Heysham-based Seatruck Ferries was formed in 1996 by a group of senior managers who left Merchant Ferries after their Heysham-Warrenpoint service, established in 1986, was dropped in favour of a route to Belfast. Now, 20 years oh, while Merchant Ferries are no more than a ferry industry memory, Seatruck has expanded to operate three Irish Sea freight routes and build a fleet of 12 vessels, six of them maintaining the original Heysham- Warrenpoint link, with newer services from Heysham and Liverpool to Dublin, while the remainder are chartered out. The initial private investor in Seatruck was ferry broker Hutch Wright of London & Wessex, sailings starting in April 1996 using the chartered Bolero (1985/10,273gt), one of a series of ro-ro freighters built at Wismar, Germany, by Mathias Thesen Wetft. She continued until May 1997, and then worked for operators including Argo Line, Est Line and Norfolk Line. Her ferry days ended in 2000, when she was converted by Remontowa at Gdansk into a cable-laying vessel.
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