That Dover-Ostend question set me thinking. Check out:
www.transeuropaferries.com/
and click to view their ships. They even tell you what their previous names were, and a little gentle Googling reveals their chequered pasts...
Which of these lovely car ferries have you graced with your presence, or indeed vomit? I'm pretty sure I recognise the "Gardenia", and maybe the "Primrose". Be careful when viewing - these are seriously ugly car ferries...
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Wow. Now this brings back some memories.
As a kid we used to go to the South of France each year, and always used the Townsend Thoresen ferries.
Have definitely been on the Oleander when it was the Spirit of Free Enterprise (for that matter, went on the Herald a couple of months before the disaster)
May have been on others, but my parents had a dislike for Sealink (something to do with a battered cod that had my dad lieing in the caravan being sick all the way over the alps), so if all the others were operated by them, possibly not.
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I travelled on both the Herald and Spirit Townsend T ferries during the early 1980s - horrid things. My parents chose the hovercraft the year after.
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Next stop for these old barges -
Greek Islands
Next stop after that -
Phillipines
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The first ships I went across the channel on were "Lord Walden" and "Dinard". I think that Dinard had been at Dunkirk, it was very old, and Lord Walden was a bit more modern. This was in 1957, I was very young then! I wonder if anyone knows what happened to them. They were British Rail ferries.
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Lord Walden or Lord Warden? www.clydesite.co.uk/clydebuilt/viewship.asp?id=117...8
Was also my first ferry, to Boulogne in 1973 in my father's Hillman Hunter. Returned via Le Havre/Southampton on Viking IV as foot passengers but that's for the foreign accidents thread!!
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Thanks Bromptonaut, is was the Lord Warden.
I would still like to know about the Dinard, or a similar name.
If you went on her in 1973, she must have been quite a wreck. She seemed old in 1957!
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Right....this may test some of you. Anyone else remember going from Tilbury to Calais on the SS Londoner owned by Fred Olsen lines? I do and it was flipping horrible. It was tall and wallowy. The slightest swell could induce exorcistic vomiting in the hardiest of seamen (never liked that word!)
God, it took hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours..........zzzzzzzzzzzz get the drift?
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Anyone go the channel islands on one of the hulks from Weymouth in the 60's? The Sarnia I think it was called. The train from waterloo would travel through the streets on rails set in the road to the dock side.
Second year we went dad took the car. It was CRANED into the hold!
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" It was CRANED into the hold!"
Puts me in mind of the brilliant Giles cartoon which also illustrated changing times....
Car disappearing rearwards into drink having slid off crane hoist.
AA & RAC patrolmen on dock intently peering at badge bar and one saying "one of yours I believe".
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Used to use 'em for my London-India-Nepal buses Newhaven-Dieppe/Dover-Ostend 1967-70, never had a problem. But I guess our generation was made of sterner stuff..... ;+D
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Second year we went dad took the car. It was CRANED into the hold!
Believe this is still the procedure in the (unlikley) event of wanting to take a car to the Scillies. I also have fond memories of the lift access car decks on the Western Isles ferries, still in service up to the nineties when linkspans were installed.
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Yes - I remember the Sarnia and travelling through Weymouth looking into upstairs rooms of the houses as we went through the streets on the train to the harbour.
It must have been the seventies before Helicopter Jr was born.
We didn't take the car because it was so cheap to hire over there.
I remember the crossing back as one of the roughest I have ever encountered.The boat was not stabilised as I recall.
I wonder whether it is still sailing?
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Rough and slow 6 - 8 hours I remember
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Anyone go the channel islands on one of the hulks from Weymouth in the 60's? The Sarnia I think it was called. The train from waterloo would travel through the streets on rails set in the road to the dock side. Second year we went dad took the car. It was CRANED into the hold!
The railway tracks are still in place along Weymouth quayside although it has been several years since any train has used them.
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I did a bit of google investigation on the Sarnia and her sister ship the Caeseria and found this-
'Caesarea was not finished yet though - in an enterprising move, Sealink moved the ship to Dover and Folkestone from early 1976 to operate classic passenger sailings to Calais and Boulogne, in lieu of the retired Maid of Orleans of 1949. Sarnia was not so lucky, and after finishing at Weymouth in 1977, she was sold for ignominious service as Aquamart, a floating duty-free supermarket based at Oostende, a venture soon scuppered by unsympathetic Belgian customs officials. Caesarea meanwhile finally ended operations for Sealink on the Dover Strait after the 1980 season.
The destinies of the sisters after this is disappointingly shrouded in mystery. What is clear is that, despite lingering for some years, they ultimately headed for breakers far away from the English Channel within eight months of each other. It was Sarnia which lasted slightly longer - after the failed Aquamart venture, she passed to owners in Jeddah. Following spells as Golden Star and Saudi Golden Star, she was broken up in early 1987 on the beaches of Pakistan, miserable graveyard for hundreds of ships.'
Probably now recycled as part of someones Hyundai or Proton
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The above was taken from the following website-
www.hhvferry.com/Caesarea.html
For sailing devotees there is an interesting photo of Weymouth and the Sarnia including one which shows Sir Francis Chichesters Gipsy Moth IV in the harbour - compare that to Ellen Macarthurs B&Q for sailing round the world.
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Roughest journey ever has to be the John O' Groats to Orkney Ferry in a storm. Wow sitting looking 100% vertical up, then 100% vertically down, repeat etc.
Nothing the big ferrys do can compare
Still Orkney was nice
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