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Displaying items by tag: Great Canal Journeys

#HistoricShips - One of Liverpool’s most significant historic vessels will have a more secure future thanks to a donation from the the operator of the UK north-west port, the Peel Ports Group.

The safeguarding of the steam-powered former tug Daniel Adamson, featuring art-deco interiors, is for the next three years thanks to the donation of £75,000.

According to Peel Ports, the Daniel Adamson Preservation Society (DAPS) – is a volunteer group which led the £5m restoration project of the ‘Daniel Adamson’ Steam tug-tender, and with the investment from the port operator will benefit towards a long-term legacy project committed to teaching others about the vessel and its rich ties to the area.

The vessel built in 1903, affectionately known as the ‘Danny’, is the oldest surviving steam-powered tug to be built on the Mersey. Design of the tug was custom-built to tow the long strings of barges from the inland towns of Cheshire. From there the tug conveyed cargoes to and from the Potteries to the Port of Liverpool.

As mentioned in the news recently is the Cammell Laird shipyard in Birkenhead, where the Danny was acquired by the Manchester Ship Canal Company in 1921.  The tug was used to transport visiting VIPs around Manchester’s famous inland docks and along the ship canal.

In more recent times, the veteran vessel was earmarked for scrap in 2004, at which point the DAPS was formed to save this unique tug. 

Published in Historic Boats

#InlandWaters - The waters of the Lough Allen canal, Lough Erne and the Shannon-Erne Waterway will feature in the new series of Channel 4's Great Canal Journeys.

Presenters Tim West and Prunella Scales filmed in the area in July 2015, beginning their journey in Drumshanbo, and between music sessions, poetry and hyrdoelectric locks, they tried everything on the trip up the canal and out onto Lough Erne where they visited islands, homes and castles.

The series starts this coming Sunday (25 October), and the Irish episode will be broadcast at 8pm on Sunday 8 November on Channel 4, with catch-up available later via the channel's on-demand service All4.

Published in Inland Waterways

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).