Seven Million People, One Sea: The Summer Crossing Home Begins

Every June, the car parks at Europe's southern ferry ports begin to fill. This year it started on the 15th. Families with roots in Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, many of them now settled in France, Belgium, Germany or the Netherlands, load up the car and drive south to catch a boat home. It is one of the largest seasonal movements of people anywhere, and it runs until the middle of September.

Three crossings are really happening at once, strung along the North African coast. In the west, the traffic pours through the Strait of Gibraltar, leaving from Algeciras, Motril and Almería and arriving at Tanger Med or Nador. This is the first summer those passengers pass through the EU's new biometric Entry-Exit checks. Morocco runs its own welcome operation on the far side, with reception centres dotted around the European ports. GNV's new LNG ferry Aurora has just entered service between Tangier Med and Genoa, and its sister ship Virgo joins the route on July 1. Further east, Tunisia's national line keeps TANIT and CARTHAGE shuttling between Marseille, Genoa and Tunis. La Goulette took its first passengers of the season on June 18.

The tracking tends to follow the sailings. Interest in these ships and their ports has built steadily since the season opened, and it jumped on the day La Goulette welcomed its first arrivals. GNV gets the most attention overall, with travellers keeping an eye on the new Aurora. Searches for Algiers come mainly from France and Algeria, people checking the port where they will dock. Motril is watched from Spain, where the boats set off. Individual ships have their own steady followings too. TARIQ IBN ZIYAD, the Algerian ferry on the France–Algeria run, is followed almost entirely from France, and attention on TANIT rose in step with its Tunisia sailings.

That Algerian ferry is worth a closer look. TARIQ IBN ZIYAD spent three years out of service, laid up in Greece for a long refit. It returned to Algeria in April and made its first commercial crossing on May 14, from Marseille to Skikda. With it back in the water, Algérie Ferries has all four of its ferries running for the first time in years. No other single ship in this summer's crossing is followed as closely. The people watching it are tracking a boat they have waited three years to board.

The searches come through in French as often as English: tunisie, navire tunisien, alger marseille. These are not holidaymakers idly checking a map. They are people watching one particular ship because someone they love is aboard it, about to board, or standing on the quay waiting for it to come in. For them this is not a trip. It is something they do every summer, and you can follow the same ships they are watching, live, below.