 The company responded not by hiring strike breakers, but by halting operations, hoping public pressure would convince the State to permit a fare increase.The State declined to intervene, and PSNC eventually sold its domestic operations assets to the state of Washington's Department of Transportation for the sum of $4.9 million in early 1951, creating Washington State Ferries on May 31.PSNC retained the assets used in their Canadian operations and, after the 1951 downsizing, operated a much-reduced fleet of five ships as Black Ball Ferries, Ltd. on routes between Vancouver and Nanaimo, and across Howe Sound and Jervis Inlet.