Cruise lines delay sailing, await new virus guidelines
Several major cruise lines have again extended suspensions of operations as the industry continues to await federal guidance on when cruising can resume from U.S. ports.
Royal Caribbean Group announced it canceled sailings scheduled in May on three lines — Royal Caribbean International, Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises. Sailings aboard Azamara, a luxury line that Royal Caribbean recently sold to a private equity firm, have been suspended through June 30.
Excluded from the extension are four Royal Caribbean International ships — Quantum of the Seas, Odyssey of the Seas, Spectrum of the Seas and Voyager of the Seas — and their scheduled sailings from China, Singapore and Israel.
Recently, Royal Caribbean announced plans for its new Odyssey of the Seas to depart Israel in May with all passengers above age 16 vaccinated.
The earliest sailing from the United States is Explorer of the Seas’ planned June 2 departure from Galveston, Texas. Several trips are planned in June to depart Port Everglades, Port Miami, Port Canaveral and Port Tampa Bay.
Industry leader Carnival Corp., meanwhile, announced it was extending suspensions for three of its brands.
Holland America’s planned sailings in May and June from Europe aboard Nieuw Statendam, Volendam and Westerdam have been canceled. Schedules from U.S. ports are unaffected, as the cruise line does not plan to
resume sailings from the United States until Oct. 23, when Nieuw Amsterdam is slated to depart Port Everglades for a weeklong Western Caribbean tour.
Princess Cruises canceled cruises planned in May from Port Everglades, Los Angeles and Rome. And ultra-luxury brand Seabourn canceled European sailings scheduled before July 3.
“We understand guests are eager to travel and, even though we have extended our pause in operations a bit further, we continue to prepare to welcome them back once again,” said Josh Leibowitz, Seabourn’s president.
Flagship Carnival Cruise Line, however, was not among the Carnival Corp. brands with extended suspensions.
The popular “fun ship” line is continuing to book voyages scheduled to depart United States ports in June. The first still scheduled to leave Port Canaveral for a fournight Bahamas trip aboard Carnival Liberty
Cruise lines continue to wait for reopening guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Last week, Forbes quoted a CDC spokesman who said the agency is working with cruise lines “to implement the initial phase requirements of testing all crew and developing onboard laboratory capacity.”
Major cruise lines have made it easy for guests to reschedule canceled cruises or get their money back. Details are available on cruise lines’ websites.
With reparations, there is the issue of who pays. Do African countries owe reparations to Black Americans? After all, Harvard’s director of the Hutchins Center for African & African American Research, Henry Louis Gates, wrote that 90% of those enslaved and shipped to the New World were sold by Africans to European slavers. All whites? Only whites? Nonwhites? Are payments owed before the United States became a country?
Former UCLA, historian Roger McGrath writes:
“The reparationists claim that the United
States must compensate the descendants of slaves for 400 years of slavery. Since the United States was not established until 1788 (when the required threefourths majority of the states approved the Constitution), slavery existed for only 77 years before the 13th Amendment abolished it.” McGrath also writes about the number of whites who owned slaves in Chronicles Magazine:
“While the cotton economy enriched the owners of the large plantations and insured that millions of Blacks would live as slaves, it didn’t do much for most Southern whites, who saw the most fertile bottom lands owned by a small number of powerful families. Depending on the era, only 25 percent or so of Southern whites owned slaves or belonged to a family who did.”
On former President Barack Obama’s maternal side, there were slave owners. Obama’s father came from Kenya, a slave-trading area. Does Obama get a check, or does he cut a check? Similarly, Vice President Kamala Harris’ Jamaican father has acknowledged slave owners in his family. Does Harris, whose mother is from India, get a check or cut a check?
Slavery has been part of history since the beginning. Muslim traders took whites out of the Mediterranean area and enslaved them in Northern Africa. Europeans took Blacks out of Africa and shipped them to the New World. Europeans enslaved Europeans. Asians enslaved Asians. Africans enslaved Africans. Native Americans enslaved other Native Americans.
Again, who pays whom? When and where does the pursuit of reparations stop?
As to the trans-Atlantic slave trade, Gates says:
“Between 1525 and
1866, in the entire history of the slave trade to the New World, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, 12.5 million Africans were shipped to the New World; 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage, disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America.
“And how many of these 10.7 million Africans were shipped directly to North America? About 388,000. A tiny percentage.”
And that tiny percentage has prospered to a far greater degree than did those who went to the Caribbean, Central and South America and, in some cases, Mexico.
In 1940, 87% of American Blacks lived below the federally defined level of poverty. By 1960, that number had fallen to 47%, the greatest 20-year period of economic expansion for Blacks in American history.
Since slavery ended nearly 156 years ago, determining legal heirs to the stolen slave labor would be impossible.
When assessing reparations, is it relevant that the descendants of slaves here have prospered to a far greater degree than have the descendants of slaves shipped to Central and South America? If Black America were a country, its gross GDP would make it the 17th wealthiest country in the world. Economist Walter Williams said Blacks have come further ahead from further behind — and over a shorter period — than any people in the history of the world.
To be concluded next week.