Wind of change
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It's an ill wind . . A couple of days after the cancellation of the Channel tunnel project was announced by the British Government was the date planned by TT-Line of Hamburg, largest car ferry operator in the Baltic, for its announcement that it is joining in the cross-Channel traffic. Specifically, with a service on the Southampton-St Mato route beginning May 28; it will take coaches but, in its first year, only the occasional lorry, my colleague was told: TT-Line was founded by a Scotsman, William Miller — "in the days when Britain ruled the waves," says director Dr Johan Binder, with only, I am sure, unintentional nostalgia — in Hamburg in 1826. For its crossChannel ferry it is withdrawing my Gosta Berling from the Baltic and renaming it Mary Poppins.
The company reckons it will create an extra 5 per cent "curiosity traffic" and that it needs only to retain 3 per cent. it seems quite concerned, my colleague tells me, to make extra traffic rather than capture other firms' passengers. Almost seems that in the ferry trade dog, or rather shark, does not eat shark. So different from another trade I could mention.