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Hoverspeed was a ferry company that operated on the English Channel from 1981 until 2005. It was formed in 1981 by the merger of Seaspeed and Hoverlloyd.Its last owners were Sea Containers; the company ran a small fleet of two high-speed SeaCat catamaran ferries in its final year.
HSC Cat was launched as SeaCat Tasmania in October 1990. The vessel's first spell in service was on charter to Tasmanian Ferry Services and was deployed on the route across Bass Strait between Port Welshpool and George Town until 1992 when the vessel moved to England operating across the English Channel between Dover and Calais and also Folkestone and Boulogne-sur-Mer for Hoverspeed. [3]
Seacat was a British short-range surface-to-air missile system intended to replace the ubiquitous Bofors 40 mm gun aboard warships of all sizes. It was the world's first operational shipboard point-defence missile system, and was designed so that the Bofors guns could be replaced with minimum modification to the recipient vessel and (originally) using existing fire-control systems.
Hoverlloyd was not the only hovercraft operator that decided to move on the cross-Channel market at the time; a rival company Seaspeed, owned by British Rail, was established and launched its own competing route between Calais and Dover. The two firms would compete with one another, as well as incumbent ferry operators, for market share ...
A hovercraft (pl.: hovercraft [1]), also known as an air-cushion vehicle or ACV, [2] is an amphibious craft capable of travelling over land, water, mud, ice, and various other surfaces. Hovercraft use blowers to produce a large volume of air below the hull, or air cushion, that is slightly above atmospheric pressure. The pressure difference ...
Hovercraft landing in Calais Boarding a Hovercraft with a vehicle. The SR.N4 (Saunders-Roe Nautical 4) [1] hovercraft (also known as the Mountbatten class hovercraft) was a combined passenger and vehicle-carrying class of hovercraft. [2] The type has the distinction of being the largest civil hovercraft to have ever been put into service.
Capacity 1520 passengers + 375 cars, or 120 cars + 50 freight units (900 lane metres) Gross tonnage 19,638 Length 126.6 m (411.45 ft) Beam 40.0 m (130 ft)
HSC Hoverspeed France at Dover in 1992. Caldera Vista was launched as Hoverspeed France for Sea Containers, for use with Hoverspeed, in 1991; and operated as the Sardegna Express on charter, before returning to Hoverspeed as the SeaCat Boulogne.