Page 9: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (June 2026)

onnecticut Maritime Association has decided to ITB inshore/coastal trade, the ferry trade and the excursion move its annual meeting and exposition to Hous- trade were at best tiny and in many ways non-existent and ton for the coming year. In the last few years atten- today are powerful industry segments in their own right.

Cdance has shrunk and I suppose leadership thinks Meanwhile, containerization volume continued to grow, that Houston has more potential to draw interest from the and the total oil and chemical volume is still quite large. And maritime community. after a very long absence, recreational boating in New York

This leaves me to wonder what the “Maritime Community” City is growing again too.

actually is. New York City has always been a cutting-edge port (Steam,

Connecticut Maritime Association had an interesting origin. excursion vessels, containerization, and many other examples)

In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s many bulk ship owner/op- and continues to be a cutting-edge port. It led in the ferry re- erators got sick of the long commute into New York City and vitalization and probably will be the lead port for waterborne decided to move their of? ces to Stamford Connecticut, where micro cargo distribution.

a number of these owners lived. Soon more owners and opera- It is thought that ship repair and construction is dead in the tors followed suit and Stamford and surroundings became a port of New York. That is not true it, it is just different. Bay- mini hotbed of commercial maritime. onne Ship Repair and GMD can handle big stuff, but the most

Not all maritime moved to Stamford. Container shipping interesting shipyard developments are up the Hudson River at companies moved to the New Jersey side of the Hudson Feeney, Carver and even Scarano, each unique with their own

River, and in those days, this resulted in a weird vacuum exceptional strengths. in New York City. Soon underwriters and naval architects There actually is so much going on that some types of mari- started to move their staff out of the city, and ABS moved to time are not growing simply because we are too busy dealing

Paramus, NJ. with all the other activities.

I am not sure the move to Paramus was ever well thought On a personal level I have become aware that high end eco- out and by the 90’s ABS had decamped to Houston. I have tourism in the Hudson watershed (which is a huge watershed; been told these moves were driven by ABS top leadership, reaching from the top of the Adirondacks, Erie canal and Lake where they simply moved the whole operation to the location Champlain to the Hudson Canyon Marine Sanctuary) is com- where top leadership lived. Noting that with ever improving pletely underexploited. instant communications there was no reason to stay in New So yes, maybe New York City is not the largest bulk com-

York City, other companies decamped to even more random modities port in the United and only the largest container port locations such as Florida, Newport RI, Norfolk, VA and even on the US East Coast, but if one puts it all together it probably inland locations such as Atlanta and Raleigh, North Carolina. is the largest commercial port in the United States. A top con-

Everybody thought that New York city as a maritime hub tainer port, a signi? cant bulk cargo port, probably the busiest was toast, and meanwhile it appeared that Houston was the ferry port in the United States, a very busy cruise ship port, new maritime hotbed, with Connecticut a solid but eventually probably the busiest excursion port in the United States, and declining mini hotbed. a cutting edge port for micro cargo and ecotourism with an

CMA ran incredibly successful annual conferences for al- emerging recreational industry.

most 40 years, but this year decided that New York as a mari- Hell, it even has the largest sewage tanker ? eet in the United time hub no longer was viable for its conference. States and a massive water born garbage trade!

I don’t disagree, the proof is in the pudding. But maybe we Maybe it was time for CMA to head to Houston, but maybe are making the wrong pudding and that is something that has it is also time for forward thinking maritime types to converge been concerning me for a couple of decades. on the Port of New York once a year, and to really ? gure out

When I joined Martin & Ottaway in 1988 in New York City, where the industry is going. industry people I met had one comment: “Welcome to a dy- ing industry.” These were older executives who referred to the exodus I just described. They were heavily reliant on bulk commodity transportation and were basing their concern on the local decline, particularly evident in the Whitehall Club.

For every column I write MREN makes a small contribution

In actual fact I will argue that the greater Port of New York to an organization of my choice. For the foreseeable is much more signi? cant today as a maritime hotbed. future I am selecting SL7Expo. An industry wide effort to

Bulk cargo has become more ef? cient, particularly notice- develop a Smithsonian level exhibit center for commercial able in the massive reduction in oil spills in the port and there- maritime. https://sl7expo.org/members/ fore less visible. However, in the 1980’s the cruise trade, the www.marinelink.com 9

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