SILJA LINE SUPERSEACAT FOUR • Silja Line, then owned by Sea Containers, decided to jump on the Helsinki-Tallinn bandwagon in partnership with Greece’s Eugenides in 2000, with SuperSeaCat Four. SuperSeaCat Three and SuperSeaCat One joined in 2003 and 2005 respectively. The Fincantieri-built HSC carried up to 782 passengers and 150 cars at speeds up to 38 knots. When Tallink bought Silja line in 2006, the SSCs were not included and a separate company was set up, although SuperSeaCat One departed after one season.
After Estonia’s independence in 1991, Finns quickly realised how cheap it was in Tallinn, just 80km across the Baltic Sea from Helsinki. Ferries took about four hours, making a day trip more about being aboard than ashore. So fast craft were introduced.
The early fast craft were very weather-sensitive former Soviet hydrofoils with limited capacity, introduced in 1997. From 2000 larger catamarans and single-hulled fast