As some of you may well know, this was the very ship that a motley crew of us, which included myself, CiH, Matt Smith, Jon Hayward and Franky - travelled on back during Easter in the year 2000, when we decided to go by car to the first ever Sillyventure demoparty, being held in the wonderful city of Gdansk in northern Poland, on the Baltic coast. Yes, we had a car with us too (a borrowed Vauxhall / Opel Cavalier from my housemate at the time) and as it was the first time I'd personally driven within the European mainland (and, I suspect, the same kind of thing for CiH and Matt) I reckon we were all rather relieved to get out there and back relatively unscathed. The car came back with us in full working order, with a few more miles on the clock but no damage that we were aware of :)

Some of you will wonder why this article is here - and that is a good question. Up until 2008 - when we started to use the Eurotunnel for our crossings to the Continental mainland, the Stena HSS Discovery catamaran, which was described pretty well by Chris in the most recent Maggie diskmag release back at STNICCC 2000, was our transport mode of choice for getting to the mainland. We would roll up at Harwich, on the Eastern coast of the UK (the toilet with a port attached, according to at least one infamous writer mentioned already in this article) get checked in and get onto the catamaran / fast-ferry in due course a little while afterwards.

The reason why this article is here is a sad one, but following some discoveries made online, it turns out that the HSS Discovery, at the time of writing this article, is currently on the shoreline at the city of Aligia in Turkey, being pulled apart for scrappage purposes. She left the Harwich - Hoek van Holland route back in 2007 due to the high cost of oil during that decade and was originally bought to be used as a medical ship in Venezuela after Stena replaced her with two slower traditional ferries.

This did not happen for very long (if it even happened at all) and she was laid up in Curacao port for a number of years between then and now. She became a ghost ship as a result and was sold by Venezuela to Turkey for a very cheap price, towed over and scrapped during the summer of 2015.

We'll try to get a decent picture here within this article, but if not, please look at the HTML-based version to see the picture.

I personally have a number of excellent memories of the ship. Usually when we got on, we'd grab some decent seats close to the big screen in the lounge area. The big screen in itself would normally be running various Stena-related promotions and also music videos. It was here, back in 2000 (I think, though it could have been 2001) when a lot of us saw the video and heard the lyrics for the infamous Europop song called 'Who let the Dogs Out', a song that became an earworm and remains so, even to this day.

There was one particular crossing that CiH and I made by ourselves, where the sea was very rough, I think it might have been on one of our trips home. Neither of us got seasick though as we managed to get a set of 4 seats around the middle of the ship, in the lounge area, in front of the big screen showing the music videos as per usual. It felt rather weird - in fact I felt rather drunk even though I was completely sober at the time - to wander along the corridors of the ship to get over to the duty-free store towards the rear of the HSS Discovery.

It has to be said that the duty-free shop, whilst small, certainly did what it was supposed to do. There were vast amounts of spirits, wine and, of course, beer on sale at Dutch rather than UK prices. One of the rules which Stena had was that the duty-free store had to be closed once the Discovery reached 20 miles or so offshore from the UK (on journeys back) and could not open until the ship was at a similar position, heading out towards her home in the Netherlands.

Food offerings on the ship were good, to say the least. Those who wanted a sit-down meal could get this in the restaurant that was at the front of the Discovery (with prices to match). For the rest of us, there was a McDonald's restaurant in the lounge area and also options to get other kinds of food too. For us, we tended usually to get the burger meals, but these were good to eat.

I guess there is a time when all good things must come to an end; this is certainly the case with the HSS Discovery. She will live on though, within the memories of those who who travelled on her over the years. Not just those of within the Atari scene back in 2000-2006, but many others too completely unconnected.

Rest in Peace, Stena HSS Discovery. You were one of the best ships that I personally ever travelled on - much better than most if not all of the old ferries that I used to go on when travelling from Dover to Calais with my parents, back in the day when we used to go to France on holiday in the summer. Whilst it was a shock to see you being dismantled in 2015 - we'd have preferred you to have been used as part of a maritime museum or conference centre, in order to preserve history, it unfortunately is too late for that. As I wrote earlier, you will be remembered. You are already represented, via an enterprising coder, as a level to explore in the relatively new gaming title, Minecraft. That goes to show how great you were.

Cheers,

Felice.

- CiH - Add on -

Many thanks to Felice for those recollections, and I'd like to add a few words of my own as well.

There is a picture of the ship looking forlorn and being dismantled in Turkey. I've got it here.

The Stena Discovery was one of three HSS 1500 class ships built. The others were the Stena Voyager and the Stena Explorer. At time of writing, all of these have now been taken out of service. The other facts reported above are pretty much correct, although the Discovery was supposed to be put back into service as a ferry at Curacao, but did not attract sufficient interest. They did not have a long career, due to the fuel consumption issues raised above. It was a shame, as the high speed catamaran concept, at 40 knots plus, was quite an appealing way to get across the North Sea in a reasonable time (four hours).

Another possible reason for the HSS 1500's not transferring to new owners after Stena Line had finished with them, is that they need specially designed port facilities, specifically the loading ramp or linkspan, which are not used at any other ports.

My own personal recollections are below.

1. The busy Easter trips, especially the one where we partook of the proper buffet restaurant and could only find spare seating afterwards in the casino section with the smokers. In contrast, some of the return trips were a bit more relaxed.

2. The Venga Boys on the video wall in the central bar area.

3. Lots of weirdness in general on the video wall, especially the low budget and lo-fi 'STENA VALUE!' adverts.

4. The rather decent 'Discovery Burgers', on the last couple of trips after they sacked the McDonalds franchise.

5. The one rough crossing that Felice mentioned above. We'd managed to get seats in the central bar area, as per usual, where the pitching motion of the ship was least noticeable, so no queasiness issues for us. Others were not so wise, as I discovered a sink full of sea-sickness in the toilets near the end of that journey.

6. One of my least favourite recollections comes from the 2002 (Mekka Symposium) trip, where we missed the morning sailing, and had too much time to kill until the evening. We discovered just how 'toilety' Harwich was!

Anyway, HSS Stena Discovery, you will be missed!

For Maggie 25th Anniversary issue - Sept 2015.

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