Ferry Cowes - Southampton

Cowes – Southampton with Red Funnel

This route links Cowes with Southampton, operated by Red Funnel. The two ferry terminals are about 17 kilometres (9 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.

Red Funnel traces its roots to 1820 and links Southampton with the Isle of Wight on two services: a car ferry to East Cowes and the Red Jet fast passenger catamaran to West Cowes. It carries more than 3 million passengers a year. The company was acquired by the investment firm Njord Partners in September 2025.

Cowes

If the Isle of Wight has a gateway to the future, it was Cowes. On 11 June 1959 the world's first practical hovercraft, the Saunders-Roe SR.N1, made its first public flight at East Cowes; six weeks later, on 25 July, exactly fifty years after Louis Blériot's pioneering flight, it crossed the Channel from Calais to Dover in about two hours. The island's royal story is on the same bank of the River Medina: Queen Victoria and Prince Albert built Osborne House at East Cowes between 1845 and 1851, and the queen died there in 1901. The two halves of the town, Cowes and East Cowes, are linked by the Floating Bridge, a chain ferry across the river, and the waterfront between them is a pleasant place to wait for a sailing.

Southampton

Southampton gave the world the Spitfire. R. J. Mitchell designed the fighter at the Supermarine works in Woolston, and the prototype made its first flight on 5 March 1936 from Eastleigh aerodrome, now Southampton Airport; its test pilot is said to have climbed out and told the engineers not to touch anything. The city also gave Britain its maps, since the Ordnance Survey has had its headquarters in Southampton since 1841. Older still are the medieval town walls, large stretches of which survive, with the Bargate as the grand northern gateway, and God's House Tower, completed in 1417 and described as the first purpose-built artillery fortification in England. The docks, a short walk from the old quarter, are the departure point for the ferries to the Isle of Wight.