As we know, the liner days are gone. But it is still possible to sail regular routes on ships, some quite lenghty like the P&O service between Portsmouth in England and Bilbao (Bilbo) in the Basque Country. This service, one day and one night at sea, is a little like an ocean liner voyage. It is also a little like the first services operated by the Peninsular Steam & Navigation Company, the forerunner of the P&O Line. Some well-known European ferrycompanies also have their roots in linertravels. like the above named P&O Ferries of course, but also the DFDS Seaways for example. Ferryroutes are also older then the big linerroutes on the Pacific, Indian Ocean and Atlantic. So it is a very interesting part of seatravel, also when you want to keep the past in mind.

Ferry history is by no means comparable to ocean liner or cruiseship-history in historic context. The oldest continuesly sailed ferryroute in the world is the service between the towns of Rocky Hill and Glastonbury in Connecticut in the United States Of America. This service is now sailing from the year 1655 onwards. Of course, if we believe the Greek mythology, ferries are still a little bit older because the profession of ferryman is given to Charon, who ferries souls across the River Styx to the underworld in mythological times. In the 4th centrury, the Romans seem to use oxes to propell ferries by use of a waterwheel. It is hard to believe, but it is possible and a more modern form of this was used at Lake Champlain in the USA in the 19th century. This time, horses did the trick. The first steam-powered ferry, when we say ferryhistory really started, sailed in 1811 between New York and Hoboken, New Jersey. This ferry was named Juliana, and started sailing at the 11th of october of that year. She was invented by John Stevens, a 1749-born American lawyer, engineer and inventor from New Jersey. Most people don't know him anymore, but he was in fact the man who built the first steamship that sailed the open ocean, the Phoenix in 1806. 

Next to the internationally well-known ferrycompanies, I have included some smaller ferries that sail national route's in the Netherlands. Often, the companies they are sailing for have a long and interesting history. They are a very important part of the fleet of passengerships because they mostly sail to islands that do not have another connection to the mainland. In that way, for me they represent a link to a time in which there were no aircraft and people relied on passengerships. Next to that, these ferries can be very handsome also, and sometimes their size can equal that of smaller or midsized cruiseliners.

King Of Scandinavia of DFDS Seaways entering from Newcastle at the port of IJmuiden under the rays of morning sunlight on the 6th of june 2010.