Viking II
 As Earl William in Dun Laoghaire
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The passenger and cargo ship Viking II was a combined passenger and RoRo ferry . As Windward II, it collided on April 2, 2011 while being towed to be scrapped with the Petrosaudi Saturn oil drilling ship and then sank.
history
The Norwegian shipping company Otto Thoresen took over the ship in 1964 as the second in a series of three combined passenger and car ferries that were built at Kaldnes Mekaniske Verksted in Tønsberg and Orenstein-Koppel in Lübeck. The ship was used by the Otto Thoresen Shipping Company on several routes.
Initially, the Viking II connected Southampton and Cherbourg, later it also drove from Southampton to Le Havre and between Tilbury and Antwerp. From 1968 Thoresen worked with Townsend Car Ferries in Dover and transferred the Viking II to Thoresen Car Ferries, for which it was used from Dover to Zeebrugge and later again on the lines from Southampton to Cherbourg and Le Havre. In the early 1970s, Stena Line chartered the ship in Gothenburg and operated it between Gothenburg and Frederikshavn without being renamed. From 1974 the ferry was chartered by Lion Ferry in Halmstad on the Varberg-Grenå route. In 1976 Lloyds Leasing from London acquired the ship, which operated as Earl William for Sealink and Sealink British Ferries until 1986 on alternating lines from Portsmouth, Weymouth and Cherbourg to St. Peter on Guernsey and Saint Helier on Jersey.
After lay-up times in Weymouth and on the River Fal, the ship served as refugee accommodation in Harwich, where it was torn from the mooring and driven aground in a hurricane on October 16, 1987.
After a repair period, the Earl William operated the lines Liverpool to Dun Laoghaire, Belfast to Liverpool, Folkestone to Boulogne and between Holyhead and Dun Laoghaire.
In 1992 the Ardonis Shipping Company bought the ship and initially shortened the name to William . From 1992 the ship served as Pearl William for Neptunus Lines between Bari, Igoumenitsa, Brindisi and Patras, from 1993 then for European Seaways in the Mediterranean on various routes between Bari, Brindisi, Igoumenitsa, Piraeus and Cesme. In 1996 the ferry was sold to the P&L Ferries Shipping Company in Valletta, who first used it as Mar-Julia in Igoumenitsa and Bari and later in Thessaloniki, Istanbul and Odessa. As early as 1997, the company Lucky Shipping from Kingstown acquired the ship and chartered it to the shipping company Stern Lines, which operated it as Cesme Stern between Bari and Cesme until 2000. In 2000, the Windward Lines from Kingstown bought the ship, renamed it Windward II and launched it in Bari. From 2003 the ship then sailed between Kingstown, Port Of Spain and La Guira, and from 2006 again between Trinidad and Tobago.
After a renovation, it was used as a hotel ship in Chaguaramas from 2007 and marketed under the name Ocean Pearl . On a towing trip from Nassau to San Domingo for scrapping, the Windward II collided with the oil drilling ship Petrosaudi Saturn on April 2, 2011 and sank as a result.
Web links
- Viking II on faktaomfartyg.se (Swedish), accessed November 30, 2016
- Ocean Pearl ( ex.Viking II) on faergelejet.dk (Danish), accessed November 30, 2016
- M / F Windward II on simplonpc.co.uk, accessed November 30, 2016
Individual evidence
- ↑ Viking II data on Miramar Ship Index , accessed November 30, 2016