Talk:Cable ferry

Comment
I'm a descendant of the person who invented the first underwater cable ferry.Yay! Helo254 20:15, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

World list please
It would be nice to have a list of all chain ferries in the world.

There is a cable ferry at Reedham in Norfolk, UK. I was wondering if there are any others in the UK.

To answer the above, the (state-owned, AFAIK) Finnish Road Enterprise alone operates over 40 ferries in Finland, so the world list might be long. While the following text is unclear as to whether all of them are cable ferries, I am assuming at least most of them are. http://www.tieliikelaitos.fi/english/ferry_services.asp --jmerlin


 * All of the ferries mentioned in Murray River crossings are cable ferries. I think there are others on other rivers in Australia too, but I don't think I've seen any of them. --Scott Davis Talk 15:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

I am aware of a few chain or cable ferries working in the UK; at least one at Dartmouth, one at Cowes on the Isle of Wight, and one that used to work at Fowey and may still be there. It is mostly erroneous that the ferry pulls itself across on its chains, though. Mostly the ferry is self powered and the chains are to prevent powerful tides or currents from sweeping the ferry away, as has happened at least once to the one at Sandbanks when the chains broke several years ago. Britmax 21:37, 7 November 2006 (UTC)


 * There is a list of chain ferries in the UK in this months Ships Monthly magazine. It explicitly only covers submerged chain ferries, and implicitly only those that carry cars (which might come to the same thing). There are probably a few passenger only ferries that are not covered, for example the one across the River Avon at Stratford-upon-Avon. The list is:
 * Torpoint Ferry across the River Tamar
 * King Harry Ferry across the River Fal
 * Dartmouth Higher Ferry across the River Dart
 * Sandbanks Ferry across the entrance to Poole Harbour
 * Cowes Floating Bridge across the River Medina
 * Reedham Ferry across the River Yare
 * Windermere Ferry across Lake Windermere


 * Incidentally, the only one of these seven that does not use the chains for propulsion as well as guidance is the one at Dartmouth (which is guided by chains but propelled by diesel-electric paddle wheels!). So I think the general case is that chains are used for propulsion. -- Chris j wood 16:24, 13 November 2006 (UTC)

There is a ferry in Los Ebanos, TX that crosses to Mexico and the U.S —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.251.189.74 (talk) 00:23, 31 October 2009 (UTC)

I remember crossing the River Clyde by chain ferry in the 1960s. I cant recall if this was Erskine Ferry of another crossing, but the Clyde certainly had chain ferries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.133.140.189 (talk) 22:44, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

There's at least one hand-cranked one in Belgium coz I've seen a picture of my e-chum Mrs Pingu operating it. Mr Larrington (talk) 01:38, 22 February 2022 (UTC)

First (underwater) cable ferry
This article claims that:


 * The first underwater cable ferry was invented by William Pitt and was installed on the Kennebecasis River near Saint John, New Brunswick in Canada in the early 1900s

The reference cited by this claim actually goes further and states it was the first cable ferry. That certainly isn't true, the first cable ferries probably date back to pre-history, and there are documented examples on the River Clyde in the 18th century.

Submerged chain ferries are also older than the early 1900s. Indeed WP has an article on an engineer (James Meadows Rendel) who was responsible for some of the breakthroughs in submerged chain ferry design in the 1830s, and who designed several such ferries including for the still existing service at Torpoint Ferry.

I guess it is possible that William Pitt was responsible for the first ferry that used submerged cables rather than chains, but I'm not totally convinced. I suspect the 'cable ferry'/'chain ferry' distinction is more a linguistic issue between North American English and UK English than a technological difference. Can anybody contribute to our knowledge here. -- Chris j wood 20:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)


 * Apparantly not. I shall therefore remove the claim until somebody can, as the current wording is patently misleading. -- Chris j wood 20:09, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It's a linguistic issue, as the English "cable ferry" as in this article includes both chain and rope ferries but doesn't distinguish between the two. In German the terminology is "Kettenfähre" and "Seilfähre", so that it is clear. I'll try to work in some distinction into this article. Theosch (talk) 15:05, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

Cable ferries for carrying boats?
I've removed the following paragraph:


 * Cable ferries were particularly prominent in the era of canals during the 19th and early 20th centuries in Europe and North America. Such devices allowed the transfer of canal barges continually from one canal to another across a river in the presence of a substantial transverse flow. A cable ferry across the Delaware River constructed in 1831 allowed large-scale the transportation of coal from the Lehigh Valley directly to New York City via the Morris Canal without reloading of the canal boats.

It is a great paragraph, but it seems to be describing something quite different to the subject of this article. I don't see how a cable ferry, as described in this article, would help canal boats cross rivers. I'm sure there is something worth saying here, but I suspect it belongs in a different article, or a different section, with more explanation as to exactly how a cable ferry was used in this way. Sadly there are no cites, so difficult to follow up further. Perhaps the original author can help. -- Starbois (talk) 16:09, 13 November 2008 (UTC)

Åland is not a country
In the list of countries with cable ferries, there's Finland and further down Åland --- where this last is an autonomous part of Finland, so not separate. 94.169.249.202 (talk) 10:44, 25 November 2009 (UTC)
 * There's also Hong Kong. It's quite often the case that autonomous places—or even just places that are culturally different, like Scotland—are treated as countries. I think it's reasonable, but have no objections to putting it as a subsection of Finland.
 * But I've come here to state that I strongly object to the idea that English is the same as or in any way dependent on Swedish alphabetical order. Alphabetical ordering in English completely ignores diacritics, and the English Wikipedia must use the English alphabetical ordering rules to be useful.
 * —Felix the Cassowary 21:33, 21 March 2011 (UTC)
 * As the Nordic alphabet don't use diacritics - å, ä and ö are not a and o with diacritics but their own letters - the two are compatible. BlueBanana (talk) 13:18, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

Glenora_ferry_a_cable_ferry?
The article currently lists the Glenora Ferry as a cable ferry. I am dubious. MV Quinte Loyalist usually works on the Glenora run -- but sometimes fills in for the ferry that runs from Millhaven to Amherst Island. Would a cable ferry really fill in for a ferry to an Island? Geo Swan (talk) 22:51, 7 November 2011 (UTC)

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Longest cable ferry link
Which is the longest cable ferry link in the world? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2003:DF:1F1F:A638:7526:8343:8CAB:F640 (talk) 00:09, 9 September 2022 (UTC)
 * MV Baynes Sound Connector in BC, Canada.Theosch (talk) 15:16, 9 January 2024 (UTC)