After dropping Sault Saint Marie from its Great Lakes itinerary, the German cruise line Hapag-Lloyd has now announced that it's pulling its luxury ship MS Columbus from the Great Lakes next year.
Hapag-Lloyd says that decreasing water levels in the Great Lakes has made the navigation for Columbus unsafe.
Last fall, Purvis Marine was retained to remove windrows of sedimentation from the area where the Columbus docks near the Roberta Bondar Marina. About $130,000 worth of dredging work was required to make the depth suitable, and the city council declined to pay for the work, saying the cruise line was happy with the current depth. That apparently is not the case.
The Columbus, a cruise ship with capacity for 423 passengers, was specifically built for the lakes. The ship was narrow and shallow enough to maneuver through the area's locks and tight waterways.
That has changed in recent years. The water levels in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, are down 3 to 4 feet since the late 1990s, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Hapag-Lloyd dropped Sault Saint Marie, on the St. Mary's River in central Ontario, from the Columbus' ports of call because of low water levels.
The company says it "is not returning to the Great Lakes in 2008 — and possibly not for many years," says the Great Lakes Cruise Company on its website, which markets Columbus cruises.
That leaves just one ship, the 100-passenger Grande Mariner, sailing in the the Great Lakes in 2008.
The Grande Mariner offers six-night Lake Michigan cruises and a two-week Great American Waterways cruise, with voyages from Chicago to Warren, Rhode Island.
MS Columbus Leaving Great Lakes
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Hapag-Lloyd Cruise Line - August 26, 2007
