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Blog :: Dieppe seen by Peter Avis

It’s time to toast the Transmanche | 04/07/2010

TransmancheLe Transmanche: that’s what the Dieppois call the Newhaven-Dieppe ferry service. It’s been around a long time; regularly since 1825, with some breaks occasioned by wars, industrial disputes and company pullouts.

Its glory days were in the early 1990s, when annually a million and more passengers were carried on this route, many of them dazzled by the magic attraction of ‘duty free’ bottles to be purchased on the journey (which often you could buy more cheaply at a Dieppe hypermarket). The Brits are always on the lookout for a bargain.

There was another magic touch to arriving in Dieppe when the ferry swept into port, curling its great hulk round the corner to park alongside the Quai Henri IV, in the place now taken up by the rather soulless Marina. There a train was waiting to carry passengers to Paris. And, if you didn’t want to go to Paris, you crossed the road to sit outside a quayside café and have your first drink on French soil. Travel is less romantic today and the ferry terminal is exiled to the port entrance.

The cross-Channel service was developed in the nineteenth century by the British and French railway companies that served the two ports on either side of the Channel. The jointly owned ferry service prided itself on providing ‘the shortest route from London to Paris’. 

The line has always had its characters. We remember ‘Spats’, the head cook on the Senlac who played a mournful tune on his tuba on that ship’s last sailing. ‘Spats’ died a few months ago after continuing his culinary activities at The Greys in Brighton. Then there was Lynn Thomas, the helmsman of the Senlac, who became a successful performing magician as the Great Velcro on returning to employment on land. Ho Chi Minh must have been quite a character, too: he was employed as a pastrycook on the line early in the twentieth century, before returning to his Vietnamese homeland to become leader of his nation.

The line, whose existence provides several hundred jobs in Dieppe and Newhaven, was saved from collapse in 2001, when the Seine Maritime department (county council) in Normandy bought part of Newhaven port and provided the ships for the service. Today, exploitation of the service, which survives - even thrives - because of lucrative freight bookings, is delegated to LD Lines. The modern Seven Sisters ferry with its friendly crew makes two crossings a day in each direction (regular passengers would like it to do more and, indeed, to have a second ferry, at least in the summer months). About 250,000 passengers are carried in a year.

The Transmanche, with its colourful history and its useful present, deserves a party. And Dieppe has decided to give it one. If you can be in the town on Friday 30 July, come to the big tent at the eastern end of the seafront from late in the afternoon to very late at night.

There will be the Brighton jazz group, the Vintage Four, and the Brighton rock group, The Perils. Plus English beer and English things to eat. An exhibition of posters will evoke the history of the line. And the Flaubertist scholar Nick Wellings will have archives to show and tales to tell.

For information about crossings, look at transmancheferries.com

PS: If you want to add a comment to this blog, please click on the link below: 'ajouter un commentaire' 

  • COMMENTAIRES
  • par billy lovelock • 07/09/2010 à 09:10

  • I was working on the fete, that day, i was the guy selling the English jams, Cakes, Scones and Tea etc - i was wondering is there any pictures for me to show, of all the different stools, as i saw the camera man going round - thank you

  • par Paul Bevan • 21/07/2010 à 17:00

  • The 2010 Brighton to Paris cycle challenge, in aid of the Argus Appeal, passes through Dieppe on Wednesday 28 July, with 40-50 gallant participants arriving on the morning ferry from Newhaven. Is Monsieur Avis (whose email address I have lost) available to take a glass with us? PB