by Shirley Slater and Harry Basch

..........................................................stars and stripes forever?

     We read with interest the reports earlier this year that Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has sponsored a bill (S. 1510) that would change the long-standing cabotage laws in the Passenger Vessel Services Act of 1886. This law, sometimes referred to erroneously as the Jones Act, forbids foreign-flag cruise ships to carry passengers between U.S. ports without being forced to also call in a foreign port in between.

     For example, Los Angeles-based world cruise passengers sailing just on the segment to Honolulu on Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2 cannot board in California but must ride two hours on a bus (excuse us, a motor coach) from LA to Ensenada, Mexico, and board the ship there. The act was designed to protect U.S. passenger shipping which, like "British cuisine" and "military intelligence," is an oxymoron these days. We have no U.S. passenger shipping, but American cargo shipping interests are fearful that any erosion in the act could ultimately affect them.

     At present, the only large oceangoing U.S.-flag vessel is American Hawaii's Independence, which will be joined in December by the United States Lines’ Patriot (the former Nieuw Amsterdam, reflagged to fly the stars and stripes after the line agreed to replace it with an American-built ship some time in the future). Both vessels cruise the Hawaiian Islands year-round.

     Coincidentally, only a week or two before Senator McCain’s proposal made the news, CBS-TV's "Sixty Minutes" ran a repeat of an earlier show criticizing the cruise industry for registering their vehicles under a flag of convenience, say, Panama, the Bahamas or Liberia, to mention several favorites. The complaint was (and is) that cruise lines do this only to avoid paying federal income taxes and U.S. minimum wages to the crew.

     Helloooo — nobody ever seems to point out that our government won't permit a ship built in another country to fly the American flag. In days past, more than one cruise line spoke wistfully of wanting to be able to book business meetings and conventions that could garner tax deductions for attendees.
McCain's bill, approved by the Senate Commerce Committee (of which he is chairman) in June, is aimed at encouraging more cruise ship contracts for American shipyards but at the same time would allow qualified foreign-built vessels owned by American companies to be reflagged to operate between ports within U.S. waters. It would also require these vessels to have all repairs, maintenance and renovations performed in a U.S. shipyard.

     That's all well and good, except that U.S. shipyards, accustomed to building with generous government budgets and cost overruns, have a less-than-ideal track record with cruise ships.

     We remember when Royal Caribbean Cruise Line (as it was called then) sent the former Stardancer from short-lived Sundance Cruises into drydock in 1991 at a San Diego shipyard, to be turned into the Viking Serenade at a tab of $75 million. The press was invited in mid-April to the yard to see what was expected to be a virtually finished vessel. We marched into the yard, along with chagrined executives, who realized the renovation was far behind schedule. 

     Working around the clock, the vessel was finally sent into service in late June, with many parts of the interior still being finished.

     And take a look at Knut Kloster's megaship Phoenix World City project, a decade in the talking without seeing any action. In 1994, the almost-moribund dream to build a 250,000-ton, 5,600-passenger, billion-dollar behemoth showed renewed signs of life when the idea occurred to assign construction contracts to a group of American shipyards. The company settled on five shipyards and began negotiations, referring hopefully at the time to "appropriate government support."

     American Classic Voyages Co. — parent of both American Hawaii and United States Lines — has won government support for its Project America newbuild project. The Ingalls shipyard in Louisiana has started work on the first of a pair of ships for the new United States Lines fleet.

     At the same time, ironically, the U.S. Congress was pushing legislation to ban foreign-flag cruise ships built with foreign government subsidies from sailing from or calling at U.S. ports.
More recently, the media has registered passenger complaints about crew members with a lack of English language skills, coupled with low pay and long working hours.

     It seems to us that everyone is still talking at cross-purposes here. A very real problem facing the cruise industry today is finding enough qualified English-speaking personnel to crew the vessels. If more megaships turned into U.S. flag vessels suddenly, where would they get American workers willing to work seven days a week at a much harder job than flipping hamburgers in a fast-food joint?

     We'll never forget a young woman from Washington, D.C., who left her job with a stock brokerage firm to join the all-American crew of the Monterey under the brief period when Aloha Pacific Cruises operated it.
"I thought it would really be romantic working as a stewardess on a cruise ship," she told us, "but all I do all day long is make beds and clean toilets!"

By Shirley Slater and Harry Basch