Slow Boats to Catalina Lose Passengers to Faster Ferries : Transportation: Catalina Cruises has asked to eliminate its midweek service between the island and the mainland.

The forlorn sound of the ferry whistle echoed across Avalon harbor as the 700-passenger Catalina Empress prepared to sail for Long Beach, its seats empty save for a handful of passengers.

It was a typical midweek scene for the Catalina Cruises ferries that shuttle between the mainland and Catalina in just under two hours. Increasingly, it seems, the big red and white ships are catering to fewer passengers on the 26-mile run.

Business is so bad Monday through Friday, in fact, that company officials have asked the state Public Utilities Commission to let the company drop midweek service between the island and San Pedro and Long Beach. The company wants to run its four ferries weekends and holidays only.

But that doesn’t mean Catalina could be without service, because the fleet of smaller, faster ferries operated by Catalina Channel Express runs daily out of both Long Beach and San Pedro. The Express has cut the travel time to the island in half and captured most of the passenger market, officials said.

“We’ve got a competitor who has introduced these faster vessels . . . (and) is getting most of the market share,” said Terry Koenig, a spokesman for Catalina Cruises. As a result, he said Catalina Cruises ferries are running at less than 10% capacity during the week.

“It doesn’t make sense for us to compete head to head,” he said.

That may be so, but the requested cut in service worries the Catalina Chamber of Commerce and the city of Avalon.

“This change potentially has serious implications for the community’s visitor industry,” Avalon City Manager Chuck Prince reported to the City Council recently. The city, he added, wants some guarantee that there will be no loss of service.

Lying about 25 miles off the Palos Verdes Peninsula, Catalina has been a favorite Southern California resort since the late 19th Century. Last year more than a million people visited the island, and nearly half of them arrived by ferry, the chamber reports.

Ironically, what is happening to Catalina Cruises appears to mirror the past. A quarter-century ago, Catalina Cruises was the young upstart company that introduced newer, smaller, faster Catalina ferries and put the old steamships out of business, ending a colorful era in Catalina history.

In years gone by, history buffs say, just getting out to Catalina by steamship was half the fun. In the 1920s, three big steamships sailed between Los Angeles harbors and Avalon. This fleet included the SS Catalina, the fabled Great White Steamer that served the island for half a century.

At 307 feet long and capable of carrying 2,000 passengers, this old steamer made the 2 1/2-hour trip an excursion, with bands to entertain passengers, clowns and magic acts for the youngsters. A round trip ticket cost $2.25.

“Riding the ship was fun, delightful. It wasn’t just transportation, it was an ocean voyage,” island historian Patricia Moore said. “You started the holiday as soon as you came on board. There was dancing, dining, you made friends.”

Before it went out of service, the Great White Steamer had ferried an estimated 25 million summer passengers to Avalon. In the end, however, costs began to skyrocket while the number of passengers began to dip.

After its final sail to Avalon in 1976, the old steamer fell on hard times and was eventually towed to Ensenada, Mexico, where it was converted into a floating restaurant, Moore said.

By the early 1970s, passengers were riding the smaller, faster 700-passenger Catalina Cruises ferries, and their attitudes had changed. The ferry boats were simply a way for a faster-paced holiday crowd to get across the channel.

Catalina Cruises, a subsidiary of San Francisco-based Crowley Maritime Inc., started operations in 1969 and immediately cut the trip time to an hour and 50 minutes. Soon the Catalina King and five other royally named company ferries were making a dozen round trips a day, in season, but offered no frills or entertainment. In winter, they made fewer runs, but were still required by the Public Utilities Commission to offer daily service.

For a quarter-century, the company dominated the island market, operating out of Long Beach and San Pedro. Then, in 1981, a new company called Catalina Channel Express started operating one small but powerful ferry that carried 60 passengers across the channel in only 90 minutes.

Documents filed with the PUC show that in the next decade the loads carried by the older, larger Catalina Cruises ferry boats fell off rapidly as Catalina Express added newer, faster express ferries, cutting the crossing time down even further.

Today Catalina Channel Express has five 149-passenger express ferries that make 90-minute crossings and two “super-express” boats that complete the trip in less than an hour. Instead of just five crossings a day by the old steamers, the express now runs 24 times a day in peak season. A round-trip ticket on the express is $29 and $34 on the super express.

On a recent Friday, the Catalina Empress left Catalina Cruises’ dock in Long Beach with 53 passengers and made the return trip with about half that number. Company records show that at midweek, these old ferries are carrying only 3% to 5% of their capacity, day in and day out.

The problem is not only the competition, but the economy and the lack of growth in the number of people going to Catalina, according to Koenig of Catalina Cruises.

“The number of passengers hasn’t increased in years, but now the market is split between us . . . and the trend is away from the larger, slower vessels,” Koenig said. There is still enough ridership for both companies to operate on weekends and holidays, he said, but for how long is anybody’s guess.

“What is happening to us is the same thing that happened to the old steamers. . . . This time we are the ones on the way out,” Koenig said.