Eastport preparing to host a record 15 cruise ships this fall
A 324-foot cruise ship docking in Eastport Monday is expected to kick off a busy autumn that will produce a record number of annual cruise ship visits for Maine’s easternmost city.
The ship visits are expected to help boost local businesses as visitors — both passengers on the ships and people who will come to the city to see them — come and go from Eastport’s waterfront. The city expects to host passengers and crew from a total of 16 cruise ship visits this year — one by the Zaandam this past spring and the rest this fall — which will be Eastport’s highest annual tally ever.
“Occasionally, we got a small one, but nothing like now,” George Finch, Eastport’s interim city manager, said about cruise ship visits the city hosted in the 1990s and early 2000s, when he previously served in the same position.
The Pearl Mist, a 320-foot ship that can carry more than 200 passengers, will visit on Monday, Sept. 11.
“This is very good,” Finch said of the visits. “Eastport has had a variety of different economies over the decades, and right now we’ve become somewhat of a tourist attraction.”
While Bar Harbor seeks to decrease its summer cruise ship traffic, which many locals say has become burdensome, Eastport is hoping to attract more in the coming years. The city, positioned directly across the Canadian border from Campobello Island, has a 400-foot long deepwater pier that can accommodate ships up to 800 feet long.
At the end of this month, Eastport is also expected to host a formal commissioning ceremony for the USS Augusta, a new 420-foot Independence-class littoral combat ship built for the Navy. It will be the second Navy ship to visit Eastport this year, after the USS Oscar Austin docked at the pier for several days for the city’s annual Independence Day celebrations.
The Zaandam’s visit on May 22 brought a much-appreciated boost in business to local retailers, according to Bob Peacock, a local ship’s pilot and board member of the city’s port authority, which oversees cruise ship visits. At 780 feet long, the Netherlands-based ship can carry more than 1,400 passengers.
“Raye’s Mustard had the best day they’ve ever had,” Peacock said.
In addition to local businesses, Eastport is also convenient to Campobello, where President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spent his summers — a popular place for cruise ship passengers to visit via tour buses, according to Finch. They also enjoy going for short hikes at nearby state parks or visiting the city’s historic downtown, he said.
“The ships are smaller and looking for more places to go,” Finch said, noting the fall is the busiest time of year for cruise ships in Maine. “It’s great for the community as a whole.”
Peacock, who has been involved with the port authority in one capacity or another for about 40 years, also said the local cargo shipping terminal at Estes Head will get back some key business this fall that it hasn’t had since the pandemic.
“It’s our first shipment of wood pulp to China in three years,” Peacock said, adding that 17,000 tons of product manufactured by Woodland Pulp in Baileyville is expected to be shipped out in the coming weeks. “We’re pretty excited about the number of ships coming.”
The biggest draw, however, may be the USS Augusta, a new Navy ship built by Austal USA in Mobile, Alabama, that will be ceremonially commissioned at the city pier on Sept. 30. The tri-hulled combat ship, which has a crew of 70 and is named after Maine’s state capital, will be in Eastport for a week and is expected to attract between 1,500 and 2,000 people into the city’s downtown, Finch said.
“To me, it’s a very fortunate thing,” Finch said of the ships coming to Eastport over the next few months. “It’s kind of all coming together now.”