The first transport ferry in north China's Bohai Sea completed its maiden test voyage Monday between the cities of Dalian and Yantai.

It took the ferry "Sinorail Bohai No.1" about six hours to sail 159.8 km southward to cross the Bohai Strait linking the provinces of Liaoning in the northeast and Shandong in the east.

The ferry, carrying a 50-car train, left the Yangtouwa Harbor of Dalian at 9:55 a.m. on Monday and arrived at the Situti Harbor of Yantai at 4:08 p.m.

It is scheduled to sail back to Dalian on August 13.

The new ferry service, which will begin trial operations next month, cuts the trip from Yantai to Dalian by 1,800 km. Currently, more than 18 million tons of cargo and 7 million people travel between Dalian and Yantai each year.

It is the second ferry service in China and the longest. The first transport ferry sails in Qiongzhou Straits in South China, connecting Haikou on Hainan Island with Hai'an in Guangdong Province.

The launching of the new ferry service is expected to help rejuvenate China's aging industrial area in the northeast.

A large amount of raw material, crops and heavy industry products manufactured by the northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning can be transported southward via the ferry on their way to eastern regions of Shandong, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang. The ferry will also ship products from eastern regions to the northeast where they can more easily be transported on to Russia.

The accumulated GDP in these regions accounts for 36 percent of the country's total.

The Bohai is a horseshoe shaped sea that is almost enclosed by the Shandong and Liaodong peninsulas. The smallest of China's seas, it covers an area of 77,000 square kilometers.

With unpredictable currents and climatic condition, the Bohai Strait presents many marine perils.

Between 1997 and 2003, eight major accidents took place in the Bohai Strait, often called China's Bermuda Triangle.

On November 24, 1999, a 9,000-tonne ferry Dashun caught fire, broke up and sank in rough seas and gale-force winds near Yantai while sailing to Dalian. Only 22 of the 304 passengers survived the shipwreck which was the country's worst shipping disaster since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

The construction of the new ferry "Sinorail Bohai No.1" had been hailed a "milestone" for China's shipbuilding industry.

"The vessel lifts China's shipbuilding industry to a new level in terms of performance and safety," said Yi Binhua, chief engineer of the builder, the Yantai-headquartered Sinorail Bohai Train Ferry Co., Ltd.

The ferry, a roll-on roll-off vessel that is 182.6 meters in length and 24.8 meters wide, can carry a 50-car freight train, 50 20-ton trucks, 25 cars and 480 passengers.

Yi said the ship can withstand gales measuring eight on the Beaufort scale.

The ferry cost nearly 3 billion yuan (about 375 million U.S.dollars) and took 20 months to complete, he said.

By 2008, there will be three such ferries crossing the Bohai Strait. Eventually there will nine ferries in service with a cargo capacity of 10 million tons a year, he added.