Edward Sandle on Transport

Lisa: What was the main kind of shipping through the Solent in the ‘70’s?

A lot more cargo ships than there are now and there are still a few passenger liners which we have now, ferries and a lot more cargo ships and tankers, but of course the ships were a lot smaller then so there were more of them. The cargo ships have mainly gone now.

They’ve been replaced by container ships which if you see them are huge things if you ever see them going round the Island. They’re getting bigger and bigger all the time. They’re sort of 1600 going up to 2000 containers now, they’re huge and they’ve gone now.

All the cargo ships are all gone now, the ships I sailed on, which had quite big crews. We had a crew of about 50 on the cargo ship and about 6 or 7000 tonnes. These enormous things about 200,000 tonnes have got about 10 or 11.

It’s changed completely.