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Fourth of July is freedom day for cross-Channel trade

[ July 4, 2023   //   ]

July 4 may be an important date across the Pond but it is also a significant anniversary on the English Channel – it was on that date in 1953 that the Port of Dover’s roll-on, roll-off berths opened, transforming ferry travel forever.

Up to that date, vehicles were laboriously loaded on and off ships by cranes. The revolutionary hinged road bridge (or ‘linkspan’) allowed them to drive directly from the quayside to the ferry, at all stages of the tide.

Dover today handles £144bn of UK trade each year, 33% of all UK trade with the EU and, it says is driving innovations that will ensure the next 70 years are even more prosperous.

Dover chief executive Doug Bannister, declared: “The Port of Dover always has been, and always will be, Britain’s bridge to trade with Europe. At the opening of the ferry berths in 1953, it was declared that the new berths would ‘symbolise to motorists the modern portals of the Gateway to England, so appropriately inaugurated at the commencement of the new Elizabethan era.’”

He said that it was apt that shortly after the commencement of the Carolean era, the Port of Dover’s ambition is being pushed further than ever for the next 70 years and beyond.

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