Isle of Man Steam Packet Company
She first entered services between Dover and Calais for Sea Containers subsidiary Hoverspeed in 1997, named HSC SuperSeaCat Two before moving to the Irish Sea in 1998 primarily for service between Liverpool and Dublin but also for Isle of Man Steam Packet services between Liverpool and Douglas. The vessel returned to Hoverspeed in 1999 to reopen the Newhaven-Dieppe route which had been closed by P&O Stena Line earlier that year. Her place on the Irish Sea was taken by her sister, SuperSeaCat Three.
In 2000, she once again sailed on the Irish Sea, this time between Heysham and Belfast but again returned to Hoverspeed this time for service between Dover and Calais or Ostend operating alongside 2 of her 3 sisters. After spending some time laid up in Portsmouth she returned to service on the Newhaven-Dieppe run before being chartered to the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, which had by then been sold by Sea Containers.
In May 2008, it was announced that the Steam Packet Company had purchased Incat 050 (now Manannan), and it would replace Viking from the 2009 season. At the end of the 2008 season, Viking sailed to Alexandra Dock in Liverpool to lay-up for the winter. In January 2009, Viking left drydock to cover the passenger sailings of Ben-my-Chree, which had gone into drydock for propeller repairs. After Ben-my-Chree returned to service, Viking returned to lay-up in Liverpool.
Read more about this topic: HSC Hellenic Wind
Famous quotes containing the words isle, man, steam, packet and/or company:
“She carries in the dishes,
And lays them in a row.
To an isle in the water
With her would I go.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“Each man has his own vocation. The talent is the call. There is one direction in which all space is open to him. He has faculties silently inviting him thither to endless exertion. He is like a ship in the river; he runs against obstructions on every side but one; on that side all obstruction is taken away, and he sweeps serenely over a deepening channel into an infinite sea.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
““If Steam has done nothing else, it has at least added a whole new Species to English Literature ... the booklets—the little thrilling romances, where the Murder comes at page fifteen, and the Wedding at page forty—surely they are due to Steam?”
“And when we travel by electricity—if I may venture to develop your theory—we shall have leaflets instead of booklets, and the Murder and the Wedding will come on the same page.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“The captain was a duck
With a packet on his back,
And when the ship began to move
The captain said, Quack! Quack!”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. I saw a ship a-sailing (l. 13–16)
“Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)