The Innocent 50's

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The sixth sister! Consideration was given to giving the Manxman diesel engines but the Company in the end remained faithful to steam although her engines were different to her older sisters. She had the more advanced Pametrada steam turbines and the two propellers were driven by double reduction gearing, not single reduction as in her older sisters. The most obvious external difference was that her four aft lifeboats were carried in Welin gravity davits which lifted them off the boat deck and thus created more deck space. She was launched from Cammell Laird’s on the 8^th February 1955 and trials took place on the Clyde on the 12^th May when she reached 21.95 knots.  Her maiden voyage was from Douglas to Liverpool on the 21^st May.

Manxman on Sea Trials (1955)

She continued in service year round on the Douglas (Isle of Man) - Liverpool service working the familiar summer outstations of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company namely Dublin, Belfast, Fleetwood and Ardrossan as well as charters to other ports in the Irish Sea and Round the Island Cruises.