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heuhen: They are symmetrically placed, but you cannot see through the ship, only to the outer superstructure support framework/bulkheads. Essentially there's two large built-up towers in the car deck which divides it in three on all Washington State ferries (this arrangement is without exception even on the Island Home class). The difference is mainly in the number of lanes. The central section never has a second car deck. The outer wings do, on all but the smallest boats. These outer wings have the upper deck accessed by ramps. Cars are loaded onto the two-level outer decks, trucks and RVs and cars towing trailers and such into the central single-deck section. Passenger elevators and stairs as well as the uptakes are located in the two framework/bulkhead boxes dividing up the car deck.
Access to the hull itself is only through watertight doors on the car deck level, which is also where the escape trunks come out. This makes the vessel semi-submersible in a very strange way; there is no point of admission of water to the hull below the ends of the uptakes and the ventilators in the passenger superstructure. Speeds range from 15 - 20kts design, the fastest being the Supers, who also have the worst stability and most love of crashing into the dock at speed or slamming onto rock reefs because the Captain is showing off a vacation house to a cute woman on the bridge (that led to a local drink in the San Juans, an "Elwha on the Rocks". She is still in service). This means the ferries are never cancelled for any kind of rough weather, and I've been on one of the ancient 1920s vintage Steel Electrics as a kid (they were scrapped after being taken from service in 2006) on the Port Townsend - Keystone run from the Olympic Peninsula to Whidbey Island, where we were rolling enough that we got a drum chorus from all the unsecured bathroom stall doors. They kept the galley open so dad and I could get me some chowder, though nobody else seemed much in an eating mood...
There are some awesome pictures of waves simply washing all over the car deck, accordingly. The ferries, due to their design, don't care about this; the water just washes back out of those open scuttles everywhere and she keeps on ploughing ahead. The danger can be to your automobile, which can get slammed about or washed overboard or knocked into other autos. However, the ferries are legally part of the state highway system, so this is not something you can sue over.
Lots of commuters also use their due to their copious passenger space for getting to work as part of the public transport system in Western Washington, as the state basically is divided in two by Puget Sound. All the islands and peninsulas rely on them, places I've lived for a very long time before, and they are a beloved and sometimes bemusing part of the state culture. Interconnections with rail and bus abound.
Otherwise, one more thing to realize is that they are relatively deep draft, with yacht hulls that have extremely deep keels for stability, and they curve sharply down. The hull has a kind of "lip" extending outwards from the yacht-style hull just below it forming a deep keel. On this is built up the entire superstructure. Here's another hint: The MV Coho, one of those private ferries to Victoria, BC on Vancouver Island, is owned and operated by Black Ball Lines, which used to run all of the state ferries before they were nationalised by the state government. She actually has the same hull. Her smart looking enclosed hull with side/rear loading and no bow doors is actually a false superstructure built on top of a standard Salish Sea ferry hull. The BC ferries use the same design.
Because of this they only have one screw forward and one aft, all being double-enders (though even a lot of the ships with only a single-ended bridge had two screws), with two rudders. No ferries have ever had pods, thrusters, or any other maneouvring aid. When we bought a design that had them, they were ordered to be removed to save costs and because they were "unnecessary". Ferries are docked quick and hard in Puget Sound, you line up and let rubber-and-wood bumpers, though the wood is being replaced by hydraulic cylinders now, do the cushioning. There is a standard signal for a hard landing so the passengers know to brace themselves, though Captains never sound it because they always think they can fix the situation. The regular daily commuters then mock their skill and style at docking appropriately.
Regardless of the lack of modern fancy toys, docking is done very quickly, and people drive their own cars on and off. Unlike in most ferries these days due to security regulations, the open superstructure means access to the cars on deck is allowed in passage. Some people remain in their cars, who are also mocked. Among the hardcore peninsular commuters like myself, there was long a game of waiting to start your car until the very last second in ferry lanes, just as the car in front of you starts to move. The upper open deck is usually called the Texas Deck, a holdover from American inland river steamboats. And as a note, yes, the Black Ball Line is the legal successor of THE Black Ball Packet company. After it went out of business, a descendant of the Peabody family secured the corporate instruments and refounded it as the ferry service in the Puget Sound area. Captain Peabody was THE institution of Washington State ferries until he was nationalised by the state. He then started a unified BC network that the same thing happened to, and ended up running one international route with his pride and joy of the Coho, the last ferry built for the Black Ball Lines and still in service under that corporate flag -- but the "DNA" of Black Ball is still pretty strongly in both the Washington and B.C. government ferry systems.
Oh, one more random aside: A lot of the ferries are Diesel Electric; Peabody liked that combination a lot, and though we give in and buy regular geared ferries sometimes, since the 1920s a heck of a lot of the Black Ball/WSF/BC ferries have been diesel-electric. This may have something to do with Kalakala's infamous direct drive diesel vibrations.
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"Once movement was detected, the crew attempted to raise anchor and maneuver away from the shore, but the weather and sea conditions made this difficult. By the time the anchor was raised, the ship had been pushed too close to the shore to recover." Next time, guys, grab a blowtorch.
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Thank you Kim for the crest
