Built in Rotterdam, the Isle of Inishmore took 15 months to construct at a cost of €80 million and, before the arrival of Ulysses, was North West Europe's largest, most well equipped and most modern car ferry. It entered service on 4th October 1996 on the Dublin-Holyhead route and began service on the Rosslare-Pembroke route in 2001.
It was named after the famous island off the west coast of Ireland. Inishmore (or Inis Mór) is one of the three Aran Islands, which are situated in the Atlantic, around thirty miles (48kms) west of Galway. The other two islands are Inishmann and Inisheer. Inishmore is the largest of the three islands and with about 900 hundred inhabitants it is by far the most populated of the islands. The three Aran Islands have a unique landscape with flat limestone and sheer cliffs facing out to the Atlantic. In the past the islanders had to try to farm this terrain and to do so they had to transport soil from the mainland or scrape it from the cracks in the rocks and fertilise it with seaweed to grow feed for their livestock.
The islands are also world famous for their Aran sweaters, even though few of them are hand knitted anymore. Gaelic is the everyday spoken language of the islanders and this adds to the charm of the island, which seems to be untouched by progress and overcrowding.