More than half of the ferries illustrated in these unique drawings by an unknown artist were used on services across the English Channel as part of the Sealink and Townsend Ferries fleets, along with SNCF from France. In the early 1970s, traffic built up so that each fleet was offering as many as ten summer return trips a day. Townsends were the major trend setters of the time, with three impressive new ferries coming from Werf Gusto at Schiedam, in the Netherlands, between 1962 and 1965, while Sealink relied on trusted veteran Invicta and two SNCF newbuildings from the mid-1960s.
In the 1970s there was a proliferation of routes, unlike in the 2020s, where services have been rationalised so that the focus is now very much on Dover-Calais operations. But in 1973 ferries from Dover ran not just to Calais, but also to Boulogne and Dunkirk, as well as Ostend and Zeebrugge in Belgium. Another feature was the Dover-Dunkirk train ferry services taking freight as well as passenger coaches on the London-Paris Night Ferry. But train ferries are now long gone.
Cross-Channel competition between co-operating Britishand the independent operations of Townsend Ferries were a feature of the Dover-Calais service in 1973.
