n 1975 Silver Line, one of Britain's old style shipping companies, was purchased by foreign buyers, and as is often the case, the incumbent Managing Director flew the coup, taking with him a number of key executives. This group became Sealion Shipping and established itself in the city of London not far from Leadenhall St, which was still the centre of the universe in shipping terms. Initially they operated a single chemical tanker which was chartered to carry caustic soda across the Irish Sea, however the company grew rapidly and by the early 80s it owned and managed a small fleet of chemical tankers.

In 1983 Sealion was purchased by TNT which resulted in the departure of the chemical tankers and the building of four offshore vessels. These ships known as the Lion Class were constructed by Richard Dunstan of Hessle, the company having purchased the designs from Cochranes just up the river who where at the time building two of the same class for Harrison's Clyde. The four ships entered service as the TNT Leopard, TNT Lion, TNT Panther and TNT Tiger. This was the same TNT who were and still are, engaged in major transport activities around the globe. The small ships were 61 meters long, had 3500 BHP available and were assisted in their efforts to manoeuvre by an azimuthing thruster under the bow. This layout had been traditional for British designed vessels since the early seventies the azimuthing thruster compensating to a degree for the limitations of fixed pitch propellers. These small ships traded in the North Sea at times venturing as far as the most northerly platform of the time, the Magnus platform.

These ships were followed by two further newbuildings. These vessels were built in China; the TNT Cougar which was an anchor handler and the TNT Grypon which was a platform supply vessel, although both looked identical from the outside. They were, and are muscular looking ships but of limited bollard pull being powered by 4 1000 bhp MAN engines.

Over the next few years the fleet was augmented by second hand tonnage including the Seagair which had been BP's multi-role support vessel and the Balder Baffin which had been a platform ship or ROV support vessel. They became TNT Sentinal and TNT Mariner.

In 1989 the company decided that it was no longer necessary for it to be at the traditional hub of the shipping industry and move out to Farnham in Surrey, and almost before they had unpacked the tea chests the ships and the supporting organisation was purchased by Gregory Callimanopolous. The ships became Toisa instead of TNT and the managers remained Sealion Shipping.

Most of these developments took place as the oil industry and all the support services were being rocked by the recession which was at its worst in 1987 and 1988, and even ships recently brought into service were often being laid up to wait for an improvement in day rates. It may have been these years of sparse returns which determined the future for TNT, who were probably more used to the steadier trade resulting from the delivery of newspapers.

In 1988 the Piper Alpha disaster propelled the industry into a new phase, and despite the brave rescue activities of the standby vessel Silver Pit and its FRCs, the Cullen enquiry determined that the SBVs (Standby Vessels) which were then mainly old trawlers, would in reality be unlikely to be effective and so a general upgrading of these craft took place. Supply ship owners, in addition to the traditional standby vessel owners, entered the market and the whole industry had scouts exploring the ports of the world looking for hulls which could be turned into the new breed of SBV. Sealion joined in this search on behalf of Toisa and sent superintendents out on purchasing expeditions.

They picked up five small craft from North America which became the Toisa Widgeon, the Toisa Teal, the Toisa Petrel and Toisa Puffin and the Toisa Plover. Two of these ships were surveyed by a luckless Sealion superintendent in the icy wastes of Northern Canada, where they had lain since being built, effectively unused. It was so cold that when he took his camera out the lens froze, and so he was forced to return without pictures. However, they and the other three vessels joined the Toisa fleet and they are all still operational.

As the turn of the century approached the confidence gradually returned in the oil industry and Toisa ordered two VS483's from Kvaerner Govan. This ship type has become particularly popular with British ship-owners and managers for some reason and the nw ships were delivered in 1998, named the Toisa Intrepid and Toisa Invincible.

The company had by now made some major design charges to existing hulls and had carried out five conversions for the standby market, and so they were ready to bring out their own design. This initiation resulted in the construction of the Toisa Coral and Toisa Crest both of which were built at Appledore Shipbuilders in North Devon They entered service in 1999. These two ships are completely up to date and aligned to today's thinking on what support vessels are about, though their concept originates in the Canadian built Balder ships, offering an alterative, ROV support or platform supply role. They look superficially like UT755s but are in fact almost as large as VS 483s. One is still operating in its supply role while the other is acting as an ROV support vessel for cable laying operations in the Far East.

Sealion now operates a fleet of twenty-one vessel world wide from its offices in Farnham and has a marine workforce of over 350. The principle activities undertaken by the Farnham office are those of chartering, development and support for the fleet, and the day to day running of the vessels is left to the masters and their teams of officers. The company also places emphasis on the training and development of the sea staff, and up to 10 cadets a year are taken on. The result of this policy is a low turn-over of staff.

Possibly the boldest step the company has taken - apart from entering the offshore industry in the first place - was the placing of orders for the Toisa Polaris and Toisa Perseus, variously called multirole support vessel, or life of field support vessels, both built in Holland at the van der Giessen-de-Noord yard. These ships are over 110 meters long and are provided with multiple thrusters and full Class 3 DP capability. The Toisa Perseus was reviewed in this journal in November 1998 shortly before it entered service. It is equipped with carousels for cable-laying and J-lay equipment for subsea pipeline installation.

As construction of the second ship, Toisa Polaris, was nearing completion, the recent downturn in the offshore industry was beginning to bite, and once more the smaller vessels in almost everybody's fleets were beginning to go into hibernation to await a return to the warmth generated by a higher oil price. The result was a change of specification for the second hull which became a dedicated diving support vessel. This was an unusual direction to take, since the role of the diver has been much reduced by the increasing versatility of the ROV, but the company, and their charter's could see that there was still a great deal of diving to be done, maintaining subsea structures which had been put in place before the arrival of the ROV and whose lives have by now far exceeded that which was originally envisaged. However despite the continuing need for diver intervention, no new diving ships had been built for many years.

The ship was promoted by Halliburton who have taken it on charter for seven years with options and advertise it as a "construction class diving support vessel capable of providing a number of packaged facilities and services not commonly available to field operators."

All these things may be true, but getting back to basics the Toisa Perseus and the Toisa Polaris are extremely large sophisticated and impressive vessels, a long way from the Toisa Tiger, the first offshore vessel to appear in sealion colours, and considering that the company has gone from four to twenty-one ships in seventeen years this is probably not the end of the story.

This report appeared in the Offshore Support Journal in 2000

Sealion have a Brazilian Company with one ship, Toisa Amazonia, which is included here.

At the 2013 review some ships identified as being sold, three anchor-handlers added and some newbuildings shortly to join the fleet.

At the 2014 review one ship had been sold, and there are three construction type vessels on order. The company website tends to offer ships in more than one category. I decides that if a ship had a helideck it should go in the "Construction and other vessels" category, but I think I've failed in this area here. maybe I'll catch up at the next review.

This information updated 13th October 2014