The 178-metre Caribou will be replaced by one of Marine Atlantic's new ferries in 2011. (CBC)

The company that operates ferries between southern Newfoundland and Nova Scotia has named its new vessels after two historic military units in Atlantic Canada.

The ferries, which will join the Crown corporation's fleet in 2011, will be named the MV Blue Puttees and the MV Highlanders.

The Blue Puttees regiment represented the Dominion of Newfoundland during the First World War. It was named after the blue leg coverings, or puttees, its members wore.

The Nova Scotia Highlanders regiment was created when the North Nova Scotia Highlanders, the Cape Breton Highlanders, and the Pictou Highlanders were combined in the 1950s.

The vessels will replace the aging MV Caribou and MV Joseph and Clara Smallwood. They have been chartered from the Stena Group of Companies.

In March, Liberal MP Gerry Byrne, whose riding covers western Newfoundland, claimed that the governing federal Conservatives were planning to name the two new ferries after two Tory icons.

Byrne claimed that John Baird, then the federal minister of transportation, told him in a private conversation that the ferries would be named the Mila and Brian Mulroney and the Jane and John Crosbie.

"This thing sounds like a done deal,” said Byrne.