[ 13 ] Nor-Shipping is where the entire chain of the maritime equipment industry meets, so attending the event also provided a perfect picture of what latest technologies were available on the market. After all, more than ten years had passed since we pushed the button on our Spirit-class project. Ordered in August 2008, the Spirit-class — just like our Fusion-class ships of the future — started from a clean sheet of paper, being designed from the bottom up, taking in the latest trends in both shipboard and shore-based interior design. With their impressive intake of 2,741 freight lanemetres plus 1,000 car lanemetres on a separate 3.3-metre-high upper car deck, the Spirit-class represented a quantum jump compared with the ships they replaced, the 1987-built Chunnel beaters Pride of Dover and Pride of Calais. Their ability to easily manage freight at peak times was, and still is, one of the Spirit-class’s uniqueness. Rather than building an improved, ‘lessons learned’ Mk II version of the Spirit-class we decided to start from scratch again. The Spirits were an evolution of the Darwin-class with an optimised hullform, way better fuel economy and larger payload. At the time of their conception, alternative fuels and especially hybrid technology were still in their infancy or nonexistent, at least on ro-pax ferries the scale of the Spirits. So, the Spirits came with a conventional propulsion plant of four AHEAD OF THE PACK P&O Ferries has always been at the forefront of innovation, pioneering the first drive-through and double-decker ro-pax ferries on the Channel in the mid-1960s and late 1970s, respectively. The first-generation Spirit-class, delivered in 1979–80, was well ahead of its time, leaving the competition far behind. In the absence of a fixed link and the climate change debate, speed was a unique selling proposition with the technically advanced Spiritclass guaranteeing 75-minute berth-to-berth crossing times. Such was their success that an improved, larger version of the Spirit trio was developed and introduced on the Dover–Calais route in 1987. Dubbed the Chunnel beaters, Pride of Dover and Pride of Calais were the first genuine jumbo ferries on the Dover–Calais route, being true gamechangers. The 1994 opening of the Channel Tunnel initially created overcapacity, resulting in a price war and P&O Ferries briefly joining forces with one of its rivals which eventually withdrew from the Channel arena. Rather than building anew, two of P&O Ferries’ so-called super freighters were converted to fully fledged ro-pax ferries in 2003. Coined the Darwin project, this was a code name given to underline the ‘evolution’ from super-freighter to ro-pax ferry. The Darwins represented a kind of stopgap solution until the arrival of a second-generation Spirit-class in 2011–12. Spirit of Britain and Spirit of France represented yet another big step forward on account of their ability to efficiently manage freight, also boasting a separate dedicated car deck. With the arrival of the state-of-the-art P&O Pioneer and P&O Liberté, P&O Ferries is entering a whole new era. Pioneering the double-ender concept on the Channel, the diesel-battery hybrid ships stand out in many ways, not least because of being the world’s most innovative and greenest ferries. SHIPBUILDING
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NzQ1NTk=