Relic of the Past Should be Dead in the Water

It’s easy to be nostalgic about the “golden age” of passenger ocean liners now, especially when one considers how they have been replaced by the ludicrous and vulgar mega-cruise vessels driving global tourism in the 21st Century.

The U.S. West Coast was once home to a fleet of Matson Line legends which operated scheduled voyages up until the early 1970s, and a few old timers may even recall when cargo tramps booked passage for travelers who had the luxury of sailing on inducement calls to exotic Pacific Rim ports.

Meanwhile, on the East Coast the storied Queen Mary made regular Atlantic transits to The Continent until she was sent to Long Beach to anchor as a hotel and venue for special events. Since then, alas, the vessel has passed through multiple organizations, resulting in decades of disappointment, bankruptcies, and failure.

Now the Long Beach City Council is considering the transfer of Pier H, which includes the ill-fated Queen, to the Long Beach Harbor Department. John McLaurin, President of the Pacific Merchant Shipping Association, is among the chief critics of this idea.

“Instead of debating whether to transfer responsibility of the Queen Mary from the City to the Port of Long Beach, there should be an honest discussion about the viability of the vessel as a hotel and tourist attraction,” he says. “The preceding decades of failure should guide the discussions.”

According to McLaurin, The Disney Corporation “smartly walked away” from the Queen Mary in the early 1990’s. A news account on the structural problems of the vessel had the following quote from former Mayor Kell following the departure of Disney: “The ship is a tombstone in a cemetery no one wants to visit.”

McLaurin maintains that this statement is still valid thirty years later.

Unsaid in the rushed debate on this issue, is how the transfer of the Queen Mary to the port will have a negative impact on the Port finances. The Port of Long Beach is facing billions in infrastructure costs going forward from the Pier B railyard, along with installing the infrastructure necessary to support the transition to zero emissions under both port and state policy directives.

“If the Queen Mary needed $289 million in repairs six years ago, one can assume that figure is much higher today?” asks McLaurin.

There are other questions as well, including liability and potential environmental mitigation and cleanup that will be needed should the vessel either continue to be operated as a hotel, or if it is scrapped, concludes McLaurin.

Last April marked the 10th consecutive month that the Port of Long Beach has broken cargo movement records for a particular month amid a historic cargo surge that started in July 2020.

It is worth noting that Long Beach spent the past decade preparing for the challenges of cargo growth through an aggressive $4 billion capital improvement program resulting in terminal upgrades, a new bridge and the completion this summer of the Long Beach Container Terminal at Middle Harbor – one of the most technologically advanced and greenest container terminals in the world.

In the next 10 years, the port plans to invest another $1.7 billion for rail improvements, terminal modernization and other strategic infrastructure projects aimed at easing the flow of cargo moving through the nation’s second-busiest seaport.

Retaining the Queen Mary would only complicate this progress and would be a major distraction from logistics management issues deserving our attention today.

“Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be,” noted one bygone sage…nor is there any future in it.

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