ACL Backs Jones Act at Paducah Propeller Club Meeting

Like the towboats moving along the nation’s rivers, American Cruise Lines (ACL) vessels are American owned, built and crewed.

Cassandra Caldwell, ACL’s government affairs manager for the Mississippi River and tributaries, stressed the company’s strong support of the Jones Act as the keynote speaker at the Paducah Propeller Club’s August 13 meeting.

Caldwell has a background in ports and terminals, serving as executive director for the Arkansas Waterways Commission for nearly five years before assuming her current role with ACL in December.

ACL is family owned and started with one small tour boat on the Connecticut River in 1972. Still headquartered in Connecticut, the company now owns 24 vessels.

“And at any given time we are building three more,” Caldwell said.

ACL owns its own shipyard, Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, Md., and exclusively offers all-domestic cruises that visit only U.S. ports of call along the nation’s rivers and coasts. The company features more than 50 itineraries, ranging from six to 51 days, that explore portions of 35 states, from Alaska to Florida.

“The different thing about our cruises is you can always see land,” Caldwell said.

Various river itineraries include the full lengths of the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland rivers as well as the Columbia and Snake rivers in the Pacific Northwest, the Hudson River in the Northeast and the St. Johns and Tolomato rivers in Florida.

“We are able to build our vessels specifically for the waterway on which they will be operating,” Caldwell said.

Additionally, boats accommodate 90 to 180 passengers, and all staterooms include a private balcony and a full-sized bathroom.

Caldwell said that because American Cruise Lines includes so many river itineraries, the company is extremely interested in the rehabilitation, construction and maintenance of American locks and dams, along with maintaining channels through dredging and the accurate deployment of buoys. Ensuring that the Coast Guard receives funding for its missions, including construction of new buoy tenders, is also important to the company, she said.

A recent lock issue that affected the company was the nine-month closure of Wilson Lock near Florence, Ala., after concrete cracked in the main chamber’s downstream miter gates. While barges could pass in the auxiliary lock one at a time, ACL’s vessels were too big.

The company, which sets its itineraries two to three years in advance, had to bus its passengers around the lock or change its ports of call.

“Our guests are paying for a cruise experience, not a bus experience,” Caldwell said.

In her government affairs role, Caldwell wants to make sure lock and dam policymakers like the Corps of Engineers consider not only the tonnage of commodities passing through the nation’s locks but also the value of river cruising throughout the system.

One of those values is bringing tourism dollars to smaller, often more rural communities.

ACL’s cruise vessels are small enough to call on river towns and small cities that may not have enough hotel space to accommodate all the tourists who visit, Caldwell said. Passengers visit area attractions, eat in restaurants and shop in stores, providing tourist trade to smaller communities that might otherwise be left out.

During her visit to Paducah, Mayor George Bray asked Caldwell how to explore the possibility of additional ACL port calls in Paducah. Caldwell said that Paducah is always very popular with cruise passengers and offered to assist in setting up a meeting between city officials and cruise line executives to discuss the matter.

ACL passengers are often older, and they don’t want to fuss with passports or long-haul flights, Caldwell said. Instead of touring globally, ACL provides a luxury experience closer to home, keeping U.S. tourism dollars in the domestic market.

Caldwell said, “A lot of people haven’t seen parts of the country or, if they have, they haven’t seen it from the water, which is a totally different perspective.”

Featured image caption: A pair of American Cruise Lines vessels docked at Paducah, Ky. (Photo courtesy of American Cruise Lines)