Ferry tales

FERRIES have been sailing between the Sussex coast and Dieppe for more than two centuries. A regular service began in 1790, the year after the French Revolution, when the packet Princess Royal left Shoreham every Tuesday evening and returned from Dieppe on Saturday evening. A contemporary leaflet announced that the vessel had two elegant cabins, each containing eight beds, and that ‘‘horses and carriages must be sent on the day before sailing’’.

War between Britain and France during the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte (called ‘‘Boney’’ or ‘‘Bogeyman’’ to frighten naughty little English children) interrupted the regular service and it was not until June 1825 that the General Steam Navigation Company advertised that its steamer, the Eclipse, would leave Newhaven for Dieppe, calling at Brighton Chain Pier on the way, every Tuesday and Saturday (weather permitting), and returning on Monday and Thursday.

The line received a boost in 1847, when new railway connections on both sides of the Channel provided the shortest and most efficient regular route between London and Paris. The crossing took six hours and 5,000 passengers were carried between Newhaven and Dieppe during the first season (compared with some 300,000 a year today and a million or more in the glory days of cross-Channel travel in the early 1990s).

As the line developed, British and later French ferries, belonging to their respective railway companies, maintained a joint service. The ships evolved, from the paddle steamers of the 1840s, to the ‘‘screws’’ of the 1890s, to the car ferries of the 1960s, and to the variety of super ferries and fast ferries that have been crossing the Channel since the 1980s.

Wars, industrial disputes and managerial pull-outs have all disrupted the service from time to time. In the move towards privatisation, British and French Rail both divested themselves of the line which bumbled along in the incompetent hands of various private companies for several years.

In 2005, when the line was threatened with permanent closure, the Seine-Maritime Council stepped in to save the day, buying up the dilapidated Newhaven ferry port at the same time. The French council ordered two new ferries, the Côte d’Albâtre and the Seven Sisters, equipped for freight and passenger traffic. The running of the line has since been delegated to a private operator, LD Lines, which transferred the Côte d’Albâtre to its Portsmouth-Le Havre route. This unfortunately reduces the crossings between Newhaven and Dieppe, and local restaurateurs are not best pleased that no ferry arrives in Dieppe in time for the Brits to have lunch. (Hungry and gourmet Brits are disappointed too.)

The history of the Newhaven-Dieppe line  - on which Ho Chi Minh worked as a pastry cook and so many illustrious travellers (including some dodgy characters) have sailed - is recorded in a number of books. Many mementoes of the line have been gathered by Peter Bailey and his colleagues in the Local History and Maritime Museum in Newhaven’s Paradise Park. Normally open at the weekend, and in the week during summer.