MF Via Mare
Cargo ship built in 1976
The Via Mare is a ro-pax ship which is owned and operated by Baltic Scandinavian Lines.
History
The Via Mare was launched for Townsend Thoresen as the European Clearway in 1976 for use on their Dover – Zeebrugge route. Townsend Thoresen was absorbed by P&O European Ferries in 1987, retaining the European Clearway before transferring it to Pandoro, another section of P&O. In 1992 European Clearway was transferred to the Portsmouth – Le Havre route In 1993 she was transferred to the Rosslare – Cherbourg route. In 1996 Pandoro renamed the ship Panther, in keeping with the animal names of the other ships in their fleet. Two years later the name was changed again, this time to European Pathfinder when Pandoro Ltd. merged with P&O European (Felixstowe) Ltd. to form P&O Irish Sea.
The vessel suffered a serious fire on 26 November 1997 when 35 miles out from Rosslare on passage to Cherbourg, but was repaired at Birkenhead and returned to service.
She was transferred to the Larne-Cairnryan route in April 2001 to replace the European Trader which had been sold. Unfortunately her port main engine failed in June 2002 and was not repaired, resulting in the final month of operation being at 10 kt on one engine.
The public source identifies “MF Via Mare” as cargo ship built in 1976. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Mare, Cargo and ship.
Why this record matters
A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “MF Via Mare”, the useful work is to connect “cargo ship built in 1976” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 10, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6715667. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1976, 1987, 1992 and 1993.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
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- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
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This entry incorporates text from “MF Via Mare” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.