|
A bus being craned on to the 'Forde' in the 1930s.
In 1928 Captain Townsend, formerly of the
Honourable Artillery Company, had started operating a car
ferry service from the Camber
at the eastern end of the harbour. Initially with a small
collier the ‘Artificer’ and then, when the capacity of the
small vessel was exceeded , with another charter vessel the
‘Royal Firth’. The success of the venture caused the Southern
Railway to introduce, from May 1929, a special service
of fast cargo boats for motor cars running from Dover- Calais
and Folkestone-Boulogne, at rates much lower than those charged
hitherto for carrying cars on the ordinary mail steamers.
In spite of this Townsend prospered and in 1930 the ‘Forde’
entered service. Reconstructed from a Royal Navy minesweeper
HMS ‘Ford’, she was fitted with a stern door which folded
down onto the quay. Captain Townsend had hoped to use this
stern door in conjunction with a concrete slope at each port
which would allow the cars to be driven straight onto the
ship, as was used by the car ferry between Portsmouth and
the Isle of Wight. This arrangement may have worked in the
calmer waters of the Solent but it was not suitable for the
unpredictable Channel. What was required was adjustable bridges
at both the French and British ports, which were needed to
compensate for the great variations in the height of the tides
. Unfortunately this solution did not appear until after the
Second World War.
Even though the cars still had to be craned on, the ‘Forde’
was a great improvement on her two grimy predecessors. She
could carry 165 passengers and 26 cars and offered her passengers
two general saloons, a ladies’ saloon and three private state
rooms. The success of the ‘Forde’ was sufficient to rouse
the management of the Southern Railway to provide a brand
new ship of their own for car carrying services the ‘Autocarrier’.
During the Second World
War the ‘Forde’ served under the Admiralty as a salvage
vessel. Afterwards she was refitted at Southampton and returned
to Dover as a car ferry on 12 April 1947. She was withdrawn
in October 1949, sold and finished her days as a car ferry
between Gibraltar and Algiers, finally being withdrawn in
1954.
|
