I was coming back to the UK on Wednesday night on DFDS’s King of Scandinavia, from IJmuiden to North Shields. I had noticed the wind getting up as I was driving up from the south of Germany so I packed my camera, just in case, when getting my gear together for the crossing.
At about 2:30 I was woken up by the ship clanging like a broken bell as the waves hit it. After an hour of trying to get back to sleep I decided to get up and see if I could get a drink and try to take some photos.
These are some of the ones I managed to take then.
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After about 1/2 an hour, I went back to bed and slept till the wake-up call. Then I went back up to the front of the ship to try for some more shots.
Its quite difficult to get a good shot like this, with my camera. It a relatively old Minolta DiMage E223. There’s a slight delay between pressing the shutter button and my camera taking the photo. The shots I’ve put up here are IMHO the best ones. If your interested, you can see the rest of them here.
Rob K:
Interesting though they are, I think this pic will produce more comments .
AAGHHH!!!
Sorry Simon,I have a nervous disposition.
The worst crossing I had was on the ‘Rosebay’,a ship chartered to Stena Line and was used on the Hook-Harwich route.
When we sailed from the Hook just after midday the wind was getting pretty bad.
As usual,as soon as dinner had been served the crew did a vanishing act,which they did every crossing,and I retired to bed.
The cabin I had was mid-ships,and the bed faced port to starboard.
The problem was,the mattress was smaller than the bed frame,and every time the ship pitched and rolled the mattress would slide up and down the frame!
It got so bad that most of the time I was almost standing in bed,so bad in fact that I thought we would go over and so I got dressed and laid on the bed with my coat on ready to rush for the lifeboats.
But,we made it to Harwich,and I lived to tell the tale.
We had to steam 6 hours the wrong way on our way to Stavanger in late '89. I was quite surprised how many times a man can be sick. I even ran out of carrots.
RobK
Interesting though they are, I think this pic will produce more comments.
Bloody hell,Keith “Rosebay”,what a blast from the past that name is,god i used to try every trick in the book to avoid that heap!!,breakdowns’s etc.,but still ended up catching the thing
Caught it around 10 times and only had 1 meal,and that ended up down the loo!!
Funny i used to notice the crew used to disapear after we left the Hook or Harwich,i always thought it was because of the tall brunette lady that worked on there when i used to catch it though!
Certainly preferred the "Beatrix"or the “Stena Europe” or even better the freight boats out of Felixstowe.
Before it was DFDS it was Brittany Ferries. Before that it was on the Baltic, I’m not sure which line though.
According to the crew, it wasn’t just the outside that was a bit rough. It took them three weeks of scrubbing to get the inside to what they considered “a reasonable condition”.
The Val was ok really. The crossing to Santander from Plymouth was 24 hours, and it used to get a bit choppy. I never saw anyone particularly green on there although the bar was always well attended.
The roughest boat was the Coutances freighter on the Cherbourg/Poole run. Reverse on and always try to get on the top deck so you could sleep in your truck and avoid the wonderful cabins. Got on there once with a load of French Armee de Terre. They were swaggering around the ship, so full of themselves, and took all the “best” grub. 5 minutes after the ship got out of the harbour and started swinging in the force 10 gale, that food was washing around the deck.
Every single one of them turned as green as their uniform fatigues. No driver barfed but every single one of them did.
KW:
The worst crossing I had was on the ‘Rosebay’,a ship chartered to Stena Line and was used on the Hook-Harwich route.
a bit late on this one but
I remember being on that “lovely liner” on her first week when it was sailing to Rotterdam because the linkspan wasn’t finished at Hoek (or summat like that)
Was having a ciggy out on deck next to the Barrell type inflatable life boats and noticed they all had 1 inch metal transit strapping on them with the words “Must be removed 24 hrs after placement” clearly visible on them in RED.
but even worse they were still there for weeks and weeks after
So I would not have counted on the “Lifeboats” arriving Keith
host these photos.
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