Boston Harbor: Facing an Uncertain Future While Nostalgic for Grandeur Long Past

Bostonians can point with pride to the fact that Boston as a port predated the United States as a nation by some 135 years. Indeed, by the early 1700's registered tonage had placed it in the ranks of the first five seaports of the world. It now ranks a mere eighteenth in the United States alone. Old engravings show proper Boston ladies in crinoline and bonnets walking along the docks, dwarfed by rows upon rows of masts and sails. Now only Old Ironsides at its dreary berth in Charlestown is left to remind the city of what it once was. The schooners and whalers are gone, even the passenger boats.

When, in 1840, Cunard established the first steamer passenger line in America, Boston was its natural choice of the terminus. In 1966, only 34 scheduled passenger ships will leave Boston Harbor and nearly all of these are cruises to the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. Gone too are the coastal shuttle boats to New York (remember Gloria Wandrous in Butterfield 8?) which did in a more leisurely age what the Logan shuttles do now. At every turn, Boston Harbor evokes its past, not in the solid romantic way of Beacon Hill, but in a mood of decline and acceptance of a less-glamorous modern shipping world where Boston found itself without prestige, an old forgotten relative to the north.

Under the Pru

Now that the New Boston has turned from a seditious idea to a Babbitt cliche, how is the former lifeblood of the city faring beneath the limelight of the Pru? It is not faring well. Boston's major problem as a harbor is usually summed up in two words: New York. Boston has never really recovered from those years in the mid-1800's when the upstart Knickerbockers took away not only the prestige, but most of the business, of the foreign trade. When domestic trade came to be handled almost entirely by railroads and trucks, Boston had to compete for the increasingly-needed foreign trade with the already established business and commercial center of the nation. (This, despite the fact that Boston is the nearest North Atlantic port to Europe, Africa, and the east coast of South America.)

But what is more alarming, perhaps is that New York today draws even the New England business which should logically be Boston's. When, in November of '64, the Massachusetts Port Authority launched a campaign for Port of Boston Export Month they discovered that some 700,000 tons of general export cargo originating in Boston's immediate marketing area were being shipped via New York. (The campaign, incidentally, was wrecked by a Longshoremen's strike.)

The New Boston, then, clearly has a challenge in making its port a more successful going concern. What it has done with the challenge, however, is quite another story. At the end of World War II, it became evident that a controlling and supervisory body would be necessary to insure future growth for the port. Joseph P. Kennedy and a legislative commission researched the matter and proposed a state Department of Commerce. Massachusetts politics being what they are, however, the proposal soon became involved in a tug of war between the Governor and those business interests opposed to the Fair Employment Practice Commission, also on the boards that year. The Governor got his Commission, but the Department of Commerce was pushed aside and it was only with some difficulty that a much less solvent and effective Port of Boston Authority was squeezed through.

But the port showed a surprising rate of growth. Between 1945 and 1959, the average volume of import-export cargo almost tripled. Construction and improvements involved huge expenditures, however, so the Massachusetts legislature terminated the Port of Boston as a government agency and in 1956 created the combined Massachusetts Port Authority. The Authority, which presently operates and controls Logan International Airport, Hanscom Field, Port of Boston properties, and the Mystic River Bridge (whose revenues are bigger than those of the port properties), is a curious mixture of business and government designed for the purpose of making the port a commercial concern, rather than a publicly subsidized one.

Discouraging Record

There is no doubt that combined revenues from the Mystic Bridge and Logan have enabled the entire operation to function without a drain on the taxpayer. But it is also true that the combined Authority has produced a very discouraging record for the port itself. The rate of gain in short tonnage has not increased appreciably since the Authority assumed control in 1959, and an even more depressing note is revealed in the number of ships visiting the port, which decreased by 361 ships from '59 to '64. The fact is simply that the MPA has not increased or even equaled the rate of growth experienced during the Port of Boston era.

This question of the Authority's impact is perhaps the single most sig- nificant factor for the future of the port. There were, of course, unavoidable external elements which greatly hampered the port's prosperity during this period. Completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway provided new competition. A long about with the International Longshoremen's Association was at last somewhat abated, if not resolved, with a new contract. Railroad problems in the '60's caused the Authority to become embroiled in the now-famous rail rate parity case, which had previously enabled Philadelphia, Norfolk, and Baltimore to receive more advantageous rates to and from the Midwest. Recent mergers have not favored Boston, and a dramatic example of railroad trouble occurred this winter when Boston was unable to ship government wheat to India because the two city's grain elevators, both leased by railroad companies, had been closed down. The advantage of railroad proximity to piers (in Boston cargo can be loaded directly onto railway cars) has become less valuable since truck transport now accounts for 80 per cent of the traffic.

All these are sizable hindrances. But overriding them is the larger question of the combined Authority's effectiveness. There is widespread belief that the New Boston has cast its lot with airplanes rather than ships. Though repeatedly denied by the MPA, the concept of airport priority would seem to be borne out by facts. In the fiscal year 1965, for example, capital expenditures for port properties amounted to $648,000 as opposed to $5,162,000 for airport properties. Nearly as much was spent on the Mystic River Bridge as on the port. Logan, of course, is an expanding enterprise with heartwarming figures of growth--11.9 per cent increase in passengers and 30 per cent increase in air cargo for the last fiscal year. New Boston men are counting on an even bigger growth when the new terminal is completed, as well as the much-debated and much-needed new runway. Where all this leaves the port, however, is quite another matter.

A Bright Future?

The future of Boston as a port according to MPA officials at least, is bright. When confronted with immediate past records, they quickly point out plans for the future which they hope will overcome the sluggish rate of growth. "The future is excellent," Robert S. Tobin, Chief Trade Representative, said. "I'm sure we can double, possibly triple, foreign trade as far as was done between '46 and '59. I'm confident we can."

The confidence, perhaps, is justified. For if the New Boston has learned anything, it is not to rely on the past which has left it so out of touch with the present. It has accepted automation, for instance. (Boston's four largest import commodities, petroleum products, sugar, gypsum, and salt are now completely handled by automated machinery. The New Boston, in addition, has begun to learn from other cities. Old South Station and the New Haven yards are to be torn down to make way for a Trade and Transportation Center which features accommodations and showrooms for visiting businessmen, very similar in concept to the proposed Trade Center in New York. Baltimore, whose port has achieved huge growth rates in recent years, took an old airport harbor that had fallen into disuse and rebuilt it as a giant unloading facility. The MPA is now planning a similar project at8CRIMSON Roger W. Sinnott