News

Dover Cruise Port is set to see more and bigger ships next year.

Carnival Cruise Line who will be using the port for its Northern Europe market with the new SuperLiner class ships for the first time.

Carnival Splendor, currently under construction, will become the largest cruise ship to berth at the port with her capacity for more than 3,000 passengers offering a programme of six cruises following her delivery voyage.

Dover continues to be the major UK port for shore excursions.

Kate O’Hara, Head of Commercial and Marketing at the Port of Dover commented: “The growth in the port’s cruise business reflects the increasing popularity in ex-UK cruise vacations. We are perfectly positioned to grow with the trend with our two dedicated liner terminals, which enjoy good access by sea and road, combined with a wealth of landmark tourist sites for shore visits.”
 

The wreck of U-Boat 33, which was one of the deadliest submarines in the German Naval fleet during the First World War, is threatening to rise from the depths of the English Channel, 89 years on.

The sunk World War I German submarine off the coast of Dover is to be moved because it is becoming an increasing danger to shipping.

Lying in shallow waters, the wreck of the UB-33 has been disturbed by passing vessels, leading to fears that it could break free from the seabed and rise to the surface.

So a salvage operation has been launched to prevent it hitting any of the hundreds of ships that cross the Channel each day.

The UB (Unterseeboot) 33 was sunk with all 28 crew on April 11, 1918, after hitting a mine around the Varne Bank sandbank in the Dover Strait. It was armed with six torpedoes, two already loaded in its forward tubes.

The area is directly beneath the shipping lane now used by ferries travelling to Calais and Boulogne and much of the movement of the wreck has been caused by the turbulence of vessels travelling above it.

Lighthouse authority Trinity House requires a minimum clearance depth of 26.5m (87ft) but the U-boat, which has been in the Dover Strait since 1918, is just 23.5m (77ft) below the surface, which does not leave enough clearance for modern ships.

Divers have completed a survey of the wreck and it hoped to move it into deeper water later this summer.

The U-boat, which is a classified as a war grave, is one of dozens of similar vessels sunk off the coast of Britain during the war.

The wreck lies to the south of the Varne Bank and eight miles south of Dover.

Three councillors who sailed across the English Channel on a homemade raft to deliver a goodwill message were arrested on their arrival in Folkestone yesterday (8 August).

The two Germans and one Frenchman set out on a homemade raft with no lifesaving equipment to cross the world's second busiest shipping lane, without gaining prior permission from coastguards.

They were arrested on suspicion of endangering life as soon as they reached the shore at Folkestone after travelling from Boulogne. They spent 10 hours in police cells.

Lynn Dockar, manager of the Boulogne and Shepway Co-operation Association, was part of a welcoming committee at Folkestone who watched in horror as the trio were taken away by police.

"In the space of 20 seconds I went from elation at their joyous arrival to deep concern when two very angry Coastguards appeared," she said. Ms Dockar added that their visitors were "deeply sorry they had caused so much fuss".

The sailors claimed that they had tried to make contact with the coastguard to obtain permission before their trip, but after failing to get through on the telephone they decided to head off anyway.

Mark Clark, a Maritime and Coastguard Agency spokesman, said their stunt was like "crossing the M25 on a scooter with a blindfold on".

"It was just stupid. They posed a danger to themselves and to other vessels. Big ships are not to be messed with. Ships go up and down there at a considerable rate," he said.

Their raft was found to have had no radio connection set up with UK coastguards and contained outdated flares, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency said.

Mr Clark added that it was essential that anyone who wished to cross the Channel - which is used by up to 500 ships a day - sought permission from authorities on both sides of the water.

"They’ve also got to assure us they have sufficient safety equipment before they depart, none of which this lot did. We’re really hacked off with them that they chose to do this," he added.

"The vessel was detained by us as an unsafe craft. They hadn’t got a radio which was working on the Coastguard emergency Channel 16 and the flares were completely out of date."

The sailors, who named as Gunter Ludvig and Bernard Drucker from Germany and Claude Allan, of Boulogne, were trying to present a goodwill message in a bottle to the chairman of Shepway District Council as part of a partnership agreement between the areas.

However, after being held by police in the cells all the way through yesterday, they only managed to present their message today.

George Bunting, the chairman of Shepway District Council, said: "In this particular case we would advise our friends to use a more orthodox form of transport next time they visit us."

The three were eventually released without charge.

A Dover bound cruise ship has returned to sea carrying 756 mostly British passengers and crew members following a suspected outbreak of Legionnaires' disease.

Six cruise ship passengers, at least five of them British, have been hospitalised in Sweden showing symptoms of Legionnaires disease, a medical source and the ship operator said Saturday.

"They are not in intensive care and they are in stable condition," Jerker Jonsson, a Stockholm region infectious disease specialist, told AFP.

"This is probably a case of Legionnaires disease," he added.

The six were passengers on the Black Watch cruise ship, owned by Fred Olsen Cruise Lines, which said the ship had been partially disinfected and tests of its water had been carried out to determine the source of the outbreak.

"Six passengers have been hospitalised in Stockholm," company spokeswoman Wendy Hooper-Greenhill told AFP, adding that they were "suffering of pneumonia-like symptoms and ship (crew) thought it would be better that they receive proper hospital treatment."

Before stopping in Stockholm the ship had passed through Saint Petersburg, the Estonian capital of Tallinn, the Finnish town of Kemi and Lulea in Sweden. It had also been scheduled to stop in Denmark and Norway, but the company had decided to cancel the last stops as a "precautionary measure".

Hooper-Greenhill said once the passengers had disembarked the ship would be deep-cleaned.

Legionnaires' disease was first discovered at an American Legion convention in the United States in 1976, where 29 people died. It causes high fever, dry cough, lung congestion and subsequent pneumonia.

It is commonly spread through contaminated water sources, air conditioners and ventilators and is treated with antibiotics.  

Dear Editor,

Re: Cross-channel bridge plans revealed

I read this article with interest. However, it is no surprise that there is little in the way of the large ideas, ideas that would really represent an investment for the future.

Given that the ferries and tunnel between them now barely cope with the trade, it would hardly be built before the bridge, which also, would be over capacity.

No. The large idea would be to construct a causeway, that is fill the channel in. It should not be too difficult, it is only about 40 metres (140 feet) deep and many of the grand dams in the USA are of the same size.

In the land so built we would offer locks so that shipping could still go up and down the channel, we could also use it as a land-fill site for all our rubbish; we could install a tidal power station in it (there is a net flow of millions of tonnes of sea water every day and this passes without doing any useful work at all); we could put the new major airports that the travelling public demand and finally, wouldn't it give jobs to thousands for years to come?

Yours optimistically,

Lazarus

Driving to France for a little more than a fiver could have been a reality if a huge Channel suspension bridge had been given the go-ahead by the Thatcher government, official records have revealed.

After dismissing the option of a tunnel under the sea as "impractical", civil engineers submitted detailed proposal to construct a three-lane motorway between the two countries.

It was suggested the bridge, with a span of 21 miles and towering 220 feet above the busy sea lanes would carry cars and freight traffic between either Dover or Folkestone and the French coast.

Motorists, it was estimated, would pay a toll charge of £5.60 per person in their vehicle while lorry drivers could be charged £8 to use the route.

Engineers said that private financiers were willing to back the project, attracted by the forecast that tolls could provide a revenue of up to £220 million a year.

The bridge would have been built along the lines of the Severn Bridge that links South Wales and England at an estimated cost of £3 billion, said engineering group LinktoEurope.

LinktoEurope admitted that the huge pylons on which the bridge would rest could make navigation of the Channel difficult for shipping traffic. But they said that the structure would be sufficiently sturdy that, should a boat plough into the struts, traffic above would be unaffected.

The Government file on the proposals has been kept secret until today, when it was released at the National Archives at Kew.

The City of Rochester, New York, has now rejected the offer by Euroferries for its fast ferry, the Spirit of Ontario, which is currently docked in Nova Scotia.

The Rochester Democrat and Chronicle reports that the city has a new leading bidder on the high-speed ferry, and that city officials say this one has the financial ability to close the deal in 30 days.

Mayor Robert Duffy would not identify the amount of the offer nor reveal the identify the bidder, other than to say it came from an established European operator.

The offer helped buffer the news that talks have broken down with British firm Euroferries Ltd., which pledged to buy the ship for $29.8 million in a deal announced last May. Duffy said the Euroferries offer came with "too many conditions."  

Following on from a record-breaking year in 2006, the Dover Cruise Port is gearing itself up for one of its busiest seasons. 

Kate O’Hara, Head of Commercial and Marketing, Port of Dover said: “The growth in the port’s cruise business reflects the increasing popularity in ex-UK cruise vacations and we are well positioned to grow with the trend with our two dedicated liner terminals which enjoy good access by sea and road combined with a wealth of landmark tourist sites for shore visits.”

For 2007 Dover is expecting 135 cruise ship visits by Fred Olsen, Saga Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruisesand MSC Cruises.

More than 400 people attended a service in Dover on Sunday (4 March) to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the sinking of the Herald of Free Enterprise.

They included survivors, people who lost members of their family or friends, and those involved in the immediate aftermath.

In all, 193 of the 542 passengers and crew on board the roll on, roll off ferry died when it capsized just outside the Belgian port of Zeebrugge on 6 March 1987, a few minutes after setting off for Dover.

The service at St Mary's Church in Dover was organised largely to give thanks to those who helped in the rescue operation and to recognise their courage.

The Rev Nicholas Stacey, a former Director of Social Services at Kent County Council, who gave the address at the service, said: "No group of people suffered more acutely than the 42 members of the 80-strong crew who survived.

"In the blame game that followed [the disaster], the outstanding selfless work of the crew was never fully acknowledged. I want to put the record straight.

"Many of the 313 passengers who were rescued owe their lives to the crew. They were heroes."

The Rev Stacey said: "It is absolutely right that the mayor and vicar of Dover have called for this service to give us an opportunity to remember and lift up to God in our prayers and in our hearts, those who died, the bereaved, and all who have suffered and are still suffering from this disaster.

"May the message of this service go out to them, hopefully through the media, 'you have not been forgotten, you are in our thoughts, in our hearts, in our love, in our prayers, may our loving God be with you'."

Kent social workers went to Zeebrugge to support relatives who came from all over the country to wait for the bodies of their loved ones to be retrieved from the hull of the ferry.

The Rev Stacey said: "The stress on the counsellors, who went on counselling for many months not just the survivors and the bereaved but those involved in the rescue operation, was particularly great.

"One of the many lessons learnt from this tragedy was the need for the Coroner and the counsellors to be given support.

"The counsellors learnt from their experience about a condition that has come to be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

He added that as a 17-year-old midshipman in the Royal Navy he visited Hiroshima a few weeks after the atomic bomb had been dropped. The effect on him was to lead him eventually to the priesthood.

"I thought and felt then, as I still feel and think 62 years on, that the heart of the Christian faith does help to explain the riddle of our human existence and meets our deepest needs and yearnings," he said.

"Our life on earth is not the beginning and the end, it is the end of the beginning. Death is not the slamming of a door, it is the opening of a gate where we are welcomed by a Loving Father.

"I do not pretend it is easy to believe but it is the belief that has given meaning and hope to the millions who have believed and whose lives have been transformed by it."

Anyone who is still experiencing emotional difficulty following the tragedy and feels they would like to talk to someone in confidence can ring the Dover Counselling Centre on 01304 204123.

US Mayor Bob Duffy's patience is running thin and he wants answers faster than the fastest fast ferry which he is hoping to sell to British company Euroferries Ltd.

Certainly faster than the city's own fast ferry which has been idle for some time awaiting its UK buyers to actually come and buy the thing. Indeed, their own speed has been called into question.

The Spitit of Ontario has been laid up at Shelburne, Nova Scotia, since December 2006, months after the announcement in May 2006 that Euroferries Ltd were to purchase the vessel from Rochester's ferry company for $29.8 million.

Despite papers and emails flying to and fro across the Atlantic, the ferry hasn't done much crossing itself and it's been reported the mayor is livid.

Now the Mayor of Rochester, New York State, wants a face to face and is preparing to dispatch a top official to the UK.

The Rochester Chronicle reports: "It really comes down to one thing: My frustration with how this process has dragged on for months and there has not been a face-to-face negotiation," said Duffy, who has told city Corporation Counsel Thomas Richards to make travel arrangements. "I'm putting an end to this endless stream of e-mails and phone calls."