To the Editor:
Self-aggrandizing double talk from the Steamship Authority is nothing new, but it usually comes from two different people, or the same person at two different times. In contrast, SSA General Manager Robert Davis (“No effort to conceal Sankaty records,” Nov. 29) has separated his diametrically opposed statements by nothing more than a couple of paragraph breaks. We mostly roll our eyes and let the double talk slide as inconsequential, but this time the SSA’s offense is big — letting an unmanned ship drift about freely in Woods Hole.
Across the history of the maritime industry, if a captain lets his ship drift away, his head rolls off the fantail as soon as the admiral or owner learns about it. Not so in SSA World. Five months after the SSA failed to tie up its ship, the SSA is focused on explaining how engaging a lawyer to stop us from finding out just what happened does not constitute an effort to “withhold records.” Two paragraphs later, SSA says that it did just that — it “withheld” these records because the elaborate “SQMS” bureaucracy it has developed within itself required it to do so.
Pass the buck around a circle that you create until onlookers forget the original issue. This is the antithesis of responsibility, and characteristic SSA defensive self-preservation.
Self-preservation is no crime, and in most of the world, we tap that instinct to get ahead. Ferry companies that have to compete know that if they don’t offer better service than the other guy, they are going to go out of business. The SSA works it the other way around — it uses its legal power to stop any other ferry service that might do better than it does. 41 North Offshore wants to run freight service between New Bedford and the Vineyard, but Vineyard representative to the SSA Jim Malkin is wary about allowing it to do so, because “this could potentially give away [our] truck revenue.” (“New Bedford freight company proposes Vineyard expansion,” Dec. 1). This has been the SSA strategy for decades — forbid freight service that is not itself, then claim itself as the one and only “lifeline.”
About that ship adrift in Woods Hole. The wind was blowing. Ropes slipped off. We are training. We already told you what happened. Oh. We didn’t tell you what happened because SQMS wouldn’t let us. There is nothing left to see here.
After six decades of the SSA’s successful efforts to preserve itself by killing off anything that looks like competition — anything less expensive, anything more efficient, anything it cannot tax, or anything that is otherwise more satisfactory to the public than itself — it is time to break the monopoly.
John Woodwell
Woods Hole