TS Leda
ship built 1952 for Norway - England route
TS Leda was operated by Bergen Line between Britain and Norway as a North Sea ferry for over 20 years from 1953. She was rebuilt in 1981 as a cruise liner and later became an accommodation vessel at a penal colony for terrorists and members of the Mafia. In 2002, whilst being broken up, she was boarded by Greenpeace campaigners protesting about conditions in the shipbreaking industry.
Bergen Line ferry
TS Leda was a passenger and cargo vessel operating between 1953 and 1974 as a twice weekly North Sea ferry between Bergen, Stavanger and Newcastle upon Tyne.
Built by Swan Hunter for Det Bergenske Dampskibsselskab (Bergen Line), she was launched in 1952 by Princess Astrid of Norway accompanied by her father, Crown Prince Olav. Leda replaced the Vega which had been sunk in the war and was important for the Bergen Line in operating the ferry service (the "Norwegian Royal Mail Route") that had started in 1890. The first Norwegian vessel to be built with stabilisers, Leda's powerful steam turbines made her quiet and good at sea. She was of a particularly elegant and, for her day, modern design with a raked stem, single broad funnel and tripod mast. She had accommodation for 119 first class passengers and 384 tourist class. Up to 18 cars, lifted on and off by her own electric cranes, could be accommodated in three cargo holds.
“TS Leda” enters the record as ship built 1952 for Norway - England route. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Leda, ship and built can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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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 Sep 11, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7671791. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1953, 1981, 2002 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “TS Leda” 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.