![\"](\"http:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/horsa-sunsethhv21_ul2.jpg\" "\\"horsa")
<\/a>As it turned out, the key assumption upon which this entire section of the business plan was based turned out to be flawed. The 1970s Channel Tunnel project was cancelled, and so the ships sailed on. More than a decade later, when the tunnel was eventually authorised, the ships were nearing the ends of their Channel careers and were sold two years before it opened to Greek owners for good prices (when the Hengist was sold by her first Greek owners Agapitos to Ventouris Sea Lines in 1993, the price achieved was approx \u00a37.5m). The ships proved more adaptable than J S Daniels could have possibly imagined, almost perfectly suited to Greek inter-island ferry operation in the 1990s. So on they sailed, well past the 20 year lifespan Sealink’s calculations had given them, into their third decades and then their fourth decades and fifth decades. <\/p>\n The Horsa passed in 1992 to Agoudimos Lines who placed her in service from Rafina to islands in the northern Cyclades – Andros, Tinos and Mykonos. For four years from late 1999 she fell under Hellas Ferries control as the Express Penelope, but she remained based at Rafina. For more than two decades the port was her home, and she usually sailed through the winter when most of her competitors retired for seasonal lay up. Agoudimos Lines got their ship back in 2004 but by late 2012 the company was in severe financial difficulty and the Penelope A entered a period of uncertainty, out of service. She was in operation around Easter 2013 and then again in late June that year before her crew went on strike over unpaid wages. A settlement of sorts was reached and the ship re-entered service for the summer peak on 23rd July. <\/p>\n 27th August 2013 marked 15,000 days since the ship had entered service at Folkestone back in August 1972. Seven days later came the end, both sudden yet expected – she was again taken out of service by her crew, still largely unpaid. In between times, on 31st August 2013, I made what I knew would, in all likelihood, be a final crossing on this proud old veteran. <\/p>\n For the Penelope A (named after Penelope Agoudimos and locally pronounced, Penelope Alpha), this time there were to be no second chances. The crew settled down for the long haul, occupying their ship where she lay – in the port of Rafina, prominently at the bottom of the cliffs from the residence of the former Prime Minister. The crew, seemingly abandoned by the operator, ran out of food and power, their plight featured in national and international media. In January 2014 the last crew members left the ship and, eventually, the Rafina port authority paid for a tug to tow the Penelope A, dead ship, over to lay up in Elefsis bay where she has remained ever since. <\/p>\n Set out below are some images from that final crossing, four days before the end of the ship’s long career. It’s fair to say she had seen better days and, although it is not immediately obvious here, a lack of maintenance and long-term care was apparent. But the ship had lasted in operational service far longer than anyone could have imagined back when she and her sister were ordered in 1970, and it was an honour to be given the chance to sail on her for one final time in her Indian Summer, and to say goodbye. <\/p>\n In August 1970, the British Treasury approved the construction of a pair of new multi-purpose passenger car ferries for operation by British Rail from a new Folkestone car ferry terminal….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4915,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[871],"tags":[81,873,14,872,129,126,874],"class_list":["post-4912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beyond-sealink","tag-agoudimos","tag-andros","tag-horsa","tag-mykonos","tag-penelope-a","tag-rafina","tag-tinos","wpcat-871-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4912"}],"version-history":[{"count":49,"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6640,"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4912\/revisions\/6640"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hhvferry.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>