Musicians played live music, vendors were set up in front of the local port authority building and City Hall closed at noon Thursday as Eastport welcomed the first Virgin Voyages cruise ship to ever visit Maine.
The scene in Eastport, a remote Maine city that overlooks the Canadian border, was reminiscent of cruise ship visits years ago in Bar Harbor, which for years was considered Maine’s busiest cruise ship port. As Bar Harbor sought to increase its cruise ship business, which over 30 years grew from a little over 20 visits a year to nearly 160 in 2019, officials there would hold similar events celebrating visits by ships such as the Queen Elizabeth 2.
But the red-carpet rollout for the Virgin ship Brilliant Lady, which can carry 2,800 passengers, mostly contrasts with summer scenes in downtown Bar Harbor these days — and not just because Bar Harbor now has banned large cruise ship visits.
Eastport is more remote than Bar Harbor — at least a two-hour drive from any airport with regular commercial passenger service — and has a population of roughly 1,500 residents, one-third the number of people who call Bar Harbor home.
And even without cruise ships, Bar Harbor gets millions of visitors who visit Acadia National Park each year from late spring through early fall — by far more tourists than in Eastport, where vacation rentals can be found but hotel rooms are scarce.
Other cruise ship ports in Maine also typically get bigger crowds, both from the ships and other places. Portland, Maine’s biggest city and a major overnight tourist destination, is expected to get nearly 100 cruise ship visits this year. Rockland, which has around 7,000 residents, has about 30 visits on its schedule this year, and Bar Harbor — which is honoring ship reservations made before local voters approved cutbacks in 2022 — has more than 60 visits scheduled for 2025, though most are by ships that carry roughly 200 passengers or fewer.
This year Eastport is expected to get roughly 25 visits, seven of which are from ships like the Brilliant Lady that can carry more passengers than Eastport has residents. When a big ship anchors in Friar Roads, the channel that separates the city from the Canadian island of Campobello, and starts ferrying passengers in tenders to the city’s downtown breakwater, residents and business owners alike take notice.
“It’s pretty amazing that this small fishing village in Down East Maine is among the stops,” said jeweler Adrian Johannes, who with his brother was selling jewelry and photographs Thursday from booths set up in front of the port authority building. “It’s definitely a feather in the cap of Eastport.”
The dropoff of cruise ship traffic in Bar Harbor, where resident pushback against congestion resulted in steep voter-approved cutbacks in 2022, has helped raise Eastport’s profile for cruise companies that want to make stops in Maine for voyages that stretch from New York or Boston to Atlantic Canada — but no one in Eastport seems eager to become the next Bar Harbor.
Chris Gardner, head of the local port authority, said the most cruise ship visits Eastport had in any year prior to this one was around 20 in 2023. He said that the port authority has actively recruited ships to visit, because of the much-needed boost they provide to the local economy, but he doesn’t see the city’s annual cruise ship count ever getting much higher than 30.
“This helps Eastport keep its character,” Gardner said.
The money local business owners make when a ship is in port for a few hours helps them keep their doors open on quieter days, and the pressure on local infrastructure stays relatively low, he said. Eastport gets a fair share of seasonal residents and daytrippers, but does not get crowds of tourists who crowd the sidewalks at night or make parking spaces hard to come by.
“All we have to do is share Eastport with ships 30 days a year,” Gardner said. “That allows us to keep it as it is for the other 335 days.”
Like Johannes, other local business owners said they welcome the foot traffic that pass through their doors on cruise ship days.
Shania Armstrong, the bar manager at the Happy Crab, said the restaurant was busy Thursday from when the first passengers came ashore until the last ones left. For much of the afternoon both the Happy Crab and the nearby Waco Diner had wait lines stretching out their doors onto the sidewalk.
“We did really good,” Armstrong said. “The entire restaurant was packed all day.”
Armstrong said that after the last tender went back out to Brilliant Lady, she had another run of locals who came in to get drinks and wind down from the rush of having a big ship in port. She said that she wouldn’t want to be that jammed every day, but that it is helpful to have ships in town after Labor Day, when the number of tourists who arrive overland slows down.
“It does help out our staff,” Armstrong said, adding that the Happy Crab is open year-round. “I love it. I think the number [of ships that visit] is just right.”
Christina Jeffrey, co-owner of A Boatload of Books bookstore on Water Street, said that the impact on her store varies from ship to ship but that, generally, the added business from cruise ships has a positive local impact. She said that it is theoretically possible to have too many ships, but that she does not think local officials will allow ship visits to become a burden on the small city.
“I think it’s really good for the businesses here,” Jeffrey said.
Pos Bassett, who lives in the nearby Passamaquoddy community of Sipayik, sold out of lobster at his seafood truck Bassiano’s, which was parked Thursday by the breakwater pier.
“We like it,” Bassett said, though he said it is harder for fishermen to come and go from the breakwater pier and adjacent marina when cruise ships are in port. “We did good today. It was a good day.”
And it is not just local business owners who appreciate the ships coming in.
Two passengers on the Brilliant Lady, Abby Dutes and Sebastian Ortega, were raised and live in New York City, where the 8-day cruise began. They said they wanted to go on a fall foliage cruise, which is when Maine’s cruise season peaks, to see the ocean and visit smaller towns.
“There is a large emphasis on community, and you feel it as soon as you walk past the businesses. It’s really nice,” Dutes said, noting how many ship passengers were strolling in the middle of Water Street. “I haven’t gotten honked at one time.”
The couple said that they’ve never been to Maine before, and they were hoping to get lobster rolls before continuing their cruise to Canada. They would like to have more time to explore Maine’s coast if they could, they added.
“Right now we’re getting a taste for everything, and it’s making me wish we didn’t have to get up and leave in a couple of hours,” Dutes said.
