Philip Spaulding, 92, designed state ferries, other vessels

Watching the superferry Walla Walla glide across Puget Sound never failed to remind Philip Spaulding of his life’s work as a naval architect. The 440-foot, double-ended Walla Walla and its Jumbo-class sister ship Spokane were his designs. And from most windows of his three-story, Colonial-style home on Magnolia Bluff, he had for decades enjoyed a panoramic view of crossings of those vessels and others operated by the state ferry system.