Nagasaki Takes Pride in New Ship

This is a company town. One out of 18 people here is financially dependent on the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Shipyard, where the finishing touches are being put on the first passenger vessel the yard has built in more than 40 years.

The city’s pride in the $200-million, 960-passenger Crystal Harmony is apparent everywhere, from the serious and tidy workmen who take off their shoes before going into an area with finished wood or carpeting, to the huge crowd that showed up to cheer when the hull was “floated out” from the shipyard dry dock last fall.

At a house on a nearby hillside, Japanese families vocally admire a scale model of the ship, then gaze out the window to the real ship lying in the harbor below.

But unlike the ships built by Mitsubishi in decades past--the Asama Maru, Suwa Maru, Argentina Maru--that carried passengers between Japan and the West Coast of North America, the Crystal Harmony is a ship heading first to Los Angeles, then cruising to Alaska and afterward to the Panama Canal and the Caribbean.

It may be a long time before the Crystal Harmony comes home, which is not the way things originally were planned.

The ship, owned by Nippon Yusen Kaisha, Japan’s largest shipping company and operated by Los Angeles-based Crystal Cruises, NYK’s American-run subsidiary, was meant to sail the South Pacific and Asia during the summer of 1991. Then came the massacre of student pro-democracy demonstrators in China’s Tien An Men Square.

So instead of returning to Asia, the Crystal Harmony will sail to Europe in April, 1991, and spend the season sailing in the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.

Crystal Harmony prices will be comparable to Royal Viking ships and Cunard’s Sagafjord and Vistafjord, with per person, double occupancy rates of $245 to $1,200 a day. Cabins are large and luxurious, each with a bathtub and sitting area. More than half have private verandas.

The ship features innovations that include the first shipboard casino to be operated by Caesars Palace of Las Vegas and the first continuous CNN television news coverage by satellite on a ship.

To test the cabin space, Japanese shipyard employees and their wives took turns spending the night in the mock-up cabins, with their suitcases and enough clothes for a two-week cruise.

“We made a lot of modifications after that,” said Shoji Fukushima, one of Mitsubishi’s design executives.

At last report, the Crystal Harmony’s initial series of Alaska cruises in July and August from San Francisco were virtually sold out, but some space still is available on a September positioning cruise from San Francisco (September 10), Los Angeles (September 11) or San Diego (September 12) through the Panama Canal and arriving in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Sept. 27.

The transcanal series between San Juan and Acapulco, Mexico runs through March 8, 1991. Prices for these 10-day cruises start at $2,450, including round-trip air fare.