Ferry travel disrupted as Calais blockaded anew by French sailors

Protesting French seamen blockaded the port of Calais on Sunday, stranding thousands of cross-Channel ferry passengers on a busy bank holiday weekend in Britain. About 15 sailors from the bankrupt firm Scop SeaFrance took to the water in two lifeboats, a source at the port said. "Traffic is totally blocked, as a safety measure, as there are lifeboats in the port," the harbour master in Calais said. Thousands of people travelling with P&O ferry company were left stranded, some of them aboard ferries arriving from the English port of Dover that were waiting to dock, others waiting in vessels blocked at the quayside. A spokeswoman for P&O told AFP that it had one ferry stuck in Calais with 2,000 passengers onboard, and two others carrying 1,700 and 1,500 people "waiting off Calais to be able to enter" the port. A fourth vessel carrying 900 people was waiting to leave Dover, she added. P&O was considering rerouting the ferries towards the French port of Boulogne-sur-Mer if the protest continued, she said, noting that the protest was taking place on one of the busiest weekends of the year for British holiday traffic. Danish ferry firm DFDS said on Twitter that its services out of Dover were still operating but that the ferries might have to be rerouted to Dunkirk, further north along the French coast. A spokesman for the Port of Dover said authorities there were monitoring the situation and hoped "to resume normal operations as soon as possible". Scop SeaFrance workers have for months been protesting plans to sell off some of their ferries to DFDS, a move that had led to fears of hundreds of job losses. The latest action by the seamen comes on the eve of a meeting on a deal aimed at resolving the dispute, under which up to 407 of the 487 sailors would keep their jobs. Calais has also recently been the scene of a cat-and-mouse game between police and hundreds of migrants trying to smuggle themselves into Britain via the undersea Channel Tunnel that links the two countries. On Monday, Prime Minister Manuel Valls is to travel to Calais along with two EU commissioners to discuss the migrants issue. In July, striking ferry workers blocked Calais for three consecutive days, causing havoc with cross-Channel sailings and huge tailbacks on roads in the region. The action earlier in the month also sparked cancellations on the Eurostar train service between France and Britain. The ferry route from Dover in England to Calais is one of the busiest in Europe, with British holidaymakers using it to get to the Continent by car.