In the late 19th century, the Great Eastern Railway (GER), wishing to compete with its rivals who were operating from the Kent coast to France and Belgium, obtained the rights to provide a cargo and cattle service to Rotterdam.
Dudgeon also supplied the 1865 built Avalon, 670 gt, which was powered by a two-cylinder oscillating engine that gave a speed of 14 knots.
[1] When the service first started, ships bound for Rotterdam had to negotiate the Brielle Bar to enter the river Maas with access possible only at high water.
The Great Eastern paddle steamer, Richard Young, was the first seagoing vessel to use the direct link to the city.
The new route enabled passengers to leave London in the evening and, after arrival in the Hook before 6 am, be in Amsterdam at breakfast time and reach Berlin by the end of the day.
The Dutch had their own services from Flushing, which was operated by Stoomvaart Maatschappij Zeeland (SMZ) which was created in 1875, which ran firstly to Queenborough near Sheerness and then to Folkestone.
In 1926, SMZ moved its English port to Harwich providing day sailings but did not start using the Hook of Holland until after the Second World War.
This fully integrated service was operated from November 1968 under the Sealink banner with each ship leaving port by day and returning overnight.
In 1990, when Stena Line took control of the route, the Harwich to Hook of Holland service was being operated with two passenger and one freight Ro-Ro vessels.
[5] The ferry consumed 180,000 litres of high grade fuel daily whilst doing its four crossings at speeds of up to 45 knots, about 75 kilometres per hour.
In 1987 Townsend Thoresen were taken over by P&O Ferries who in turn sold the route in 2002 to Stena who then moved the British end of the operation to Harwich.