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North East skills save stranded travellers

A P&O FERRY has managed to return thousands of stranded British tourists, thanks to the handy work of a Tyneside shipyard.

The Pride of Kent, the final P&O ferry to leave A&P Tyne after its annual MOT, is now back in business, returning people desperate to get home after the turmoil caused by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud.

The huge roll-on, roll-off ferry, which operates between Dover and Calais, was the last of four P&O vessels to undergo a winter re-fit on Tyneside.

It sailed out of the Tyne at the end of last month and will now prepare to carry the first of the 1.3 million passengers wanting travel across the English Channel this season.

P&O spokesman Brian Rees said: “The scale of the work and the skill of the engineers never ceases to amaze me.

“I can change a piston on a motorbike at a push and that’s the size of a teacup – but the pistons in our ships’ engines are the size of dustbins. To a layman, the sheer scale of the work they’ve done [on Tyneside] is mind-boggling.”

Between January and March of this year, the 210-strong workforce at A&P Tyne, worked on the Pride of Kent and Pride of Calais, which sail between Dover and France.

The refits took between 12 – 16 days for each ship, and all sailed out of the Tyne on time or sooner.

Stewart Boak, managing director of A&P Tyne, said the yard had worked “round-the-clock” to get the multi-million pound jobs done on time.

He added: “ The workforce here are proud of what they do. Every time a ship sails out of the yard, everyone takes a pride in delivering a good product back to the customer.“

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .