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America is really good at being #1 in number of things—it ranks top in quantity of Waffle
Houses, Walmarts, moon landings, American Civil War Victories, Americans—but one thing
that it does not have more than anyone else of is cruise ships.
That’s because there is only one sole cruise ship based in the US.
Now, for the purposes of arbitrarity, when I’m talking about cruise ships, I’m talking
about one of these big boy ocean ships that carry thousands of people—not one of those
low tier ships that go on rivers or lakes or stuff like that.
In that category, this ship, the aptly named Pride of America, is the only American flagged,
American based cruise ship.
Now, to that, you might ask, “huh?”
You see, the reason this is is because of a little thing I like to call, “the law.”
Onboard ships, the laws of the country in which they are registered apply.
That is to say, if you’re on an American flagged ship you can’t drink till 21; if
you’re on an Singaporean flagged ship, chewing gum is illegal; and if you’re on a British
flagged ship, you’re allowed to invade and annex any country you want, for recreational
purposes.
Trust me, I’m a lawyer.
But what that also means is that those boring kind of laws doing silly things like, “protecting
employee rights,” and, “preventing labor exploitation,” also apply.
Of course, in the US, one of those labor laws is the minimum wage which is $7.25 an hour—enough
to buy an avocado cracker in San Francisco.
But, surprisingly, United States law does not apply in the rest of the world.
In Panama, for example, the minimum wage for ship workers is $2.32 an hour so let’s say,
and hear me out here, we take a ship, register it in Panama, and pay people $2.32 an hour.
“Genius, you’re hired,” says the cruise industry because that’s exactly what they
do.
Considering cruise companies pay for their employees food and housing onboard, they’re
able to hire labor from low wage countries and, because they typically register the ships
in places with low or no minimum wage like Panama, Singapore, or Liberia, they’re legally
allowed to pay them very little.
Those workers are allowed to work on the ship no matter where it sails since, for all intents
and purposes, it’s the territory of the country in which it’s registered, but there’s
one major exception for the extra special gold star country that is the United States.
You see, the US has a law known as the Jones Act but that is officially titled, “the
Merchant Marine Act of 1920.”
Believe it or not, this law, passed in 1920, is, potentially, possibly, a tiny bit antiquated—not
that this is a political video or anything.
It stipulates that, in order to transport goods or passengers between ports in the US
a ship must be American built, American crewed, and American flagged.
Now, if this were a political video I might say something like, “this significantly
increases the cost of transporting goods between US ports and therefore raises the cost of
living in isolated regions of the US like Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico,” but of
course this is not a political video, so I won’t say that.
Working on a US flagged vessel also requires the right to work in the US which is not easy
to get in comparison to the right to work in a place like Panama, which makes sure regulations
are easy for its registered ships since ship registration is big business for them.
Now, these laws all also apply to cruise ships since, technically, when a cruise sails between
US ports, it’s transporting passengers between US ports.
This presents a problem for the cruise industry which simultaneously wants to build and register
their ships outside the US and also cruise to places like Alaska and Hawaii.
They figured out two unique solutions, though.
One is to sail to the US from not the US.
Cruise ships are allowed to sail between multiple US ports if they start outside the US as long
as everybody gets back on the ship—that way nobody’s getting transported between
US ports, they’re just stopping off.
Therefore, a lot of cruises to Alaska start in one of the not-yet United States of America—Canada.
The other solution, though, that exempts the ships from the Jones Act, is to make a stop
outside the US.
That’s why most every Alaskan cruise leaving from Seattle stops in Victoria, British Columbia.
They usually make sure the American passengers aren’t too distressed, though, by keeping
to stop to only a few hours, rather than the typical full day.
Now, that works fine for Alaska Cruises but what about Hawaii?
If a cruise is going from the US West Coast, to Hawaii, and back to the West Coast, they’ll
typically make a stop in Ensenada, Mexico, even though that adds up to two days for a
round-trip Hawaii cruise from San Francisco.
If a ship wants to do a cruise exclusively around Hawaii, though, there’s really no
foreign country nearby that they can stop in.
That’s why there are basically no cruises around the islands roundtrip from Honolulu—except
for one.
Norwegian Cruise Line, persuaded by the potential of an all Hawaii cruise, and a huge amount
of federal subsidies, went through the enormous expense of building a cruise ship mostly in
America for the first time in a while, registering it in America, and crewing it with Americans.
This ship, the Pride of America, is now the only full-size American cruise ship and it
is also the only cruise ship making trips exclusively around the Hawaiian islands.
Of course, American labor is not cheap and so the seven night trip on the Pride of America
starts at $1,200—exactly triple as much as their seven night cruise from Alaska to
Seattle via Vancouver.
Of course, rule number one of cruising is that the wifi is expensive and sucks.
That’s why, before you go, you should download one of Skillshare’s 25,000 courses on their
iOS or Android app for some aquatic skill acquisition.
One course that I might recommend for anyone taking a trip this summer, cruise or not,
is their one on iPhone Photography.
It teaches all about composition, lighting, and other tips for mobile photography that
can really spice up the photos even from the device you hold in your pocket.
Of course, there are more than 25,000 other courses to take after or instead of this one
all of which you will have unlimited access to for free for two months only by signing
up at https://skl.sh/hai24 and you’ll be supporting HAI while you’re at it.