Hacker News Reader

Comment by nightfly | Hacker News Reader

> With demand soaring, many cruise shipbuilders are booked into the early 2020s...

That didn't work out so well for them.

Cruise lines seem to have survived just fine and are starting operations back up (for vaccinated passengers). And if you believe that all publicity is good publicity they should have no problems filling those ships

This is turning out to be an interesting business model - there are obviously the "pay us and we keep your money, but keep offering you future cruises till the pandemic is over"

Additionally they are now offering "single country cruises" - start in one country, sail from port to port in same country - which radically simplified the vaccination

The cruise line business is very cyclical so the companies hold really big piles of cash for when things get slow (like 2007-2008 financial crisis)

All the big companies had a couple billions each sitting around just for shit like this. They just fired most of the crew (they still need to have 100+ crew per ship to keep them in good condition) and anchored them waiting for better days.

With this reduction in costs they could easily wait out a year or two for business to come back.

Wendover Productions did an excellent video on the topic https://youtu.be/N4dOCfWlgBw

(including how they solved getting their tens of thousands of employees back home when planes were not flying really)

It'd be nice if the US would ditch it's statutes from the late 19th century that make it illegal for foreign-flagged vessels from taking passengers from one US port to another.

This is why, for example, almost all Alaskan cruises sail from Vancouver.

Without those rules, what is to stop foreign vessels from replacing domestic passenger ships? The Staten Island ferry might just adopt a foreign flag and staff the ships according to foreign (ie cheap) labor laws.

A better law that more precisely addresses the various situations instead of depending on the verbiage chosen by the long dead.

>> verbiage chosen by the long dead.

Look at the average age of the people writing laws. I'd say that 90% or more of current law was created by people now "long dead".

What domestic passenger ships?

There's a handful of cruise ships that are US flagged specifically for the Hawaii route. That's it.

If you're concerned about car ferries, you can make specific laws about them. Or better yet, New York state could, since that's in their jurisdiction.

It's a bit of a few different thigns. There are tons of ferries across the US and getting rid of that rule would require either rewriting the law to maintain the change for them or for every state along the coasts to do their own regulating. Then there's a desire to maintain some domestic shipping and ship building industry from a national security standpoint and from the goal of protecting the environment immediately around the US.

> Then there's a desire to maintain some domestic shipping and ship building industry from a national security standpoint and from the goal of protecting the environment immediately around the US.

This is the original purpose of the law, but it has failed completely and utterly. At some point you have to stand back and survey what the actual results of legislation are, as opposed to the intended results, and if those two aren't in any way congruent, scrap things and start over.

It only 'really failed' Puerto Rico.

Airlines have similar rules, yet I never see people grousing that you can't take an Air Malay flight from Chicago to LA.

The domestic ship building industry imploded. America is an economic empire built on maritime shipping with only one remaining commercial shipyard capable of producing large vessels, and it is being kept alive with government contracts.

That has everything to do with lower cost of labour overseas.

Without the requirement for US ships to go from one US port to another, the shipbuilding industry would still be dead, and you'd have a dead shipping industry with it. You would have foreign-flagged crews moving cargo with foreign-built ships, against which you'd have zero recourse, in the event of disaster.

Where would those foreign workers live? In the ship?

Yes. That is exactly how such things are done.

Hmm, I didn't think it was legal for foreign nationals to live (be resident) just offshore like that..

Such as all of those manning the cruise ships sailing out of US ports? Every large ship sitting in s US harbor has forgien workers living aboard.

I would have assumed cruise-ship workers would come on land for long port stays. And that larger cargo vessels wouldn't stay long. How long can you stay in one place before it counts as residency?

Syrian sailor stranded on abandoned cargo ship off Egyptian coast - BBC News Apr. 6, 2021

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyU6NtwspLM

The Egyptians have told him he cannot leave the ship. He has been stuck as its "master" for over a year. These things happen in the world of international shipping. Human rights tend to disappear.

But wait, this isn't a standard thing - the cargo vessel wasn't intended to stay long?

What could be more American than that?

The problem isn't so much the flag requirements as the other ones- especially the requirement that the ship must be built in the US.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com