Travel Weekly's Sept. 12 issue featured an article headlined "Deployments a major coup for Galveston, three years after Ike." Included was a Port of Galveston timeline, which showed 1989 as the start of major cruises out of the Port of Galveston.
In fact, the first negotiations for a major cruise line to sail out of Galveston were in the early fall of 1973. I was a district sales manager for Norwegian Cruise Line at that time, and I received a phone call from Norwegian's then-president, Tom Simpson. He ask that I arrange my schedule to ensure I would be in the Houston/Galveston area every other week for the next two months to work with Capt. Arvid Lingaas, who was then Norwegian's senior vice president of operations. Lingaas was negotiating to have the line's Southward sail out of Galveston on a summer series of cruises in 1974.
On my first venture to Galveston with Capt. Lingaas, we met with Charles Devoy, director of the Port of Galveston. At the time, the only other passenger ships that had attempted to sail in the Gulf area were two Mexican casino ships, which had been confiscated by U.S. authorities.
Lingaas advised Devoy of our request to bring the Southward to Galveston for passenger sailings. Lingaas showed him a photo of the ship and, at that moment, Devoy paused, picked up his phone and called George Pratt, the port's head of security, and said, "George, you should be in this meeting with these cruise folks I told you I was meeting with. They are for real."
We were for real. The first barrier Lingaas had to deal with was where he could berth the vessel. Almost all the freighters that sailed out of Galveston carried material and grain. Sometimes they took days to unload and reload, so many of the berths might not be available each week. At first, Devoy advised that we might need to move the ship into whatever berth would be available whenever the ship would be embarking passengers.
Lingaas, Devoy and I walked many rat-infested piers looking for a decent place to moor the Southward. After a lean-to pier was finally suggested and it was agreed that we could have the pier for all six Southward sailings, we then had to figure out how to get our guests there.
We met with Pratt, who said we would need to find a place away from the pier for both embarkation and disembarkation. He told us of an old Galveston airport that still had some rundown concrete runways available and suggested that we erect some tents and do embarkation there. In the Houston-area yellow pages, I found a tent-keeper named Omar, who told me it could be done. But he warned that if there was any bad weather on the days of our departures, he could not guarantee the tents would stay in place.
The Holiday Inn overlooking the bay had a large, enclosed atrium, and we wanted to have our guests check in there and then continue to the ship. I asked Pratt if he and his wife would want to gamble with the possibility of increment weather while checking in at the old Galveston Airport (we had already invited them on our inaugural sailing). Very quickly, he answered, "Holiday Inn it is!"
Lingaas then had to set up and arrange for secured coaches to take all our guests to and from the ship, with security guards on each coach to ensure international security measures were in place, especially on disembarkation.
Next, he had to set up the baggage transportation and stevedores to handle not only the guests' baggage but all supplies moving on and off the ship. There had never been a need for so many stevedores assigned to one pier prior to the Southward coming to Galveston.
Speaking of supplies, the ships back in the '70s did not have the storage capacity for supplies that today's cruise ships have. It was a challenge finding room for 500 heads of lettuce, barrels of fresh fruit and vegetables, bushels of fresh potatoes, etc., in Galveston on a Saturday.
Ships were not megasized back then, and this caused a real concern. The biggest challenge was finding laundry facilities available to take away dirty linens and load fresh linens. Lingaas contracted mostly with Houston suppliers, who transported their goods some 60 miles. The pier was lined with 18-wheelers hauling their wares to and from the ship.
There was no embarkation building when the first major cruise ship began sailing out of the Port of Galveston on May 8, 1974.
Many ships have followed and many more will follow, with Disney Cruises making their first Port of Galveston sailings in 2012.
However, the story of Galveston's port is really the legacy of one man, the late Capt. Arvid Lingaas, who died earlier this year. It is a legacy that will live on for many, many years to come.
Anne Watson Henry, former employee
Norwegian Cruise Line
Austin, Texas
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