Talk Story
Jones Act runs Hawaii’s
cruise industry agroundTHE 1930s were the golden age of ocean liners. Matson's Lurline, Monterey, Mariposa and Matsonia plied the busy route between Coit Tower in San Francisco and Aloha Tower in Honolulu.
In the 1940s, while Lt. Daniel Inouye battled through Italy into France with the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, the U.S. Merchant Marine, its Royal Navy escorts and Hitler's U-boats fought the Battle of the North Atlantic.
More than 2,700 Liberty ships were built during World War II. Our merchant fleet played a key role in winning the war, transporting some 85 percent of the troops, ammunition and supplies used to support the Allied war effort.
By 1960, the picture was changing. Boeing 707s with the capacity of carry 180 passengers cruised smoothly above the oceans at 600 mph. The days of passage making -- getting from point A to point B by ship -- were virtually over. Successful ocean-going passenger ships were becoming floating hotels, not transportation.
In the Pacific, Matson's liners would still bring passengers to Hawaii until 1976. In the Atlantic, the U.S. Lines flagship, the SS United States, would ply North Atlantic sea-lanes until 1969.
SPEEDING across the North Atlantic from New York to Le Havre, France in four and a half days on her maiden voyage in 1952, the United States won the trans-Atlantic speed record, the Blue Riband, held for 14 years by Cunard's RMS Queen Mary.
As a teen, I made the trip on the "Big U." Although it was June, the ship hurtled eastward at 30 knots, rolling and yawing through rough, cold, gray seas. Passengers bundled up to stagger around the promenade deck. Deep in the hold there was a tiny swimming pool full of cold salt water.
The food was fabulous, the theater showed two new movies each day and there was entertainment every evening in the lounge. We were coddled and pampered, but it wasn't a cruise experience.
DAN INOUYE, now Hawaii's powerful senior senator, is still fighting a holding action 40 years later, defending the Merchant Marine Act of 1920. This so-called Jones Act requires all vessels transporting cargo between two U.S. ports be built in the United States, crewed by U.S. mariners and owned by U.S. citizens.
According to the American Shipbuilding Association, its purpose is "to maintain a shipbuilding and ship-repair industrial base, a trained merchant mariner manning pool and assets to respond in times of national security emergencies."
The Jones Act predates the golden age of American passenger liners, World War II, modern cruise ships, mammoth C-5B jet transports, satellites, the Internet and global free trade. It anticipates the need for a fleet of U.S. flag passenger ships to move troops and war material for defense.
To discourage overseas competition, it requires foreign vessels that pick up passengers at one American port and stop at another to include a stop at a foreign port in the journey.
That's why the only ship now offering seven-day Hawaii cruises, the foreign-flagged Norwegian Star, spends four days schlepping its 2,200 passengers to Fanning Island, a 2,400-mile round trip, and only three days visiting Hawaii ports.
INOUYE fought to have two new American-flagged cruise ships built in Mississippi. Unfortunately, the company that ordered the ships, American Hawaii Cruises, went bankrupt.
The Jones Act now protects a non-existent American cruise ship industry from foreign competition.
Foreign cruise ships could spend all their time visiting Hawaii ports, delivering thousands of passengers to local visitor attractions, restaurants and stores on a daily basis, rather than three days a week.
Hawaii can benefit from a vigorous cruise ship industry. It's time to amend the Jones Act, not to erect new barriers for foreign cruise operators.
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.