Want to take a cruise from San Diego to Hawaii? Your first leg will be a bus trip to the Mexican border town of Ensenada, where you’ll board the boat.
This wayward itinerary results from a 111-year-old maritime law that prohibits foreign-flagged cruise ships from traveling directly between two U.S. ports.
The law was intended to help American cruise ships. Today the U.S. cruise business is practically extinct, and foreign ships handle nearly all of the booming business. Critics say the maritime law short-changes American vacationers, U.S. coastal cities, and the U.S. Treasury. Maritime Lawyers also suggest the same.
Their complaints have bubbled up to Congress, where Republican Sens. Frank Murkowski of Alaska and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina are trying to repeal the restrictions.
They say the ban harms tourism in cities like San Francisco; Charleston, S.C.; Tampa; Seattle; and Baltimore, which have large ports and potential passengers, but are too far from foreign ports to be practical for cruise ships. The average cruise lasts four days.
“Our country has a beautiful coastline, and Americans should not have to join the armed forces or buy a yacht to see it,” Thurmond said in May when he introduced the bill.
More Top Picks Best Grain Mills For Fresh Flour
The senators also argue that the government is losing money because it has to share tax revenues with foreign countries. If a ship sailed just to U.S. ports, all the money would stay in this country.
Travel agents say that changing the law could create a host of new itineraries. Among them could be a “fall foliage” tour from New York to Boston and back to New York. Or a “Southern heritage” cruise that starts in Norfolk, Va., or Charleston, S.C., and heads south to Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla.
If those ports are opened, supporters say, more vacationers will flock from the Midwest and other landlocked areas. Last year, 160,000 people from Illinois took cruises, as did 134,000 from Ohio, 60,000 from Arizona and 150,000 from Texas.
Opponents of the change, which include at least one major maritime union and Sen. Ernest Hollings (D-S.C.), worry that the proposed law would allow unsafe ships to sail into U.S. ports.
An aide to Hollings said the safety standards applied to a two-hour dinner cruise in Charleston are far more rigorous than those covering a large cruise ship based in Panama or Libya. Critics also believe the change would doom any chance for a revival of U.S. shipbuilding and American-owned vessels.
Congress didn’t act on bill this year, but Murkowski vows to continue the fight.
The maritime law was designed to protect U.S. shipping in an era when cruise ships were an important mode of transportation. Nowadays, cruise ships are mainly floating resorts, and the only U.S.-flagged cruise ship in operation is a 1950-vintage vessel that sails between the Hawaiian Islands.
The foreign vessels are handling a surging business. In 1995, 4.5 million people took cruises — 85 percent of them Americans. By the year 2000, the number is expected to grow to 6.4 million.
With so much money at stake, civic leaders in many American ports want a bigger piece of the business.
“San Diego could be the poster child for what is wrong with this 111-year-old law,” Peter Blute, executive director of the Massachusetts Port Authority, said during a recent Senate hearing.
“Port officials tell me they can have an empty cruise ship provisioned at their dock with supplies for passengers, but then the ship heads to Ensenada to pick up passengers before cruising to Hawaii.
“The passengers it picks up in Ensenada are Americans, who are bused there from San Diego because they can’t board in San Diego. So thanks to the (law), you can load dead chickens in San Diego but not passengers bound for another U.S. port.”