The Steam Packet Company wants to recruit a senior master to manage a proposed new vessel.

Described as an ’incredible opportunity’, the post of senior master will be part of the state-owned ferry operator’s ’new build team’.

The job advertisement states that the successful candidate will ’assist with the successful delivery of the new company vessel and to manage that vessel for the foreseeable future’.

Applicants must be senior officers with new build and/or shipyard experience.

They must be able to travel to wherever the ship is being built.

The Ben-my-Chree is due to be replaced as the Steam Packet’s flagship vessel under the new sea services agreement approved by Tynwald in March this year.

Under that agreement, the Packet will endeavour to replace the Ben with a new RoPax ship by December 31, 2020, or by the end of December 2022 at the latest, taking into account the availability of appropriate shipyards.

Any new vessel will be the ’Heysham max’ size of 142m and will be able to carry 800 passengers, compared to the Ben’s capacity of 630.

It will also have an increased freight capacity with 1,250 lane metres available, which the agreement states is necessary as ’major freight customers reported a need for greater volumes of high-trailer capacity’.

The Ben will be retained as the back-up vessel, which will be available to other companies to charter except at peak times such as the TT and MGP fortnights.

Birkenhead-based shipyard Cammell Laird announced at a trade fair in Oslo in June ambitious plans for new specially designed Ro-Pax ferry. Cammell Laird said its ’innovative, environmentally ground-breaking design’ will prove attractive to an ’underserved market’.