As the airlines have become increasingly uncomfortable, unpleasant, and unreliable, I’ve been finding the SCOTIA PRINCE an increasingly soothing presence. Every night during the clement half of our year, she pulls out of Portland harbor, bedecked in lights, on her purposeful mission to deliver passengers and cargo to foreign lands across the waters. It reminds me of an earlier age, before I was born, when people crossed the ocean at a leisurely pace, with plenty of places to wander, dine, drink, gamble, read, walk, exercise, pee and sleep. The eleven-hour trip across the Gulf to Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, is the nearest thing we have to the transatlantic passenger liners of yore, an ocean journey both pleasant and purposeful.
So I’ve been saddened to hear that the SCOTIA PRINCE’s run could be coming to an end. If it does, the most likely candidate to replace her – a giant high-speed catamaran – evokes a Boeing 757, rather than the QUEEN ELIZABETH 2. We would be able to get across the gulf twice as fast – six hours instead of eleven – but for me, at least, half the fun will have been lost.
The 485-foot ship’s owners, Scotia Prince Cruises, don’t like to share much information, but they’ve clearly had a difficult time since buying her in 2001. Passenger boardings have been in decline – by about 19 percent between 2003 and 2004 – in part because of a marked decline in the number of U.S. tourists visiting Nova Scotia. Mold and structural problems at the city-owned International Marine Terminal – PRINCE’s Portland berth – forced passengers to board from tents as the structure was rehabilitated. A plan to run between Florida and Cuba in the off-season was nixed by the Bush administration, and, winter 2002 service from Tampa to the Yucatan was suspended because of navigational problems at the Mexican port of Morelos.
To make matters worse, the PRINCE has been facing stiff competition from The CAT, a 310-foot Australian-built catamaran that can carry up to 900 passengers and 240 vehicles from Bar Harbor to Yarmouth at speeds of up to 50 miles an hour. The CAT’s owners, Bay Ferries Ltd. of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, have expressed a keen interest in expanding fast ferry service to Portland or another port closer to Boston.
“There is a body of market out there that wants a product which is placed close to Boston, but also wants to get there quicker and not do it on the lines of a cruise model like the SCOTIA PRINCE,” says Bay Ferries president Mark MacDonald, whose company is also looking at Portsmouth, Gloucester and Boston. “Portland is a beautiful city and a well developed port,” he said, “but it’s not the only place we can do business from.”
Mark Hudson, Scotia Prince Cruises’ spokesman and senior vice president, declined to be interviewed for this column or to answer most questions sent by e-mail. He did say his company believes the problems at the International Marine Terminal are the largest factor in the recent decline in passengers and that the situation would improve if and when Portland completes its proposed $16 million Ocean Gateway Terminal. He confirmed that the ship will return to Portland for the 2005 season; last summer he told reporters that 2004 might be its last year.
Hudson would not comment on questions related to competition from the CAT or even general market conditions in Maine-to-Nova Scotia transportation. As a privately-held company incorporated in Bermuda, Scotia Prince Cruises doesn’t have to provide much information about its business, and volunteers little. Port managers in Portland have to obtain passenger and vehicle boarding figures from customs authorities through the Freedom of Information Act – information the SCOTIA PRINCE’s previous owners provided to the city themselves.
SCOTIA PRINCE was built at a Croatian yard in 1972 for Stena Lines of Sweden. Prior to coming to Portland in 1982, she plied the Baltic between Sweden, Denmark, and Germany as the STENA OLYMPICA. Her near-sistership, the STENA JUTLANDICA, came to Maine two years later as the BLUENOSE, and ran the Bar Harbor-Yarmouth route until replaced by the first CAT in 1998; she now sails between Spain and Morocco as the EUROFERRYS ATLANTICA.
There are many theories for why SCOTIA PRINCE’s ridership has been slipping: Americans’ fear of international travel after 9/11, Canada’s opposition to the war in Iraq, even jitters about SARS and mad cow outbreaks many thousands of miles away in Central and Western Canada. Christopher Wright, president of the Mariport Group Ltd. in Cambridge, Ontario, says the rapid growth of the cruise ship market in Maine and Atlantic Canada over the past few years may also be eating into the Prince’s market. “With the cruise ships, you leave your car at home, board the ship in Boston or New York, and don’t have to do any work at all,” he says.
Judith Cabrita, president of the Halifax-based Tourism Industry of Nova Scotia, points to the growth in air travel to Halifax. “People are looking for the quick route, and more and more American airlines are coming into our market,” she says.
Like the PRINCE, the CAT has also been experiencing a decline in business in recent years, but its owners appear to be in a stronger position. Bay Ferries operates year-around ferries between Nova Scotia and Saint John, New Brunswick, an important link for fish distributors and other commercial operations; its sister company, Northumberland Ferries, operates the government-subsidized run between Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
Last year, Bay Ferries questioned the legality of a 30-year-old agreement between Portland and the successive operators of the international ferry, which gives the latter a monopoly on the Nova Scotia route in exchange for agreeing not to operate service out of other New England ports. That agreement is now under review by the Federal Maritime Commission, which is not likely to make a ruling until the end of the year, according to Benjamin Snow, manager of marine operations for the city.
If the CAT does come to Portland, it doesn’t necessarily mean the end for the SCOTIA PRINCE. “Our school of thought is that the pie can be greatly expanded by having a high speed option,” says Mr. MacDonald of Bay Ferries. “High speed and conventional ferries operate side by side all over the world.”
Mr. Snow thinks it’s an open question: “SCOTIA PRINCE has attempted to reposition themselves as a different type of product, more of a cruise ship experience,” he says. “The question is if the market can support both types of products.”
– Colin Woodard is the author of The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier (Viking). He lives in Portland and maintains a website at www.colinwoodard.com.