There are large calendar pages tacked to a wall in the Sentinel office. May through September list the cruise ships scheduled to stop in Wrangell on specified days. We keep them there for easy reference.
However, we don’t really need the pages to know when there’s a cruise ship in town.
Remember that scene in Pixar’s “Finding Nemo” where the horrible little kid comes up to the fishbowl and starts tapping violently on the glass? Many businesses along Front Street may have had that same feeling when cruise ship passengers disembark and start filtering through town.
Without fail, at least one person walking by will see our sign, stop, lean up to the window with hands cupped around their eyes to stare in and view the mythical newspaper people. Some are kind enough to come in, ask questions and even buy the week’s issue.
Last Thursday had to be a bigger ship, I reckoned, as swarms of camera-wielding, backpack-wearing, semi-lost-looking people slowly migrated south along the sidewalks. Surely, if these were the streets of New York City, locals would be cussing and rushing past. At least they weren’t walking in the middle of the street, as sometimes happens.
Checking the calendar revealed that the Roald Amundsen was anchored that day. It has the capacity for 530 passengers. It’s not the biggest to have visited Wrangell, nor the smallest.
Whereas one vessel making regular stops this season can only bring 12 travelers and its crew to town, another has a passenger limit of 930 — or almost half our population.
The Viking Orion is the one that can carry 930. On the day it’s scheduled to arrive, the Ocean Victory, which can accommodate up to 200 passengers, is planning to be in port the same day, June 12.
During the entire summer tourism season, the possible cruise ship passenger count totals 29,510, assuming all the berths are full, according to this year’s schedule. That doesn’t include the crews or people coming to town by ferry or airplane.
But wait, there’s more. Much, much more. Next year, Holland America has scheduled one stop each for two of its ships for Wrangell: the Westerdam and Nieuw Amsterdam. The ships have a passenger capacity of 1,964 and 2,106, respectively.
Those numbers are good news for the town’s economy, but can we handle it?
Many travelers come to smaller places like Wrangell to experience the “real” Alaska, something different from the endless cookie-cutter souvenir shops and crowded ports of call of larger destinations.
The larger ships scheduled for next year are within the maximum capacity of City Dock and expansion would be needed for anything larger. With bigger crowds comes the need for more services, more amenities, more retail, more more more … you get the picture.
What happens to those businesses when the season ends?
With the loss of the sawmills and commercial fishing facing its own set of problems, there aren’t many large-scale, year-round employers outside of SEARHC attracting more families to Wrangell. It’s no secret that all of Alaska faces more people leaving the state than coming into it. Could tourism fill that void if we continue to see an increase in traffic?
If the tourism industry does continue to grow here, our fishbowl will need to grow along with it, and we’ll all have to adjust to having our windows tapped.
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