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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was withdrawn in October 1949, sold and finished her days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withdrawn in 1954.
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