The
Mountwood was the slightly older sister ship of the
MV Woodchurch. Both of the ferries were built for the Corporation of Birkenhead to replace the existing fleet of 1930s steamers. The designs of the two new vessels were loosely based on the ferries
Leasowe and
Egremont of the Wallasey Corporation; they were designed by the same company, Graham and Woolnough, and were built at the same shipyard, Messrs. Philip and Sons Ltd. of
Dartmouth.
Mountwood was launched by Mrs Hugh Platt on 6 July 1959 into the
River Dart, and after being fitted out was delivered to the Mersey in 1960. She was named after an overspill post-
war housing development of
Birkenhead. The
Mountwood and her identical sister
Woodchurch originally had bright orange funnels with a black base and black soot buffer. On the main deck, there was a forward, heated shelter and also a main saloon, aft of this was the toilets and machine space. Below was a saloon bar. On the top deck was a large open promenade and a forward shelter beneath the
bridge, although this shelter was open beneath the bridge so it was often breezy and cold. They had a main central
wheelhouse and two side cabs, and power came from two medium speed
Crossley 8-cylinder
diesel engines. Upon the bridge deck, in the wheelhouse, one would find the large brass
helm and steering pedestal, a
binnacle, and two conjoined Chadburn Synchrostep
engine order telegraphs. These were linked to the other two identical telegraphs in the docking cabs so they moved in tandem. There was also whistle controls and lighting controls. In the docking cabs or navigation boxes was another binnacle, a whistle control and also various indicators for engine/speed etc. Originally all ferries had a simple ship to shore communicating radio, but did not have
radar or
sonar. The wheelhouses of the two ferries differed slightly due to different positioning of rudder angle indicators and engine RPM gauges in the bridge wings. The telegraphs were designed to give the captain direct control of the engines (although they could still be used in the traditional signal / response manner) and as such were marked with commands such as 'brake'and 'start'. They also had more speed settings ahead and astern. The original engines could reach full speed within 3 seconds once 'run' had been passed. In her early years
Mountwood was an unreliable ship, breaking down several times whilst crossing the river and having to anchor. In May 1961, she suffered a main engine failure, with her passengers having to be rescued by
Woodchurch. She also collided with
Bidston whilst berthing, due to a communications error. The new
Mountwood had two options of engine control. The first was direct control, where the bridge telegraphs controlled the engines directly, without the assistance of an engineer at the control board. The second option was the traditional system of telegraph orders between the engineers and the engines. On this day, the
Mountwood was operating in the traditional way. It seemed as though the duty engineer carried out the wrong order and started the engines in the wrong direction resulting in a collision. There should have been a 'wrong way' alarm which sounded however either the engineer failed to hear it or, for some reason, it was not working. The
Mountwood remained in operation up until she was withdrawn for refurbishment in 1989. She was rewired, internally refurbished and her bridge wheelhouse and cabs were plated over to form one large navigation bridge, although she retained all the original equipment. The original Crossley engines were retained but heavily overhauled and the central saloon saw modifications in the form of a cafe. The most noticeable change was the colour of the funnel, flame red and black, harking back to the 1920s Birkenhead steamships. The new 'Mersey Ferries' logo was painted on each side of the funnel. The
Mountwood returned to service in July 1990 and remained in operation up until 2001 when she was withdrawn from service for a major refit. Her only major work during the period 1990–2001 was the addition of a shelter
abaft the bridge, which also had a small bridge deck area. The black band on the funnel was reduced and the logo resized giving the ferry a small looking funnel. ==Major refit==