[3] The people behind Seaborne Freight were claimed to have many years of English Channel ferry experience including with Sealink, SeaFrance and MyFerryLink.

for possessing a shotgun, in relation to a protest by animal rights activists against a live cattle exporting company in Shoreham-by-Sea of which he was a director in the 1990s.

[11] On 22 December 2018, the company was awarded a £13.8 million contract to run ferry services between Ramsgate and Ostend to lessen the consequences of probable capacity constraints on the Dover - Calais route after 29 March 2019 in the case of a no-deal Brexit.

In early January 2019, it was reported that Seaborne was aiming to begin operating services with two ships in late March, rising to four by the end of the summer.

[12] According to the government, the award of the contract without prior publication of an invitation to tender in the Official Journal of the European Union (OJEU) was justified by the "extreme urgency" brought about by unforeseeable events.

Critics also pointed out that the Port of Ramsgate would need to be dredged before services could begin and raised questions as to whether due diligence checks had been undertaken before the award of the contract.

[18][19] On 7 January 2019, Joanna Cherry MP enquired in the House of Commons about the reason for the government using Regulation 32 procedures to enable it to negotiate the Seaborne contract behind closed doors without a published invitation to tender, when it had known for some time that there was a risk of the UK leaving the EU without a deal.

[21] On 9 January 2019, the Financial Times reported that Seaborne itself acknowledged that services would run by late April 2019 at the earliest, and that inaccurate investor briefings had been issued by the company.

[22] In January 2019, Private Eye magazine reported that "Ben Sharp's other company, Albany Shipping (which also has no boats)" claimed to have been "fundamental in the creation of a new shipping fund in the UK specifically for the purpose of purchasing offshore vessels […] based in Gibraltar and […] managed by Flexagon Capital Solutions LLP in London”; the magazine also quoted Flexagon's boss as saying that it had "'never raised a pound', was dormant and had nothing to do with Seaborne".

[26] Eurotunnel, the operator of the Channel Tunnel, filed a complaint at the High Court, saying that the government had awarded the contract through a "secretive and flawed procurement process.