Alaska (173 page)

They had a sense of humor too, so that when Venn, a distinguished-looking man in his late seventies, received the preposterous assignment from his fellow industrialists in Seattle, he was more than aware of its sardonic overtones: 'Gentlemen, if I accept this job, and make any public statements about it, I'll be the laughingstock of Seattle, and Alaska too!' They agreed, but pointed out: 'This is a crisis situation, and no one has the credentials you do for dealing with it.' So, reluctantly, he agreed to place his head upon the chopping block.

Accompanied by his lovely wife, Tammy Ting, the outspoken Chinese-Tlingit beauty from Juneau, he arrived by plane in Sitka, rented a suite overlooking the gorgeous bay, and sat for several hours each day glued to his window with a pair of high-powered binoculars pressed against his face. It was July, and he was watching the arrival in Sitka Sound of an unending sequence of the most beautiful cruise ships in the world. Each morning at six, two or three of these graceful floating hotels would put into Sitka, about a thousand excited passengers would stream ashore from each one to see the old Russian town and spend huge amounts of money, then return to their ship for the conclusion of one of the finest tours in the world: the seven-or eight-day cruise of the fjords and glaciers of southeastern Alaska. If one wanted to see happy and contented tourists, one came to Sitka in the summer, for it was the general conclusion that 'we got the best bargain available anywhere.'

For his first two days in town Venn was content merely to call off the names of the great ships as they arrived: 'That's the Royal Princess, of the great P & O Line in London. I

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forget what the initials mean, but it was the famous line that is supposed to have given us the word posh.

Legend claims that people of standing, on their cruise from London to Bombay, had their tickets stamped POSH, port out, starboard home. That kept them in the shade, escaping the sun. I'm told the handsomest ship of all, inside, is that Nieuw Amsterdam

of the Dutch line. But the Chalmers told me: ”If you ever take the Alaska cruise, take that one over there.”' And against the dark peaks that rimmed the bay stood the

Royal Viking, and beyond it the French Rhapsody, a more modest ship.

Tammy Venn, recording the names of the vessels as her husband called them off, said: 'They're all foreign. Why aren't there any American ships out there?' and Malcolm replied: 'That's what we're up here about. They are all foreign. They're all making simply potfuls of money. And not a cent of it is passing through Seattle.'

'Where do they come from?'

'Vancouver. Every damned one of them.'

Since her husband rarely used even mild profanity, Tammy knew he was angry, but she asked sweetly: 'Why don't you do something about it?' and he growled: 'I propose to.'

When he felt that he had a preliminary grasp of the situation, he visited commercial shops in Sitka and learned that during the summer season no cruise ship would dare head north in winter some two hundred and sixteen of the sleek ships put in to Sitka, with an even greater number, two hundred and eighty-three, docking at Juneau, where there were extraordinary tourist attractions like the great ice field in back of town and the glories of Taku Inlet with its own more typical glaciers.

Local experts calculated that, counting the smaller vessels, an average of about one thousand passengers arrived on each ship' There's never an empty bed on one of the good boats. The crew has rakes to drag in the money' which meant that more than a quarter of a million well-heeled tourists a year were coming to Alaska, always through Vancouver, never through Seattle. Counting the time most of them spent in Vancouver hotels, restaurants, nightclubs and taxicabs, the amount of money lost by Seattle in this traffic was astronomical.

Seeking to nail down a defensible figure, on his third day in town Malcolm Venn started visiting the lovely ships, all so clean and polished for display in the old Russian capital, and he happened to tour first the exquisite little Sagqfford, a jewel of the erasing trade. As onetime head of his own shipping company, Ross & Raglan having exited the field some 1057

years back, he was welcomed aboard, and learned to his astonishment that on this superior ship the fare for the Alaska cruise could run as high as $4,890, but when he gasped, the captain personally took him to a fine small cabin at a mere $1,950.

'What's an average?' he asked, and the captain said: 'That's easy. We've had a full ship, so you just multiply the figures,' but he warned that his figures were not representative of the trade in general: 'You want to study one of the really huge ships,' and just coming into the harbor was the stately Rotterdam.

It carried more than a thousand passengers, all berths taken, of course, at what the pursers said was an average rate of $2,195.

Back in his room, Malcolm multiplied the Rotterdam figures by the estimated number of Sitka visitors, and got a result of close to $400,000,000.

Adding in the money spent ashore at Vancouver, he stared at a total topping half a billion dollars: And every damn cent of it ought to be passing through Seattle!

In succeeding days he learned things about Alaskan cruising which caused him to whistle in admiration at the brilliance of the European operators who had put together this gold mine. 'You've seen it yourself, Tammy. Take that splendid English ship, the Royal Princess.

She's really five separate ships. Officer cadre, exclusively British. Best men afloat.

The dining room, exclusively Italian, no other. Deck crew, Pakistani. Everyone below decks, Chinese. And the entertainment team, sixteen or eighteen real stars, all American.'

Tammy nodded to confirm each description, then said: 'And the Nieuw Amsterdam,

the same divisions, with its own variations. Officers all Dutch. Dining room, what?

Italian too, or French? Deckhands all Indonesian. Below decks, I think Chinese. Singers, band, all that nonsense, Americans.'

With each of the great ships it was the same: wonderfully trained European officers ran them, Italians and Frenchmen provided elegant menus, Asians of one kind or another cleaned and maintained the ship, Chinese kept the engines operating, and Americans provided the fun. A whole world of enterprise had been wrested from the Americans and turned over to foreign experts who performed like magicians. Considering everything, the glaciers, fjords, wildlife and frontier towns along the shore, the Alaskan cruise was indeed the best bargain in the world.

Why had the Americans allowed this bonanza to slip through their fingers? In a series of small, intense meetings attended by both Malcolm and Tammy, he opened the first session: 'Gentlemen, we face a shipping crisis in Alaska and 1058

on the West Coast. Your tremendous Alaskan tourist trade, which I calculate to gross well over half a billion dollars a year, is all passing through Canada, Vancouver in particular, when it ought to be passing through the United States, Seattle to be specific.' There was at this point a very slight disturbance; someone in the back of the room was laughing, and not courteously, but Malcolm plowed ahead: 'You and I both know the cause of this disaster.' He paused dramatically, then blurted out: 'The Jones Act.'

For just a moment the room was quiet, then the man in the back guffawed and pretty soon the whole room was echoing with laughter to hear the president of Ross & Raglan excoriating the Jones Act, which that company had engineered, protected, and extended through years of political skullduggery and generations of most cruel and unfair pressures on Alaskan economic hopes.

'Jones Act!' somebody from the side repeated, and the crowd really roared. Venn had foreseen the reception he would get in Alaska, had indeed predicted it before he left Seattle, but his colleagues had reasoned: 'Your saying it will make it more effective. What have you to lose, personally or for your company? Be a sport.'

He proved to be just that. Holding up his hands, he cried: 'All right! All right!

My grandfather, Malcolm Ross, thought up the Act. My father, Tom Venn, kept it alive.

And later I myself lobbied Congress to keep it on the books. I've always supported it, but the time has come . . .'

At this point Tammy Ting, always an irreverent woman, dipped her handkerchief in her glass, wet it with ice water, rose, and wiped off her husband's forehead as the crowd bellowed.

It was just the touch that was needed, for when the raucous laughter subsided, her husband said: 'Mea culpa,

and if you had a gutting knife, I'd slash my wrists. But now we face not a theory but a situation. An act which made sense in 1920 when we had American ships manned by American men makes no sense at all today when we have no American ships. We're saddled with the Jones Act, can't seem to force Congress to rescind or modify it, and what's the result? Do you know there is not an American ship afloat under the proper ownership required by the Jones Act that could bring passengers from Seattle to Alaska? None. We've given away the oceans.'

He asked a man who knew more about these problems than himself to explain further: 'The world's changed. Have any of you been aboard that perfectly splendid English ship the

Royal Princess! Where in hell do you suppose she was 1059

built? With labor problems what they are in England, incessant strikes and industrial sabotage, you can't build a ship in England anymore. Scotland's worse. The Royal Princess

was built in Finland, because in the socialist country company schedules are rigorously honored and the craftsmanship is so fine that the next three ships in the British tourist fleet will be built in Finland too.'

He said that in common sense the United States should do, if the Jones Act could be revoked, what the English did with the building of their modern fleet: 'Go into all the world's markets, find the best builders, the best sailors, the best officers, and invite them to sail the best ships at the cheapest rates from Seattle to Sitka or anywhere else they damned well please to sail.'

The audience cheered.

During his last two days in Sitka, Venn employed a secretary, who did a fine job transcribing his notes and putting them into condition worthy of being presented to his peers in Seattle. The two effective paragraphs were: I submit these conclusions as the grandson of Malcolm Ross, who engineered the Jones Act, as the son of Tom Venn, who guided it through the Congress, and as myself, for more than sixty years the recipient of advantages from the Act. It was a good Act when passed. It served a worthy purpose, and it created wealth for Seattle. But it has outlived its usefulness. The tenets upon which it was based no longer apply.

Today our city loses as much as half a billion dollars a year because the Act prevents normal traffic from using our wonderful port. It must be rescinded and it should be rescinded now. I recommend we mount a massive effort to rescind the Jones Act and I offer my services as spokesman. My family created it. It's my family's job to eliminate the damned thing.

I would be less than fair, however, if I did not report to you that our Canadian cousins in Vancouver, seeing the opening we have inadvertently left them, have leaped into it with imagination, brains, ample financing to accommodate some of the finest cruise ships in the world. We should encourage American tourists to enjoy these splendid ships, even though we're not getting a penny from them, for as my father always said: 'Whatever is good for Alaska is good for Seattle,' and this Alaskan cruising is about the best there is. Now

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we're entitled to get our share, but to do so we. must kill the Act my family and I sponsored.

IT WAS WHAT YOU MIGHT CALL A TYPICAL EXPERIENCE IN

Alaskan aviation. On Thursday afternoon the governor told his assistant in Juneau: 'Washington's sending a man up here to talk to Jeb Keeler about that North Slope debt. See if he can be hi my office Monday at noon.' It took the telephone operator about twenty minutes to track Jeb down, but she finally found him at Desolation Point, where he was in serious conversation with Vladimir Afanasi in an attempt to arrange a walrus hunt far out on the Chukchi Sea as soon as it froze.

'Jeb? This is Herman. Big boss wants to know if you can meet with him and one of the Feds from Washington. Our office. Monday at noon.'

'I've told you guys, I'm clean. I mean it.'

'That's what the governor told them, and they said you must be the only man in Alaska who is. That's why they want to ask you some questions. Can you make it?'

'Sure. I'll hop out of here Friday. Catch Mark Air to Prudhoe Bay and on in to Anchorage.

The 0905 Monday morning will put me in to Juneau in good style.' The phone fell silent for a moment, then: 'You're leveling with me? They're not coming up here to put me on the griddle for something I've never done?'

'Jeb, you know what I know. They could be lying to us, but I do believe this is aboveboard.

They're just trying to find out how the North Slope debt could have ballooned so high so fast.'

'I'll be there.'

It was dark when Jeb reached Anchorage, but a cab carried him swiftly to his apartment, where he spent some time in the shadows staring at that irritating blank spot reserved for his mountain goat. Pointing his right forefinger at the vacancy, he said: 'Starting tomorrow, bub, we bag you.'

On Monday morning his alarm sounded at six. Jumping up, he showered, shaved, and ate a frugal breakfast of orange juice, freeze-dried coffee and whole-wheat toast.

Sorting through the papers he suspected the Washington investigator might want to see, he made three phone calls to people he was supposed to interview on Tuesday, telling each: 'I'm flying down to Juneau on the morning plane. I'll be back on the evening flight, and I'll see you tomorrow as planned. I'm calling just in case.'

He then called the agent who looked after his airline tickets: 'Morning down, evening back. Like al—

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ways, A down, F back.' She said the tickets would be at the airport.

He was always meticulous about his seating on this flight, because even though the skies were almost always either clouded or foggy between Anchorage and Juneau, if there happened to be a clear day, which occurred about once every twenty flights, the scenery inland to the east was spectacular. 'Not interesting,' he told strangers, 'mind-shattering.' So invariably he asked for Seat A southbound, Seat F northbound, and on rare occasions he was allowed to see a wonderland.