The vital car ferry route between Portsmouth and Fishbourne is today seen as one of the all-important pistons which drives the Isle of Wight's economy.

While in modern times hundreds of thousands of vehicles and millions of passengers make the crossing each year, only 80 years or so ago the vehicle traffic to the Island could be measured in hundreds.

The use of Fishbourne as a key vehicle entrance point to the Island has developed only since the 1920s. The very first vehicle ferries from Portsmouth to the Island actually used the traditional port of call at Ryde as their gateway. They were towed behind passenger steam boats and were known as "towboats" or "horseboats".

This practice lasted well into the 20th century on the Yarmouth-Lymington route, but from Ryde to Portsmouth, tug boats took over the duty.

The earliest reference to this can be found on a timetable from 1864, which shows that a towboat was scheduled to leave Portsmouth at 9am and return from Ryde at 11.10am.The unloading at Ryde took place at a beach slipway just to the east of the pier. But this could only take place at high water.

When the pier tramway was built, the pier slip was used, which made better landings as it could be approached at all tides. But this slip was removed when the railway pier was built, so the horseboats had to use the old slip again.

The only competition to the system was introduced by the Isle of Wight Ferry Company in 1860, with its small paddle steamer Victoria. She was only 65ft long and had a square stern and a watertight ramp that could load and unload up to 14 tons of cargo.

She made no impact on the existing system, possibly because she was too far ahead of her time. It was the advent of the motor car which was to have a greater effect on cross-Solent transport.

Initially it was impossible to carry a car up the slip at low tide, as it meant driving through three feet of water! This was corrected by changing the service daily so ferries left Portsmouth two hours before high tide, and arrived at Ryde at high tide exactly.

The horseboat continued its rather precarious means of approaching the slip, which involved being towed by tug directly at the slip, only for the tug to swerve away at the last moment and cast off the secondary boat, leaving the crew of the horseboat to power by pole towards the slip.

The first major change in the transporting of vehicles across the Solent came as the railway groupings took place in the 1920s.

Southern Railway found that it could not rely on the tides, so it moved the landing operation to Wootton Creek. It proved a wise decision, as the route has not changed since, and has become the main arterial gateway to the Island.

Initially, the idea was to build a slip with moorings for the tug boats, but by building a larger ship they were able to accommodate the new purpose-built ships that would soon be using them.

It was 1927 when the first car ferry joined the ranks of Southern Railway. She was a 136-ton vessel named Fishbourne, which had ramps that could be lowered at each end - looking not unlike today's roll-on, roll-off ferries. The Fishbourne was able to carry 16 cars on its main deck, had a small saloon on the lower deck, and a top speed of eight knots.

The success of the Fishbourne led to Southern Railway introducing another two ships - the Wootton in 1928 and the Hilsea in 1930 - both of which were a little larger at 149 tons. For the next 30 years these three ships continued to work the route, making three round trips a day out of season.

In the 1950s they experienced an unprecedented boom in travel. The number of journeys increased 500 per cent in the peak season, and because of sensible foresight on the part of Southern Railway, there were enough vessels to cope with the demand. However, it became apparent that the Fishbourne, Wootton and the Hilsea were nearing the end of their working lives.

The decision had to be made to either increase the size of the replacement ships or to increase the fleet on the route to cope with the ever-increasing amount of traffic that was trying to reach the Island.

The final decision was two larger, faster ships - the Camber Queen and the new Fishbourne - which could each carry up to 34 cars and 168 passengers.