Preparing to the dock

As soon as the ship arrived, we were inundated with interested parties wanting to trade from the ship and work was soon started to ensure the car deck was fit to house a market.

I was sure that the market would provide the biggest draw to the ship given my experience in that field in other areas of the country and I knew it had the potential to become extremely popular.

Enquiries were flooding in for all the concessions as well, such as the bars and the restaurants. It was finally looking like our faith in the project was fully justified and that we had a viable business proposition on our hands.

However, as per usual on this project, issues constantly cropped up and the biggest concern at the time was the safety of the ship itself.

Ships which frequently dock in tidal waters are of a specific design to ensure that the back of the ships don’t break when the tide goes out. Unfortunately, ferries, and in particular ferries converted from cruise ships which were designed and built in the late 1950’s aren’t of such a design!

Likewise, the ferocity of the tides in the River Dee and the exposed position of the ship itself meant it was continually taking a battering from the elements. There was massive, and totally justified concern, that the ship could be seriously damaged in such a position and we were becoming increasingly concerned that the ship would damage herself on the rocks.

We decided that the best way to alleviate the problem was to pump several hundred tons of sand around the ship and we had intended to bring this in using the cob road.

Having paid British Rail a large sum of money for the ship they had promised their support during the negotiations however that support dwindled to the point of open hostility and they blocked the cob road between The Duke and the bridge over the railway some half a mile away towards Mostyn.

As the road access was blocked by British Rail we needed to think fast. Where else could we get hundreds of tons of sand and how could we have them delivered to the site?

We looked towards the river. At low tide there was a sand bank no more than 100 yards away which must of contained millions of tons of sand so we had to find a way to pump the sand across and under the ship.

Yet again Captain Metcalfe was called upon and asked if he know of a vessel which we could moor in the channel and pump sand the 100 yards or so across the ship.

Luckily for us he knew of an old Weaver boat called The Laundola which was about to be scrapped and also an old concrete barge located in the Menai Straits. We purchased The Laundola for scrap and the barge for next to nothing and had them both brought around to The Ship.

Firstly, the barge was placed to the stern of the ship and was scuttled, this gave the ship a great deal of protection against the winds and tides.

Secondly we built a rig onto the side of The Laundola to which we strapped a sand pump which was powered from a generator located on deck.

We immediately had a make shift dredger capable of lifting sand from the river bed and pumping it around the ship.

It has been well documented by many, many web sites that The Duke is encased in concrete, this is most definitely not the case.