Speedlink Vanguard
train ferry launched in 1973
Speedlink Vanguard was a 3,514 GRT train ferry which was built in 1973 as Stena Shipper. She was charted to a New Zealand operator on completion and renamed Union Wellington and saw further service as Alpha Express and Stena Shipper before entering service with Sealink as Speedlink Vanguard. The ship was involved in a collision with European Gateway in 1982, which sank the latter ship with the loss of six lives.
She saw further service under the names Caribe Express, Stena Shipper, Kirk Shipper, Normandie Shipper Bonavista, Boa Vista and Birlik 1 before being scrapped in 2013. The ship sailed under the flags of the Bahamas, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Greece, New Zealand, Panama, Sweden, Turkey and West Germany at various points in her career.
Description
As built, the ship was 115.32 metres (378 ft 4 in) long, with a beam of 16.37 metres (53 ft 8 in) and a draught of 4.50 metres (14 ft 9 in). She was powered by two Werkspoor 6TM401 diesel engines giving a total of 5,296 kilowatts (7,102 hp). These could propel the ship at 18 knots (33 km/h). She was assessed at 2,638 GRT, 798 NRT, 3,816 DWT. The ship had a capacity of 12 passengers.
Following her 1981 rebuild, the ship was 142.27 metres (466 ft 9 in) long, with a beam of 18.60 metres (61 ft 0 in) and a draught of 5.60 metres (18 ft 4 in).
The public source identifies “Speedlink Vanguard” as train ferry launched in 1973. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Speedlink, Vanguard and train.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16224141. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1973, 1982, 2013 and 1981.
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This entry incorporates text from “Speedlink Vanguard” 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.