Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

Displaying items by tag: European Seaway

#ReliefFerry - European Seaway, one of five Dover-Calais ships serving P&O Ferries premier short-sea route arrived to Larne for the first time this morning so to provide refit cover, writes Jehan Ashmore.

The 22,988 gross tonnage ‘Super-Freighter’ class freight-ferry had sailed through the English Channel direct from Calais on a repositioning voyage to the North Channel.

On completion of berthing trials, the 124 x 15m freight unit capacity vessel is to begin covering crossings on the Larne-Cairnryan route as previously reported.  This will allow a pair of ropax ships to be refitted on Merseyside.

During the two-month deployment of the Strait of Dover vessel, the ropax European Causeway (20,646gt) and European Highlander (21,188gt) are to take turns dry-docked at Cammell Laird, Birkenhead.

Each of the almost identical sisters with a 418 passenger capacity are to undergo an 18-day period of refit work. The first such work since 2015. Refit work will involve hull repairs, blast and paint jobs and steel deck renewals in addition to improvements made to passenger facilities.

For information on sailing schedule click here.

The £1.2m contract for the refits had also included P&O Ferries central corridor Dublin-Liverpool route ropax sisters, that began in March firstly with Norbay followed by Norbank. This saw sailings covered by the chartered car-carrier Neptune Aegli.

Published in Ferry

About Brittany Ferries

In 1967 a farmer from Finistère in Brittany, Alexis Gourvennec, succeeded in bringing together a variety of organisations from the region to embark on an ambitious project: the aim was to open up the region, to improve its infrastructure and to enrich its people by turning to traditional partners such as Ireland and the UK. In 1972 BAI (Brittany-England-Ireland) was born.

The first cross-Channel link was inaugurated in January 1973, when a converted Israeli tank-carrier called Kerisnel left the port of Roscoff for Plymouth carrying trucks loaded with Breton vegetables such as cauliflowers and artichokes. The story, therefore, begins on 2 January 1973, 24 hours after Great Britain's entry into the Common Market (EEC).

From these humble beginnings however, Brittany Ferries as the company was re-named quickly opened up to passenger transport, then became a tour operator.

Today, Brittany Ferries has established itself as the national leader in French maritime transport: an atypical leader, under private ownership, still owned by a Breton agricultural cooperative.

Eighty five percent of the company’s passengers are British.

Key Brittany Ferries figures:

  • Turnover: €202.4 million (compared with €469m in 2019)
  • Investment in three new ships, Galicia plus two new vessels powered by cleaner LNG (liquefied natural gas) arriving in 2022 and 2023
  • Employment: 2,474 seafarers and shore staff (average high/low season)
  • Passengers: 752,102 in 2020 (compared with 2,498,354 in 2019)
  • Freight: 160,377 in 2020 (compared with 201,554 in 2019)
  • Twelve ships operating services that connect France, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Spain (non-Covid year) across 14 routes
  • Twelve ports in total: Bilbao, Santander, Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Cork, Rosslare, Caen, Cherbourg, Le Havre, Saint-Malo, Roscoff
  • Tourism in Europe: 231,000 unique visitors, staying 2.6 million bed-nights in France in 2020 (compared with 857,000 unique visitors, staying 8,7 million bed-nights in 2019).