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The Ben


Liberalis

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I always find it amazing that the Lady of Man can cross in any weather and always does it with much more grace!

 

Rick Tomlinson 'Lady of Man' caught in atrocious weather off the Isle of Man.

 

Photo credit: Rick Tomlinson/Bluegreen

 

110514.jpg

18 October 1984

 

Stav.

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Awesome pictures! Love 'em. :)

 

Agree about the Lady as well. Glad she's back here again as I like watching her leave port every morning on my way to work.

It'll be a sad day when she's no longer in service.

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i've been on the lady of man in conditions similar or maybe even worse than that in the ben my chree pictures. managed it to liverpool in one piece, just! im glad i wasnt on the sea cat during the crossing

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I always find it amazing that the Lady of Man can cross in any weather and always does it with much more grace!

 

Stav.

Aye, the Lady of Mann was the last ship the Steam Packet actually had purpose-built for the job of crossing the Irish Sea, everything since has been hand-me-downs...

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I think it was either manxbird or manxmaid that put some pictures up here (or manxonline) showing King Orry in her new role. Has definately moved on to sunnier climbs, I remember that much for sure.

 

Just did a bit of digging around, and found this :

 

King Orry

 

Moby Love looks like this

 

Moby_Love.jpg

 

For This shipping company.

 

Hope its of use :D

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Last one

 

medium.jpg

 

Sorry if this page took a while to load  :)

OMG. Thats the one I came over on - not been a sea liking person I am glad I did not come over that day.... Just shown my other half who was also with me who said she would not have got on if that was the case.....

 

Where can I find bigger versions of these photos ? Quite fancy a change on the ol' desktop.

 

Terrran

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One can only begin to imagine the screams from passengers as it rolled around to sh1t scary angles like that!

I'd imagine there would be some gold medal winners on board too if there was an olympic competition for extreme chundering.... :o

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This could be just apocryphal nonsense but I heard that the Ben was actually designed to be much longer/larger than the ship we see today. The design was cut down, making her far more buoyant than expected and resulting in tonnes of ballast having to be placed in the hull to make her more stable.

 

As I say, it could be just a story – anyone able to substantiate that?

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Haven't heard that I must admit but she always looks very high in the water when she's heading out full of empty containers.

 

Thinking about it I've seen pictures on the web of identical looking ships that must been made by the same people but I suppose without seeing the specs & stats for them it's be hard to tell if one would be a bit longer than another or whatever.

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When I moved here back in January 1996, I came over on the King Orry. The sailing was cancelled and delayed for about 10 hours and when we did sail, it was still a force 9 gale (IIRC). I'm not too bad on boats, seeing as I've lived on islands for most of my life but boy, was I ill on that journey!

 

Another memorable trip was from Jersey to Guernsey on a catamaran in similar conditions. One of the lifesaver cannisters on the side of the cat came off/open during the voyage and set off a flare (which from the inside of the cat, looked like smoke and flames!) me and the missus were pretty concerned (some of the other passengers were putting lifejackets on) but the crew (all French) were not concerned at all and did nothing to calm the worries of the passengers. I seriously thought that was it, I've never before or since had such a bad crossing (huge swells, cat rising up and then dropping huge distances with thundering crashes). A very unpleasant crossing indeed that I would not wish onanyone at all. To top it all, the Gestapo Guernsey customs had the audacity to fecking stop me on the way off the boat (I apparently have one of those faces that they just don't like - only them though, never had it anywhere else in the world!). After 10 minutes of stupid, needless questions I was let through (grr, I fecking hate them!!!). Despite all of that, I still didn't chuck though, but just about everyone else did (including the missus). I felt like sh1t for the rest of the night though.

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