Ferry St Marys - Penzance

St Marys – Penzance with Isles of Scilly Travel

This route links St Marys with Penzance, operated by Isles of Scilly Travel. The two ferry terminals are about 60 kilometres (33 nautical miles) apart in a straight line. Use the search engine above for current timetables and fares, or use the Direct Ferries button at the top of the page to compare the sailings.

Founded in 1920 by islanders who raised £20,000 by selling shares, the Isles of Scilly Steamship Company links Penzance with St Mary's on the Scillonian III, in service since 1977 and carrying up to 485 passengers. Its air service, Skybus, has flown to the islands since 1984.

St Mary's (Isles of Scilly)

St Mary's is where one of the Royal Navy's worst disasters came ashore. In October 1707 four warships under Admiral Sir Cloudesley Shovell were wrecked on the Western Rocks with the loss of at least 1,400 men, and the admiral's body was washed up at Porthellick Cove. The tragedy is usually linked to the Longitude Act of 1714, which offered a prize for a reliable way of fixing a ship's position at sea. Above Hugh Town stands Star Castle, an eight-pointed fortress built in 1593 after the Spanish Armada and now a hotel, with the old Garrison walls around it making an easy circular walk. In the churchyard at Old Town lies Harold Wilson, the Labour prime minister, who first holidayed on the island in 1952 and later built a small house there.

Penzance

Penzance, at the far western end of Cornwall, produced one of Britain's great scientists. Sir Humphry Davy, inventor of the miners' safety lamp, was born here in 1778, and his statue stands at the top of Market Jew Street, close to his birthplace. On the seafront, the Jubilee Pool, opened in 1935 to mark George V's Silver Jubilee, is one of the few surviving Art Deco lidos in Britain and is filled with seawater. A few miles along the coast, St Michael's Mount, a tidal island crowned by a medieval castle, is reached by a cobbled causeway at low tide. Penzance is also the mainland departure point for the Scillonian III, the ship that links the Cornish coast with the Isles of Scilly.