richmond Ferry Terminal to San Francisco.

In September 2018 the company launched service of a plug-in hybrid ferry, the first built in the United States furthermore in 2020 they are expected to begin operating their first hydrogen fuel cell powered vessel.

From Wikipedia’s article on Red & White Fleet, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4

Sources

The numbers on this page point here. Each one links to the record it came from.

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
    Company websiteRed & White Fleet logo
  4. 4
  5. 5