the Chesapeake Bay Cruise out of Baltimore stops at Yorktown
Source: American Cruise Lines, Chesapeake Bay Cruise
the Chesapeake Bay Cruise out of Baltimore stops at Yorktown
Source: American Cruise Lines, Chesapeake Bay Cruise
Only American Cruise Lines ships visit Yorktown, as part of the 10-day American Revolution Cruise that starts in Baltimore. American Cruise Lines ships also visit Alexandria and Tangier Island.1
American Cruise Lines schedules the American Star, a 100-guest cruise ship, to visit Virginia ports on trips from Baltimore
Source: American Cruise Lines, American Star
Princess Cruise Lines added Yorktown as a "port of call" one-day stop when it announced the 2024 schedule. The company anticipated greater interest in sites associated with the American Revolution, as Virginia tourism officials prepared to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026 and the semiquincentennial (250th anniversary) of the Battle of Yorktown in 2031. The interest in Yorktown may have been enhanced by the fact that the president of the cruise line had lifeguarded at the Yorktown beach when growing up, and thought the town was unfairly overshadowed by the fame of Williamsburg.
in 2023, Princess Cruise Lines announced its first-ever stops in Yorktown were scheduled in 2024
Source: Princess Cruise Lines, Princess Cruises Debuts First-Ever Summer Colonial Heritage Voyages...
The larger Princess ships would not be able to use the dock at Yorktown; they required a channel 26 feet deep. The cruise line planned for tenders to ferry people from the anchorage site 1.75 miles to the Riverwalk Landing Piers. Charter buses to take people to nearby tourism destinations would be staged just upstream of the Coleman Memorial Bridge at the Watermen's Museum.
large cruise ships would anchor 1.75 miles away from the Yorktown waterfront
Source: Visit Yorktown Virginia
About 1/3 of passengers come ashore for pre-planned trips and another 1/3 come ashore to wander on their own, so Riverwalk Landing would be busy as the small 90-passenger tenders delivered and retrieved passengers. Princess Cruise Lines floated the idea of building a new dock if the three 2024 visits and a repeat again in 2025 was successful. At the request of the York County Board of Supervisors, the General Assembly amended the state budget in 2023 to add $15 million for the Virginia Port Authority to support making Yorktown a port of call for cruise ships.
1,500 passengers could come ashore at Yorktown in a visit by the Island Princess
Source: Princess Cruise Lines, Island Princess
At maximum capacity, three stops by the 2,200-guest Island Princess and two stops by the 3,080-guest Emerald Princess could bring over 14,000 visitors to the Williamsburg Triangle area in 2024. The Island Princess had 16 decks; the Emerald Princess had 19 decks.
Both ships were twice the height of the Coleman Memorial Bridge carrying Route 17 over the York River. For comparison, the Yorktown Victory Monument is 94 feet tall. A new pier at the Watermen's Museum campus for docking cruise ships, eliminating passenger transfer by smaller tenders, would require opening and closing the two swing spans on the bridge.
Princess Cruises indicated it might build a new dock, if three visits to Yorktown in 2024 and again in 2025 were successful
Source: ESRI, ArcGIS Online
The area economy welcomed tourists, but some local residents objected to the large cruise ships stopping at Yorktown. They argued that the American Cruise Lines visits, with 180 people, were appropriate but that the larger number of visitors from Princess Cruise ships would overwhelm the town. A reverse concern was that the business benefits would bypass Yorktown if most cruise ship passengers chose to visit Colonial Williamsburg or Jamestown, rather than eat/shop in Yorktown.
local opposition focused on the size of the cruise ships planning to bring thousands of passengers to/through Yorktown
Source: Preserve Yorktown
In addition, the large cruise ships would generate significant emissions that could affect local air quality. No terminal in Virginia offered on-shore (shoreside) power to cruise ships, providing enough electricity to the floating small cities to allow ships to turn off fuel-burning engines. Worldwide, only 3% of cruise ports were projected to offer on-shore power by 2025.
Local tourism and economic development officials highlighted the revenue that the cruise ship passengers would generate:2
By August 2023, local opposition organized by "Preserve Yorktown" was sufficient for Princess Cruise Lines to cancel the two planned stops by the Emerald Princess. A petition opposing stops by the larger cruise ships had 5,000 signatures by then. The issue was a factor in the November 2023 election. By January 2024, there were over 7,000 signatures on the petition. The 2020 census had recorded 221 residents as the total population of Yorktown and 70,045 people in York County.
a petition against large cruise ships stopping in Yorktown had over 6,600 signatures by the end of November 2023
Source: Change.org, It's a question of SCALE
Holland America Line, a subsidiary of Carnival Corporation like Princess Cruise Lines, also announced in 2023 that its ships would make three stops in Yorktown in 2025 as part of its Atlantic Coast cruises. That arrangement was never finalized with town officials. When local citizens objected in November 2023, Holland America promised to remove the 2025 Yorktown stops from its announced schedule.
Local opponents continued to press for the York County Board of Supervisors to block the planned 2024 visits. One opponent conmmented:3
The opponents managed to get the House of Delegates to block a bill in the 2024 session which would have authorized casino gambling on a cruise ship in Virginia waters within one hour of port. That legislation would have increased the time that cruise ships with at least 2,000 passengers on overnight voyages could generate revenue from gambling. State legislation was required to authorize casinos on ships to stay open once they crossed the boundary line three miles from the Atlantic Ocean coastline, from Federally-controlled into state-controlled waters. Reaching international waters beyond the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay normally required traveling four or five hours.
The bill was designed in part to make Norfolk a more-attractive port of call for large cruise ships, but Preserve Yorktown lobbied hard against it. One delegate who voted "no" in the subcommittee said:4
In January 2024, Princess Cruise Lines cancelled what had become three planned stops at Yorktown and switched them to Norfolk. City officials were happy to end up with a total of 10 stops by Princess Cruise ships in 2024. They made clear that Historic Triangle would still get economic benefits from cruise ships docking at Norfolk, since passengers would take day trips to see the nearby historic sights.
The executive director of Nauticus, the maritime museum next to the Half Moone Cruise and Celebration Center in Norfolk, said:5
Opposition to cruise ships did not extend to a visit in June, 2026 by a fleet of tall sailing ships. The 2026 Sail250 America tour scheduled a stop at Hampton Roads, along with stops at New Orleans, Baltimore, New York and Boston, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Sail250 Virginia organized visits by the ships to Cape Charles, Norfolk, Hampton, Smithfield/Isle of Wight County, and Yorktown.
Portions of the 60-ship sailing fleet were scheduled to participate in the Yorktown Tall Ships Festival, Blackbeard Pirate Festival in Hampton, Tall Ships at Cape Charles, and Smithfield Maritime Rendezvous before assembling off the Norfolk/Virginia Beach coastline for the Parade of Sail.6
To manage the tall ships and cruise ships arriving at Yorktown, York County had to expand its Dockmaster Building on the waterfront. The county decided to replace the existing 1970's building and a separate building with public restrooms, in part to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The facilities also lacked climate control. Staff used space heaters to stay warm in the winter, and the restrooms were closed after draining the pipes to prevent freezing.
The Board of Supervisors chair said in 2024:7
The Historic Yorktown Design Committee rejected three proposals presented by county staff for a consolidated, two-story building that would have provided room for event planners and emergency services personnel. Those designs would have block waterfront vistas, and the scale was out of proportion to the existing waterfront. The final, approved proposal created a building for visitor services as well as the dockmaster, with other county staff in a separate waterfront operations building to be constructed south of Water Street.8
After winning the battle to block the largest cruise ships from stopping at Yorktown, the "Preserve Yorktown" group transitioned into "Protect Virginia." Members decided that the impacts of population saturation and air/water pollution during cruise ship visits, and lessons learned about the predatory business practices of the cruise industry, justified expanding their scope:9
The group anticipated that the cruise industry would select Newport News or another location on the Peninsula for a port-of-call stop, since historical tourism was expencted to expand in 2024-2031 during the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution. A lobbyist for Princess Cruise Lines said Williamsburg and Yorktown were two sites of great interest, but:10
Holland America Line planned cruise ship stops at Yorktown in 2025, but cancelled them in response to local opposition
Source: Holland America Line, Canada and New England Cruises (as on November 24, 2023)