Aust Ferry - The Car Ferry

The Car Ferry

The ferry service gained a new lease of life, however, with the growth of motor traffic, and a service was re-opened in 1926. Between 1931 and 1966, a ferry service was operated by Enoch Williams of the Old Passage Severn Ferry Company Ltd. Initially, this was only able to transport passengers with bicycles and motorbikes, but, by 1934, the Severn Queen was launched as a car ferry. It was able to carry just 17 cars. Each car had to turn sharply off the ramp onto the ferry, then be turned on a manually operated turntable before being parked. The process was reversed for unloading. The ferry timetable was notoriously affected by the huge tidal range on the Severn. It was unable to operate at low tide or at very high tides. The last ferry crossing occurred on 8 September 1966, the day before the first Severn Bridge opened.

The Martin Scorsese film No Direction Home about the life of Bob Dylan has a promotional shot of Dylan standing in front of the Aust ferry terminal in May 1966, not long before it closed for good.

The last remaining ferry boat, the Severn Princess which had been launched in 1959, was found wrecked, abandoned and full of fertiliser in Ireland in 1999 by Dr. Richard Jones, the grandson of Enoch Williams, and returned to Beachley in 2003. For some years the vessel rested alongside the Beachley slipway but was then moved to the west bank of the River Wye in Chepstow, beneath the railway bridge. After some talk of restoration, the vessel is now derelict and increasingly vandalised.

Several older roadsigns around central Bristol (in 2007) still show directions to "Aust Ferry", but with the word "ferry" painted out.