Cape May–Lewes Ferry
ferry route across Delaware Bay
The Cape May–Lewes Ferry is a ferry system on the East Coast of the United States that traverses a 17-mile (27 km) crossing of the Delaware Bay connecting North Cape May, New Jersey with Lewes, Delaware. The ferry constitutes a portion of U.S. Route 9 and is the final crossing of the Delaware River-Delaware Bay waterway before it meets the Atlantic Ocean. It is one of only two year-round direct crossings between Delaware and New Jersey, the other being the Delaware Memorial Bridge.
System
The Cape May–Lewes Ferry, operated by the Delaware River and Bay Authority (DRBA), consists of three ferry vessels and two terminal facilities. Its operations are based at its Cape May terminal, which is actually located in North Cape May, on the north shore of the Cape May Canal.
The three vessels in the fleet carry both vehicles (passenger cars, buses, RVs, tractor trailers, motorcycles, and bicycles) and foot passengers. Each has a capacity of 100 vehicles and 800 passengers, selling out in advance during the popular summer weekends (although passenger capacity usually does not). Advance reservations are accepted.
The ferry trip takes approximately 85 minutes. The company's site says that the roundtrip is approximately three hours.
“Cape May–Lewes Ferry” enters the record as ferry route across Delaware Bay. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cape, Lewes and Ferry can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5034940. Authority coordinates are 38.878, -75.062. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cape May–Lewes Ferry” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.