‘I boarded a ghost ship frozen in time the place sinister crew raised from the useless’
EXCLUSIVE: The dry-docked TSS Duke of Lancaster has been left frozen in time since the 1980s – but now something has awakened on the eerie Fun Ship as Kelly Williams found out
I could see her long before I reached her — the TSS Duke of Lancaster, looming like a ghost at the edge of the Dee estuary. Rust streaked her sides like dried blood as her murky windows masked the sinister secrets within.
Locals call her The Fun Ship, but on Halloween night, she was anything but. The evening was clear but strangely, chills ran down my spine, and as I joined the line of thrill-seekers at the gangway and heard distant screams, I started to wonder if this was really such a good idea.
Escape Alive’s Shipwrecked Survivors was different from any other scare attraction I’d been to so far this year (the 10 houses at Orlando’s Halloween Horror Nights at the five mazes at Blackpool Pleasure Beach Resort’s Journey to Hell).
This one was set inside the old ship “sealed in silence” since the mid-1980s, a rusting carcass of metal and memory, its hallways transformed into something out of a nightmare.
Made by Belfast-company Harland & Wolff – the same builders as the Titanic – “she sailed once, but never truly came home” the chilling horror narrative goes. But this Halloween, the Duke – and its ghostly inhabitants – finally awakened.
Entering the steel doorway, I was immediately dragged into a fratured time-loop – forced to relive the vessel’s most cursed decades. The first corridor was narrow, lit by flickering bulbs. The air smelled of salt, rust, and something else – old oil, maybe, or decay. Voices echoed from all around – some luring me in, some telling me to get out.
As I tentatively walked further into the unknown, shrieks tore through the darkness as the ghosts of the crew lurked in the shadows. Something brushed past my shoulder and I jumped out of my skin as it grabbed my ankle, but I couldn’t see who or what it was.
But the terror only intensified and each deck hid a different horror as we were led through tunnels – and even down a slide – further into the depths of ship’s darkened belly.
A figure in a blood-spattered dress staggered suddenly from the corner, her eyes darkened hollows as she asked if we’d seen her husband. I bolted, heart hammering, into another part of the ship where a maze of slashed sheets, hanging body parts and flashing strobes made it impossible to get my bearings.
At one point, we found ourselves in an old bar smouldering with fog as a gruesome-loooking chef paced up and down threatening to put us on the menu.
Another crew member offered us a dismembered finger to eat washed down with a stomach-churning fish-flavoured cocktail. Further into the terror maze, we came within close quarters of another character who recounted a sinister poem, along with the ship’s captain and a woman in a straightjacket begging us to set her loose.
Then the worst part – dismembered corpses laid on slabs in a makeshift mortuary as some limbs dangled on chains from the ceiling. Dinner tables were also made up of amputated appendages with a real fear ours could soon be among them.
As the floor tilted slightly beneath my feet, I swear I could hear the sea pounding against the hull, as if the ship herself was trying to wake up – or maybe it was just my racing heartbeat.
By the time I burst back onto the deck, lungs burning, the night air felt unreal – too clean, too still. The ship loomed behind me ready to consume her next victims.
I’d gone in expecting a few jump scares – a bit of fun. But the Duke of Lancaster had felt alive, haunted not only by ghosts, but by the ghosts of its own history.
As I walked away, I turned for one last look as sickly lights flickered from the portholes. For a moment, it almost looked like someone was still watching.
The scare maze runs until tonight (November 1). For tickets, click here.
About the Duke of Lancaster
In its heyday, the 1950s cruise ship the TSS Duke of Lancaster treated passengers to silver service as they sailed from Ireland, Scotland and Europe. The first-class quarters were called “the best around” during its first decade on the sea.
However the ship took its final voyage in 1978 before it was sold to a company based in Liverpool who wanted to reuse it as a dry-docked attraction. In 1979 the ship was then beached at Llanerch-y-Mor in Flintshire, North Wales with plans to turn it into a floating leisure and retail park called The Fun Ship.
Back then flyers were printed and there were big plans for a hotel conversion along with several other attractions. But while the Fun Ship had a few happy years, the dream to turn it into one of the region’s top tourist attractions never came to pass due to a long-running legal wrangle between the council and the owner.
By the mid-1980s, the ship was abandoned and remains so over 40 years on. While its hulking frame is a well-known feature along the Dee Estuary, what is inside has always fascinated many.
For years, a treasure trove of arcade machines from the “golden area” were locked inside the ship but have since been removed. A cinema lies eerily empty with seats not sat in for decades.
The ship’s owner John Rowley spent 30 years trying restore it, but he eventually allowed street artists to leave their stamp on the vessel in 2012. Their art was later covered over with black paint which is how it remains to this day.
Since then, plenty of other ideas have been mooted to resurrect the Duke of Lancaster, but emergency services have long raised concerns over access to the ship with a low bridge leading to it being the biggest sticking point.
The ship was made by Belfast-company Harland & Wolff – the same builders as the Titanic and is listed on the register of National Historic Ships.
It weighed 11,460 tons and was 114 meters in length.
Several campaigns and petitions have been launched to raise money to restore it. But for now, the vessel still looms over the estuary waiting to be brought back from the dead.
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