We recently returned home after two weeks on St Martin. While there, we took a 20 minute ferry trip over to Anguilla to visit with a friend who lives there. We had to present our passports, go through customs/immigration each way, etc.
We also watched from our balcony each morning as the sun rose and cruise ships traveled by our room on their way to Phillipsburg. When each ship was still 20 minutes out, a small motorboat came out, exchanged pleasantries, then sped away.
I assume the motorboat was doing something to facilitate customs/immigration requirements. I’ve been on a few cruises and at each port things were pretty seamless; no passport check, etc.
So, anyone have inside info on how cruise-lines handle this?
From the inside, I can say that proof of citizens/passport and such is taken before you board. Only once - and I’ve visited eight countries from cruise ships (I just counted) - have I been asked to go through the customs rigamarole and that was Cuba. The rest we just left. Now leaving meant being scanned by our ship’s staff which including badge scanning and picture confirmation. I just sort of assumed that meant the ship was forwarding our information to people for the country being visited. But I don’t know for sure.
My one cruise was in the Eastern Mediterranean, starting and finishing in Cyprus, and visiting two ports in southern Turkey, Santorini in Greece, and Ashdod in Israel. For each, the ship’s crew took our passports and organised immigration formalities. It was a British cruise line, and almost all the passengers were British, but there were a few foreigners like my wife and me.
For Turkey, cruise ship passengers from most western countries (including Australia) are allowed a short visit without a visa, so when I got my passport back, there was nothing to say that I’d visited Turkey.
For Santorini, since it’s part of Greece and hence in the Schengen Area, there were two stamps in my passport showing that I’d entered and left Schengen.
Israel, of course, does not stamp passports, but for them we got a separate card allowing us into the country, which we gave back on leaving. (We were in Israel for two days: for the first, I just caught a bus to Jerusalem and wander around, while on the second I took a guided tour to Nazareth and the River Jordan.)
So, the details of what happens depends on the country that the ship is visiting but generally the ship’s crew takes care of it.
The small boat you saw sounds like the pilot boat. At each port, the cruise ship takes on a pilot to navigate the harbor. I don’t really know why, but they do it everywhere. The pilot also navigates the ship when it leaves, and then hops on the motorboat. It’s pretty crazy watching the exchange. Sometimes the pilot literally jumps from the cruise ship to the motorboat.
There is a special treaty governing immigration and customs on cruise ships (and making sure they are as minimal as possible), that doesn’t apply to other visitors (which I can’t seem to find the details of on Google right now, my google-fu is weak )
It is the reason they it is a pain to arrange to leave a cruise early, the company will be penalized, unless you travel back to the US to the same port your cruise ship left from.
I always mean to bring my binoculars, maybe next year. From our balcony, we can see Saba (an island) roughly 20 miles away. The ships come in much closer to us, it looks like less than a mile.
So that treaty does not apply to cruises in Europe, Asia, Africa or the South Pacific (i.e., most of the world). In addition, a lot of cruises are not closed-loop, e.g, you might sail from Sydney to Hong Kong, then fly back to Sydney. I don’t think that causes problems in this part of the world.
The harbor pilot is an experienced sailor who is an expert in navigating the local water conditions, hazards, and traffic patterns, which can be constantly changing. They are there to help guide the ship safely through the harbor. I believe that in the US, pilots are required for ships over a certain tonnage, and I assume most nations have similar regulations.
Ditto for Egypt and Russia. (Not on the same cruise!) But the cruise lines have an incentive to make it easy, as do the countries who are getting tourist money from the ships.
Ditto. I’d have to check my passport to see if it was stamped, but I don’t recall giving it up.
We went on a Western Caribbean cruise last month; we visited the Cayman Islands, Honduras, Belize, and Mexico. We had to show our passports when we boarded the ship in Miami; we then locked them in the in-room safe and didn’t need them again until we went through customs in Miami at the end of the cruise. We just took our California drivers licenses and our “cruise card” when we went ashore. I recall that in one port (I think it was Grand Cayman, but I’m not certain) we were asked for our state-issued ID when returning to the port; everywhere else the only people who seemed to care at all about our identity were the folks restricting access to the ship, who only wanted to see our cruise card.
We have done several cruises: the Mediterranean including Egypt, Norway and The Baltic. Also several EU ports.
In almost every port, we simply walked off and on the ship, although they use photo ID to check that we are who we say we are. The only port that we had any problems with bureaucracy was St Petersburg.
When cruise ships arrive at Southampton, and there are several every day, the formalities are pretty minimal, even for foreign nationals. They do sometimes run a spot check, usually on ships coming from Gibraltar or The Canaries. This is because they are outside the EU and some passengers will be carrying contraband tobacco or possibly weapons.
Fly from The East Coast to LHR and you will have to go through immigration and customs. Do the same trip on a repositioning cruise and you will probably just walk off the ship.
The pilots boat may also be used for quarantine and police activities. Less so than it used to be, since everything is done by email now.
And FWIW, passenger ships are unusual in getting pilot boats. Any big tanker or ore-ship, and I’m guessing big container ships, would get a helicopter instead of a boat.
I witnessed an attempted helicopter landing on a cruise ship for a medical emergency. Seas were rough and it was windy. They aborted the landing, instead lowering a cable with a medic who evaluated the patient and decided it was an emergency. They lowered a basket for the patient.
On a cruise to Canada/New England from NY, everyone on board had to go through Customs/Border protection onboard the ship at the first port in the US after leaving Canada, even if they weren’t leaving the ship. When I’ve been on closed -loop cruises that don’t make any other stops in the US ( NY-Bahamas-NY) , there’s no customs/passport check until disembarkation.
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