Yellow Duckmarine goes into administration

You might know the Yellow Duckmarine - the rather iconic Liverpool tour which potters around the city and splooshes its way into Albert Dock for the grand finale. Well, it recently had a bit of a meltdown and sank. And then, late last week, it sank again, this time rather more dramatically, with people being taken to hospital afterwards.

Today it’s been reported that Pearlwild Ltd, the company running the Yellow Duckmarine vehicles, has been into administration, with a number of jobs being lost.

Corporate recovery company Milner Boardman & Partners have been put in charge of handling the case. A partner told Insider Media: “The events of last weekend are well documented and the Yellow Duckmarine company has had to cease operations whist the directors, in conjunction with the appropriate authorities, investigate ways of making further safety adjustments to the vessels.

This work will take some time and therefore, sadly, it has been necessary to make a number of redundancies today, with a skeleton staff being retained to deal with a number of administrative matters.”

The unique vintage World War II vehicles, designed to traverse both land and sea, are a regular sight across town and one of the most popular tourist tours in the region. The Queen’s a fan (above, having a right old laugh in one), as are we. So we hope, somehow, the lurid yellow boatcar contraptions can splutter back to life, and make a glorious return to the streets in due course.