In 1987, the British government contracted a passenger ferry to act as a floating immigration detention centre for Tamil refugees. Later that year a storm set the ship loose from its moorings. Felix Bazalgette reports on the the little-known story of exodus and empire that paved the way for the Windrush scandal.
There are trainspotters and plane-spotters, so it should come as no surprise that there are also people who spend their days obsessed with passenger ferries.
For the community of people obsessed with ferries, specifically roll-on roll-off ferries of the 1960s and 1970s, the Earl William is relatively unremarkable. The ship was built in 1964 in Norway and bought by the British Railways Board in 1976 to sail between the Channel Islands and Portsmouth, under the nationalized Sealink brand.
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