The story of the TSS Duke of Lancaster is a tale of ships, treasure hunters and chests full of wonders, but in this case the chest is the ship itself and the treasure has little to do with doubloons or gold ducats. It may seem strange, but there is nothing traditional about this strange sea adventure. So it’s worth starting at the end, with how Oliver Moazzezi and some of his colleagues rescued a magnificent treasure trove of more than 50 arcade machines.

Here we go.

Visiting an old ship. A few years ago, in 2009, a group of explorers who loved walking among abandoned buildings decided to visit an old ship stranded in the town of Mostyn, Llannerch-y-Mor, located in north-west Wales. The ship in question was called TSS Duke of Lancaster, a 114-foot ferry that had been out of service for decades, and its rusty appearance was worthy of the relic of the seas. None of this deterred the adventurers.

They went below deck, camera in hand, walked through the corridors and cabins and took some photos, which they later shared with other Urbex expedition enthusiasts on a forum (urban exploration). It didn’t take long for images of the TSS Duke of Lancaster to circulate and attract attention, but also among a slightly different crowd – fans of arcade amusement machines.

From revelations and intuitions. The photos were taken at night and their quality was not particularly noticeable, but they were sharp enough to make Oliver Moazzezi and fans of the old arcade machine notice one detail that kept them on their toes: among other things, the images showed some of Arcadian’s machines; or rather, numerous arcade machines, full of dust and cobwebs but apparently well preserved.

To another person, this wouldn’t matter much. This was not the case for Moazzezi, a video game collector with a passion for classic arcade games who automatically embarked on the complex task of finding out who owned the ship that disappeared off the coast of Wales. It may not sound so epic, but there have been simpler treasure hunts than the complicated path that Moazzezi had to navigate step by step and with great patience until he contacted the Duke of Lancaster’s owners.

treasure hunt. “I tried for eight months to contact the owners of the place where the photos of the machines were taken. I called the city hall, I called the city post office… I called everywhere. And with each new search I found a new clue. The puzzle that would lead me to the owners,” Moazzezi told The Arcade Blogger years later. .

The effort was rewarded. In January 2011, he found the owners of the ship and finally heard the two good news he had been waiting to hear: It was confirmed that the pleasure boats were for sale and that he could see them in person in Mostyn.

A few weeks later, Moazzezi, along with two other collectors, was already on his way to board the old, stranded ferry full of surprises. Expectations were high. And the boat did not disappoint. The collector and his colleagues stumbled upon the mother of arcade treasures: none other than dozens and dozens of well-preserved arcade machines, all pre-1983.

A time capsule (arcade version). “I couldn’t believe all these games were there and then one day in 1983 the ship was shut down for legal reasons, never to open again,” Moazzezi told The Arcade Blogger in 2016. and winters.” From the portholes: How the sun rose and set for 30 years. They were right there.”

To help us understand what they saw and felt as they walked through the halls of that rusty but fascinating arcade time capsule, the team recorded a compelling video showing machines covered in years of dust. Some are in ruins. Others seem to expect the player to put a penny into their slot before starting the game.

And

Who is following him… understands, the rumor continues. In the case of Moazzzezi and his friends, this maxim was fulfilled, but yes, at the cost of following and perpetuating it even more than ever before. For months, they had to negotiate and renegotiate with the machines’ owners in a complex tug-of-war that nearly ran them aground on more than one occasion. It wasn’t like that. They obtained white smoke.

However, this did not mean that collectors got what they wanted and the story would have a happy ending for game lovers.

Water, rush and cranes. When the team returned to the Duke of Lancaster, they found the situation was not the same as what they saw on their first visit. Someone had broken into the boat and stolen the window frames to sell for scrap, leaving the machinery unprotected and exposed to the elements and rain of North Wales. The collectors had to manage to push the arcade machines into the most sheltered area of ​​the ship, but even there water leaking from the outside continued to reach them.

This wasn’t the only challenge they had to face. The owner of the ship had given them the go-ahead, but in exchange for very tough conditions: the team would have to remove all the machinery in just 10 days before maintenance work could be carried out on the ferry. And this required using a crane and maneuvering them across the deck, as they were heavy and fairly large machines.

And

Impossible, who said impossible? It was one thing if the operation seemed impossible. There was something else very different. As Arcade Blogger reported, the team managed to gather a dozen collectors and arcade enthusiasts who facilitated fundraising, rentals of various pickup trucks and a crane, and the delicate work of lifting the machines. In total, just over fifty games forgotten since the 80s have been rescued.

From the depths of the ship they retrieved machines from Ground Shaker, Vintage Time Warp, Galaxy Wars or Space Invaders Part II. “The old ones, like Meadows Gypsy Juggler and the bowling games, Exidy SideTrak and TailGunner 2, are very obscure. Of course, there were games that everyone knows, like Space Invaders, Missile Command, Battlezone machines and Atari Asteroids,” Maozzezi told CNN. Some of these devices did not work when recovered, but thanks to the ingenuity and determination of the collectors they were able to come back to life.

Bonus piece: What were the machines doing there? The story of how the Duke of Lancaster’s arcade machines were rescued is fascinating, but raises an equally intriguing question: what were more than 50 old arcade machines doing inside a battered 4,000-tonne ship stranded off the coast of Llannerch-y? Purple in north-west Wales? To answer this question we need to consider the different lives the old ship had. And no, the thing about lives in the plural is not a mistake.

Duke of Lancaster was built in Belfast in the mid-1950s and was designed to operate as a ferry on the route between Heysham and Belfast, but would eventually sail the waters of much of Europe. Throughout its extensive career, it devoted itself to transporting passengers and vehicles until 1979, when it fell into the hands of an investor who decided to completely rethink its use. He docked the ship, renamed it the Fun Ship, and turned it into a sort of mega-resort dedicated to entertainment, with a bar, a lounge, and a room equipped with arcade machines.

At least that was the case for a while, until The Fun Ship was forced to close due to legal hurdles. When it closed, it did so with all the arcade games inside, becoming a time capsule of arcade games, much to the chagrin of its owners and the great joy of 21st-century collectors.

Images: Hefin Owen (Flickr) And Wikipedia 1 And 2

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