Exhibition celebrating historic sea route opens in Rosslare as service which transformed Goodwick reaches landmark anniversary

ONE of Pembrokeshire’s most important links with Ireland is celebrating 120 years since the Fishguard–Rosslare ferry service was established.

A special exhibition of historic photographs, artefacts and archive material charting the history of the route will open at Rosslare Europort on Monday (August 24).

Organised by the Rosslare Harbour Maritime Heritage Centre, the exhibition marks the 120th anniversary of the service, which began in 1906 and has connected the communities on either side of St George’s Channel ever since.

The display will officially open at 7pm and remain at Rosslare Europort for a week.

Organisers say it will explore not only the ships which have operated the crossing but the generations of railwaymen, seafarers, port workers, passengers and families whose lives became intertwined with the route.

For Pembrokeshire, however, the anniversary is also the story of how a huge engineering project changed Goodwick forever.

Harbour blasted from the Pembrokeshire cliffs

Crowds watching Mauretania arrive at Fishguard in 1909

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Great Western Railway wanted a faster route between London and southern Ireland.

Its existing Irish Sea services operated from Neyland, but Fishguard offered the prospect of a much shorter sea crossing.

Creating the new harbour required an extraordinary feat of engineering.

Vast quantities of rock were blasted from the cliffs above Goodwick to create a level area for the railway, station, sidings and quays.

The excavated rock was itself used to reclaim land from the sea and construct the enormous breakwater protecting the new harbour.

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales records that almost 11 hectares of land were created for the quay and railway complex.

Fishguard Harbour opened in 1906 with the inauguration of the Rosslare service.

The new direct railway from Clarbeston Road also opened on August 30, 1906, allowing express trains to run directly into the harbour and connect with the ships for Ireland.

The project was so significant that housing had to be constructed around Goodwick for the large number of railway workers employed at the new port.

The resulting Harbour Village remains one of the most visible reminders of the railway age which transformed the area.

Three new ships for a new route

The tender Sir Francis Drake packed with passengers at Fishguard during a Mauretania call. Great for the section about transatlantic passengers transferring to trains

The Great Western Railway commissioned purpose-built turbine steamers for its ambitious new Irish service.

Among them were the St David, St George and St Patrick.

The original St David was built by John Brown & Co at Clydebank in 1906.

She was a triple-screw turbine steamer and became one of the vessels associated with the opening of the Fishguard–Rosslare route.

Museum Wales records that the ship later served as a hospital vessel during the First World War, carrying wounded servicemen home from France.

She was eventually renamed Rosslare and broken up in 1933.

Historic photographs preserved by Fishguard and Goodwick Local History Society show the St David alongside Fishguard Harbour preparing for one of the earliest journeys across the channel, with Great Western Railway general manager Sir James Inglis among those aboard.

The sea journey between Fishguard and Rosslare was around 54 miles — dramatically shorter than the former route between Neyland and Waterford.

Railway timetables of the period were designed so passengers arriving from London could transfer almost directly from train to ship.

The Great Western Railway promoted Fishguard as the shortest route to southern Ireland and ran dedicated boat trains from Paddington.

Fishguard dreamed of becoming an Atlantic gateway

Mauretania

The ambitions for the harbour went considerably further than ferries to Ireland.

The Great Western Railway hoped Fishguard could become Britain’s western gateway for transatlantic passengers.

The idea was simple: liners arriving from New York could stop off the Pembrokeshire coast and transfer passengers and mail onto fast trains for London, potentially shaving hours from the journey compared with remaining aboard ship to Liverpool.

Exactly three years after the harbour opened, the Cunard liner Mauretania called at Fishguard in August 1909.

She was followed by other great liners, including Lusitania.

The ships were too large to berth directly alongside the quay and passengers, luggage and mail had to be carried between the liners and harbour aboard smaller tenders.

Special express trains then carried passengers eastwards.

For a brief period, Fishguard was promoted as a serious rival to Southampton and Plymouth for Atlantic traffic.

The dream never developed on the scale envisaged, however, and regular transatlantic calls ceased around the First World War.

The Irish ferry service proved considerably more enduring.

A link which survived two world wars

Stena Nordica, the present-day Fishguard–Rosslare vessel

The Fishguard–Rosslare route became an important artery for passengers, mail, livestock and goods travelling between Wales and Ireland.

Ships and railway infrastructure changed repeatedly over the following decades, but the connection survived both world wars and enormous changes in the way people travelled.

The introduction of roll-on, roll-off ferries during the twentieth century transformed the route again as cars and freight vehicles increasingly replaced the traditional rail-and-steamer passenger traffic.

The old boat trains gradually lost their dominance, but the ferry continued.

The connection also created lasting family and cultural links between Pembrokeshire and County Wexford, with generations of people travelling backwards and forwards across the Irish Sea for work, holidays and family visits.

Still sailing 120 years later

Today the route is operated by Stena Line.

The Stena Nordica currently operates the Fishguard–Rosslare crossing, with two scheduled departures from Fishguard each day — at 1.30am and 2pm — and corresponding sailings from Rosslare.

The 170-metre vessel became the regular ship on the route in 2023, replacing the veteran Stena Europe, which had served Fishguard for more than two decades.

The Nordica returned to the route in May this year following a prolonged period of disruption and temporary replacement vessels.

There is even an unusual surviving connection to the railway companies which created the service 120 years ago.

Fishguard and Rosslare remain linked through the Fishguard and Rosslare Railways and Harbours Company, whose origins stretch back to Acts of Parliament passed in the 1890s.

The historic company remains the statutory harbour authority at Fishguard, while modern port and ferry operations are carried out by Stena Line.

120 years of shared history

The anniversary exhibition at Rosslare will celebrate the Irish side of that shared story, but much of the history on display began among the cliffs above Goodwick.

The opening of the route brought a new railway, harbour, houses and employment to north Pembrokeshire and briefly placed Fishguard at the centre of ambitious plans to connect London not only with Ireland, but with America.

Those ambitions changed, the steamers disappeared and the express boat trains became history.

But 120 years after the first services began, ships are still making the same journey across St George’s Channel every day.

The Rosslare–Fishguard 120th Anniversary Exhibition will officially open at Rosslare Europort at 7pm on Monday (August 24) and will run for one week.