Cruise Law Debated

Congressional committees are debating the merits of two bills that would make it easier for foreign-owned cruise lines to operate in U.S. waters.

The bills--one in the House, the other in the Senate--would allow foreign lines to sail directly from the lower 48 states to Alaska, and to cruise among Alaskan ports without being required to stop in Canada.

The current statute requires non-U.S. flag lines to make calls at other countries while sailing between U.S. points. The law is called the Jones Act, after former Nevada Sen. John P. Jones, who authored the legislation 102 years ago.

In those days, shipping was a vital form of transportation. There were no airplanes, and ground services were slow and not always easily accessible.

National Resource

Routes people traveled via ship included Los Angeles to San Francisco, Southern California to the Pacific Northwest, and East Coast to West Coast.

Ships were a national resource. In the event of an emergency, they could be requisitioned by the federal government to carry troops, medical supplies and food.

But to ensure the availability of such a pool of home-owned vessels, the government had to provide their owners with some form of protection from foreign competition. Thus, the Jones Act.

Foreign operations, Jones believed, would find it more difficult to attract passenger traffic and cargo between two U.S. ports if they were forced to make calls out of the country in between.

That requirement would serve to slow down the ships and make them less attractive to U.S. residents. The extra cost of sailing out of their way to make mandatory foreign calls would also make their services more expensive.

In the meantime, thousands of American jobs would be protected, not only seamen but longshoremen, dispatchers, sail makers, food and equipment suppliers and others.

That was the theory behind the Jones Act. And it seemed to work.

But the nature of the ship business has changed. Particularly the importance of ocean-going carriers in the area of passenger travel.

Vacation Travel

Airplanes are preferred over ships as transportation. Rail and motor coach also are more used for travel.

Actually, most ships today are used for cruising. And you can count on one hand the number of U.S.-flag cruise lines left.

The vast majority of cruise companies doing business in this country are owned by overseas interests.

Sitmar and Princess are British. Royal Viking is Norwegian. Royal Cruise is Greek. Then there are Holland America, Carnival, Admiral, Cunard, Costa and on and on. All are subject to the Jones Act.

This means that any foreign-owned cruise line that wants to serve the Alaska cruise passenger must also serve Canada.

Their itineraries often include places like Port Hardy and Prince Rupert, not because they are thought to be important cruise ports, but to satisfy the outdated requirements of the U.S. law.

The pending Congressional bills were introduced by Sen. Frank Murkowski and Rep. Don Young, both Republicans from Alaska. The thrust of their argument in favor of freer access for foreigners from West Coast U.S. ports to Alaska is twofold.

Nobody Protected

First, the present law is not protecting anybody in particular, since there isn’t a U.S. company operating large ocean-going vessels in the Alaska cruise market. (Ships belonging to Exploration Cruise Lines, which is U.S.-owned and travels regularly to Alaska, don’t fit the generally accepted definition of “large ocean-going.”)

Second, the law practically forces U.S. money out of this country and into Canada.

Because of the Jones Act, several cruise lines home-port their ships in Vancouver in the summer, rather than Seattle, San Francisco or Los Angeles. That way, their itinerary flexibility increases.

While there, they pay dock fees, employ Canadian labor, provision their ships through Canadian suppliers and so on.

That, according to the two legislators, is unacceptable leakage; the United States could get some of that money if it was easier for foreign ship lines to operate between U.S. ports.

Americans, not Canadians, form the bulk of the passenger volume of all of these companies. Thousands of U.S. residents fly into Seattle every weekend throughout the summer season . . . and are bused to Vancouver to join their ships.

Better for Alaska

Murkowski and Young wonder why our law is set up in a way that appears to favor another nation. Admittedly, they don’t pretend that their sole concern is the national interest. The less time ships have to spend in Canadian ports, the longer they can spend in Alaska.

But the advantages of amending the Jones Act may be felt by cruise passengers from all over the country, in the shape of more exciting itineraries, perhaps originating in more convenient ports whose local economies, in turn, would benefit. And there may just be enough support for the Murkowski/Young proposals to impact on cruise lines even for the 1989 season.