Independence to The ship that taught the world 21 years ago that cruising around the Hawaiian Islands for a week was a great thing to do is scheduled to leave the islands, probably forever, this afternoon.
sail into sunset
The cruise liner is due to leave
Hawaii today after the Maritime
Administration seizes the shipBy Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com
The S.S. Independence, the 50-year-old identical sister of the S.S. Constitution, the vessel that carried actress Grace Kelly to Monaco for her historic marriage to Prince Rainier in 1956, has fallen victim to the bankruptcy reorganization efforts of its owners, American Classic Voyages Inc.
A debt of some $24 million to the U.S. Maritime Administration led that office, known as Marad, to take over the ship, officials said.
Fran Sevcik, a spokeswoman for American Classic, said the ship would leave Honolulu soon but she didn't know when. A hearing was scheduled in a Delaware bankruptcy court today in which "we are seeking to relinquish control of the ship to the Maritime Administration," she said.
The plan is "it will be stored in San Francisco until further plans are made."
Meanwhile the union responsible for most of the employees laid off when the Independence and its partner ms Patriot were tied up in Honolulu Oct. 20, said it put a crew on board yesterday and was prepared to sail with a Marad representative on board.
It's a transit crew, of only a few dozen, far less than the hundreds that served on her when she was carrying passengers, said Neil Dietz, port agent for the Seafarers International Union.
Frank Iverson, an SIU dispatcher, said the occasion is particularly sad because everybody that worked on that vessel worked hard.
The idling of the Independence and the ms Patriot opens to door to foreign competition, he said. The Patriot is still in Honolulu, but is the object of a fight by its foreign mortgage holder to seize it through a federal court process.
The Norwegian Star, allowed to start week-long voyages around the islands in mid-December, will use foreign crews at foreign wages and undercut opportunities for U.S. workers, Iverson said.
The Independence, known as the "Indy," and the latecomer Patriot, formerly the Nieuw Amsterdam, provided round-the-islands, seven-day cruises for thousands of visitors from the mainland and elsewhere.
Seeing its business fall 40 percent or more after the Sept. 11 terrorist hits on the United States, the parent American Classic filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in a federal court in Delaware Oct. 19.
The company had already run into difficulties with Project America, its $1 billion plan to build two new 1,900-passenger liners for Hawaii cruises, but had arranged a one-year extension and new delivery dates, February 2004 for the first and a year later for the second.
Last week, the Ingalls Operation shipyard of Northrop Grumman Corp., the contractor for the two ships, suspended work on them with one of them 40 percent complete.
Northrop said it could not continue without new financing, which was almost impossible to find since Marad had withdrawn its construction loan guarantee.
The U.S.-built Independence had plied Hawaiian waters for more than 20 years.
Part of new class of ships built for the Atlantic passenger trade, the ship made her maiden voyage to the Mediterranean in 1951.
It cost $25 million to build at the Bethlehem Steel Co.'s shipyard at Quincy, Mass. American investors bought it in 1978 from Chinese shipping magnate C.Y. Tung, who had wanted to bring it out of a six-year layup caused by high fuel prices.
That move was the start of American Hawaii Cruises, which bought the ship into service in Hawaii in June 1980.
In May 1994, a New Orleans riverboat company, Delta Queen Steamboat Co., bought American Hawaii Cruises, set up the new parent American Classic Voyages and later spent more than $78 million on refurbishing the Independence alone, and many more millions buying the Nieuw Amsterdam.