It will cost £285 million to build the two new 49,000-tonne P&O Ferries ships that will start crossings between Dover and Calais in 2010/11 – and each vessel will be nearly 30 times the size of the first car ferry to cross the Channel a century ago.

It was the summer of 1908 when SS Onward, a 1,671-tonne turbine ferry with propellers owned by South Eastern and Chatham Railway, collected a vehicle which was craned aboard in Dover’s Western Docks – reborn in recent years as a cruise terminal – for the first time.

“At that time, British drivers may have been keen to escape the restrictions of the Motor Car Act which curtailed boy racers in those days with a national speed limit of 20mph,” says Brian Rees of P&O Ferries.

“Drivers in 1908 would also have been old enough to remember the earlier Locomotives Act, which required a person to walk ahead of a car waving a red flag.”

Onward sailed between Dover, Calais, Folkestone and Boulogne, and the idea of transporting cars to France took off so fast that sister ships Riviera and Engadine, launched in 1911, had decks strengthened for cars.

Motoring holidays in Europe flourished after the Great War. In 1931 Southern Railway’s Auto-Carrier was the first purpose-built ferry, and then Captain Townsend converted a 386-tonne collier, The Artificer, to provide a special service for motorists.

Dover Eastern Docks’ car ferry opened in 1953 as the port looked to speed up the revolutionary concept of roll-on, roll-off services.

The latest generation of P&O ferries, 640 feet long and almost 100 feet wide, will carry almost 800 cars each when they enter service in 2010 and 2011. They are the largest ferries that Dover can handle.

Late summer/early autumn invariably offers good deals on Channel crossings, as holiday demand falls sharply after the summer peak.

For a fortnight from September 8, the French-owned ferry operator SeaFrance will scatter 100 single crossings for just 1p through its website booking system, bookable until September 22 for travel until December 31.