Winston Churchill (ship)
 The Winston Churchill
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The Winston Churchill was a ferry of the Danish Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab (DFDS), which entered service in 1967. The ship remained in service until 1996 and was then sold as Mayan Express to Norway , but without being used again. 2004 went Mayan Express after eight years of time spent on scrapping the Indian Alang .
history
The Winston Churchill was ordered on July 14, 1965 from Cantieri Navali del Torrino e Riuniti in Genoa and laid down on January 15, 1966 under hull number 277. The ship was launched on May 25, 1966. After the takeover by Det Forenede Dampskibs-Selskab on May 19, 1967, Winston Churchill was baptized on May 28. Godmother was Clementine Churchill , the widow of the namesake Sir Winston Churchill, who had died two years earlier . On June 2, 1967, the ship finally began ferry operations on the route from Esbjerg to Harwich .
In 1971 the Winston Churchill was rebuilt, which increased its passenger capacity from 450 to 750 people. On August 26, 1979, the ship ran aground off Newcastle upon Tyne and had to be towed free. The passengers were previously evacuated by helicopter. After lengthy repair work, it resumed ferry operations on March 24, 1980.
In the course of her service life, the Winston Churchill was in service on various ferry routes. From December 1985 to August 1986 it briefly belonged to the Danish company Molslinjen before it was bought back by DFDS. From 1987 to 1991 the ship was used for cruises off Scandinavia in addition to the normal ferry service from May to June and August to October .
After renovations at Nobiskrug in Rendsburg in January 1989, Winston Churchill served as refugee accommodation in the port of Malmö until 1992 . From November 1992 she started the ferry service from Rostock to Trelleborg under the charter of the TR-Line . From April 1993 the ship sailed the route from Hamburg via Newcastle upon Tyne to Esbjerg.
On April 3, 1996, a fire broke out in the engine room of the Winston Churchill , which severely damaged it. Although the ship was subsequently repaired and put back into service, DFDS decided to sell it after 29 years of service. On July 8, 1996, Winston Churchill went to Emerald Empress Holding under the name Mayan Express . The ship was henceforth under the flag of St. Vincent and the Grenadines .
The Mayan Express was transferred to Westcon Shipyard in Vikebygd in July 1996 to be rebuilt there, but this was not realized after the bankruptcy of its owner in 1997. In the following years the ship lay in front of Norway and changed hands several times, but without getting back on the road. In January 2004, the Mayan Express was sold for scrapping in Alang, India, where it arrived on January 24th.
Web links
- the ship on faktaomfartyg.se (Swedish)
- the ship on dfdsconnects.com (English)
- the ship on midshipcentury.com (English)