Islanders will have an opportunity to see a maritime treasure when the steamer “Virginia V” visits Vashon and Maury’s waters on Sunday, Aug. 17.

This historic wooden-hull vessel is the last surviving “Mosquito Fleet” steamer still in operation, a historic legacy from an era when dozens of independently owned steam boats plied the waters of Puget Sound transporting passengers, mail and freight.

Virginia V was built in 1922 at Maplewood, just across Colvos Passage from Lisabeula, for the West Pass Transportation Co. Company owner Capt. Nels G. Christensen, for whom Christensen Creek and Christensen Cove are named. He lived at Lisabeula and listed this former waterfront resort community as the Virginia V’s hailing port.

Christensen bought his original Virginia boat in 1909 from the Merrill & Ring Logging Co., where it was named for the daughter of one of the company’s owners. Virginia Merrill later married Prentice Bloedel, and their home and garden on Bainbridge Island is now open to the public as the Bloedel Reserve.

Christensen named each of his subsequent steam boats Virginia, and the Virginia V was an amalgam of features that he admired in other boats.

According to Island author Jean Findlay, who recently published “The Mosquito Fleet of South Puget Sound,” the hull was designed after the Virginia III, which also contributed its familiar “West Pass Whistle” to the Virginia V. The vessel’s superstructure — its decks, cabins and wheelhouse — was modeled after Pete Manson’s Vashon II, Findlay said. And its Heffernan triple-expansion steam engine came out of the 1904 Tyrus (renamed Virginia IV) and “remarkably continues to power the boat to this day,” Findlay writes.

Through the 1920s and 1930s, the Virginia V ran from Tacoma to Seattle each morning, stopping at Colvos Passage communities such as Cross Landing, Cove, Colvos and Sylvan Beach. It left Seattle each evening for the return trip, and the fare to all points along the West Pass was 35 cents.

When auto ferries took over as the Island’s primary transportation system, new owners put the Virginia V to work as an excursion vessel, bringing Camp Fire Girls to Camp Sealth each summer.

The Virginia V is now owned by the nonprofit Steamer Virginia V Foundation, based at South Lake Union Park in Seattle. In 1992, the vessel was designated a National Historic Landmark, the highest level of recognition for historic sites in the United States.

— Holly Taylor is a member of the Vashon Maury Island Heritage Association.