Duke of Scandinavia

At the 25th of may 1975, DFDS ordered a new ship that was intended for the route between Esbjaerg in homeland Denmark and Harwich, England. Her keel was laid at the 21st of may 1976 under yardnumber 210 at the Aalborg Vaerft in Aalborg, Denmark. She was launched at the 21st of june 1977. her tonnage measeurement was 14.339 and the ship was 152,91 meters long, 24,19 meters wide and her draft measures 7,51 meters. She was designed for 1370 passengers, of whom 1249 could book a cabin. Some 470 cars could also be ferries on 810 lanemeters on her cardecks. The normal service speed of the ship was 21 knots and she had Esbjearg in denmark as her homeport, so she flew the Danish flag.

Below, Duke Of Scandinavia is seen during a departure from IJmuiden harbour in 2005.

On the 28th of april 1978, the ship was delivered as Dana Anglia to her owners and named a few days later at the 4th of may in London. This was kind of a problem, though, because of the rather tall funnel of Dana Anglia. The new DFDS ferry was to be named next to HMS Belfast, the warship moored in central London. For this, she had to pass Tower Bridge and to do so, her funnel had to be shortened because otherwise it was impossible to pass the bridge. The first sceduled departure from Esbjaerg started at the 13th of may. This was really to become her route, as the ship kept sailing the same service for some 24 years. In between, she had sailed several other route's for a short while, including the one between Oslo and Copenhagen in the winter of 1988/1989 and a short charter to Sealink Brittish Ferries for the service between Hoek van Holland and Harwich in 1987.Also, the ship was used as a TV star several times. In 1982-1983, she was the setting for the second and thirth series of the soap 'Triangle'. The series was about a crew and the passengers on a ferry sailing the triangle between Felixtowe, Amsterdam and Gothenborg. It is ofter referred to as one of the cheapest and worse made soap opera's ever... In 1989 she was used for the 'Birds Of A Feather' comedy series. To raise capital in a time when DFDS wasn't too fortunate, the ship was sold to the Danish Investment Company (K/F Difko XXI or Dansk Investerinsfond) and DFDS was able to buy the ship back in 1989 when things had brightened uop again. It was only in 2002 that she was renamed Duke Of Scandinavia in the naming tradition that DFDS used since the middle of the 1990's and she was replaced in the service from Copenhagen in Denmark to Gdanks, Poland. For this, she was registered now also in Copenhagen. The ship sailed this service only for one year, when she again swiched routes and now was going to sail the growing service between IJmuiden in The Netherlands to Newcastle in England.

As DFDS was eager to lower the age of their passengerships, an arrangement was made with Brittany Ferries in 2006. The route between IJmuiden and Newcastle was in desperate need for larger ships also, so Duke Of Scandinavia was chartered to BF and from BF the Val de Loire came over to DFDS. For DFDS, Val de Loire was renamed King Of Scandinavia and took over the route across the Northsea. Duke Of Scandinavia was renamed Pont L'Abbe and she was placed on the route between Plymouth and Roscoff. For BF, she was registered at Morlaix, so she now flew the flag of France. At the 19th of december 2007, the ship was finally sold to Brittany Ferries, and she kept sailing the same route under the same name untill october 2009. Only her homeport changed to Brest. Afterwards, the ship was sold to Moby Lines of Italy after a short lay-up at Saint Nazaire from november 2008 onwards and after slight rebuilding, she entered Moby service in april 2010. For Moby, she opened up a new route between Bastia and Toulon under the name of Moby Corse under Italian flag with her new homeport being Livorno. Like the rest of the fleet of Moby Lines, the ship was recieving a large-scale hull decoration of cartoon characters that makes the Moby ships immidiately recognizable.