The Connacht was delivered in January 1979 and began service on February 7, 1979, initially between Cork and Swansea . On May 22, 1979, this service was moved to the newly opened line Cork - Pembroke Dock , which the Connacht managed in eight hours. In September 1980 she was moved to the Dublin - Liverpool route, on which her sister ship the Leinster (now Madeleine ) also operated from July 1981 . In order to improve the profitability of the loss-making shipping company, a daily return trip Dublin – Holyhead was inserted between the overnight trips Dublin – Liverpool – Dublin in the spring of 1981 . In the spring of 1986, the interior of the Connacht and her sister ship Leinster was fundamentally changed, caused by the change from mainly night to day trips between Dublin and Holyhead. The cabins on the upper deck, the previous main cabin deck, have been replaced by a spacious duty-free shop, a cinema and lounges with adjustable reclining chairs. The restaurant and cocktail lounge on the service deck have been replaced by a self-service cafeteria and the previous cateteria has been converted into a restaurant. On January 6, 1988, the Connacht made her last voyage on the Dublin-Liverpool route, on which only the Leinster now operated, and on January 12, 1988, she opened the new Rosslare Harbor- Pembroke Dock route.
Brittany Ferries: Duchesse Anne
In June 1988 the precarious financial situation forced the shipping company to sell the Connacht to the French Société Anonyme Bretonne d'Economie Mixte d`Equipment Navale (SABEMEN), which handed the ship over to its sister company Brittany Ferries for management. From October 3, 1988, the ship was completely overhauled at the Meyer shipyard in Papenburg , before it came back into service under the new name Duchesse Anne . First it chartered for a few weeks in January and February 1989 for the Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland (SMZ), which at that time operated under the name Crown Line, between Hoek van Holland and Harwich , but then it was on the Route Saint on February 13, 1989 -Malo - Portsmouth put into service by Brittany Ferries. From June 1993, when the much larger Brittany took over this route, the Duchesse Anne then drove from both Saint-Malo and Roscoff to Plymouth and Cork. From 1994 she also operated the seasonal route Saint-Malo– Poole on a trial basis . At the end of the summer season 1996, the Duchesse Anne was withdrawn from service and in October 1996 sold to the Croatian ferry company Jadrolinija in Rijeka .
Jadrolinija: Dubrovnik
The ship was renamed Dubrovnik and renovated and modified for its new role, passenger ferry service along the Croatian coast and across the Adriatic Sea to and from Italy. Today the Dubrovnik is licensed for 1,300 passengers and 300 cars. It has 459 beds in 149 cabins and 384 recliners. The facilities include a restaurant with 135 seats, a cafeteria with 224 seats, a bar-café with 274 seats, a cinema with 96 seats, a video room, a play room for children, and shopping arcades. The ship drove on many routes along the Dalmatian coast, so u. a. between Rijeka, Split , Stari Grad and Korčula and to Bari and Ancona in Italy, but after the break line between Rijeka and Dubrovnik it is mainly used on the Split – Ancona route.
↑ In the first few months this led to considerable tensions with the port operators of Sealink UK Ltd., a subsidiary of the British Railways Board , in Holyhead. Twice, on March 2 and March 9, 1981, Sealink employees prevented the Connacht from docking with boats . In return, the crew of the B + I ferry Munster blocked the Sealink's St. David in Dún Laoghaire .
↑ The Société Anonyme Bretonne d'Economie Mixte d`Equipment Navale (SABEMEN) was a subsidiary of the Breton SA Bretagne - Angleterre - Irlande (BAI), which was also the parent company of Brittany Ferries; see archived copy ( memento of the original from October 20, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.isemar.asso.fr
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