About 450 pleasure-cruise passengers disembarked from the Norwegian Star ocean liner and poured down a streamer-covered gangplank yesterday as the first official visitors to the newly opened Taichung Port Passenger Terminal.
The passenger ship, belonging to Star Cruises, sailed into Taichung Port at about 9am after a 12-hour voyage from Keelung and tied up at the passenger wharf as part of yesterday's terminal inauguration, attended by Premier Chang Chun-hsiung (張俊雄), Taichung County Magistrate Liao Yung-lai (廖永來) and other officials.
The Bahamas-registered luxury ship, manned by 500 crew mem-bers and captained by Swede Leif Kallsson, departed for Keelung with a similar number of passengers at 4pm on a 22-hour pleasure cruise which took the ship well into international waters.
Although the voyage was a one-time chartered cruise, Tai-chung Port and county officials expressed hopes that the new terminal would soon make the harbor a destination for regularly scheduled passenger cruises, linking central Taiwan to other domestic and international ports.
"We're looking at links with other ports and with China as soon as shipping companies decide on destinations and evaluate market potential," Taichung Harbor Bureau Director Huang Ching-terng (
The new terminal building, which began construction in 1996 and was completed in 1999, is five stories high with a total area of 13,582m2.
Designed to handle an average of one large passenger liner per day, facilities include immigration and customs gates, check-in and ticket sales areas, shops, restaurants and parking for over 300 cars and 40 buses.
The wharf itself -- completed on June 15 -- is able to moor large ships because of a 9m water depth, port authorities said.
Promotional information pamphlets circulated by the harbor bureau tout Taichung Port as "the best location for direct links with China," due to proximity harbors such as Meizhou, Chuanzhou and Xiamen on the other side of the Strait.
"Because links between Taichung and Taipei are now very convenient, the transportation market here is too small.
"But, in the future, when direct links with China are permitted, then there would be big potential and we might consider Taichung," Star Cruises senior manager Peggy Lee said.
The cruise line, the fourth-largest in the world, has already operated regular three and four-day cruises from Keelung to the Japanese islands of Okinawa and Ishigaki.
For yesterday's special trip, passengers were charged a one-way rate of NT$3,000.
Premier Chang, who had the honor of cutting the ribbon at the terminal yesterday, said that the central government wants Tai-chung Port to eventually become a major shipping hub.
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