Updated Feb. 26
The Steamship Authority has chosen its next chief operating officer, its second highest position in the ferry line, and it has hired from within.
Mark Amundsen, the Steamship’s former director of maintenance and engineering, was announced as the new COO in a Friday press release and has since assumed his promoted role.
“Mark brings an extensive amount of experience and knowledge to the Steamship
Authority, and I am pleased to continue to have him as a member of the team,” Steamship General Manager Robert Davis said in the release.
Amundsen is filling the void left by former COO Mark Higgins, who resigned in November after he wasn’t guaranteed a promotion to the general manager seat. Steamship officials are trying to replace the general manager position after Davis announced in September he would step down amid criticism over how the ferry line was being run.
Steamship officials said that the ferry line had interviewed several internal candidates for the COO role.
“We had a number of individuals with a lot of strong strengths,” Davis said during a Steamship Authority board meeting on Feb. 18.
Amundsen said he has done “a lot of good work” at the Steamship Authority and believes he is the “perfect fit” to be COO and help bring the ferry line to the “new level.”
“[I’m] just looking very forward to the position and developing the Steamship Authority and working with everyone in the future,” Amundsen said.
The COO is responsible for planning, directing, and overseeing all activities relating to the marine operations, shoreside operations, and engineering departments alongside the operations and communications center, the release states. According to the ferry line, Amundsen will work closely with the general manager to ensure the vessel and shoreside operations teams collaborate to remain on schedule and “manage communication channels, maintain and improve efficiencies, and focus on development plans.”
Jim Malkin, Martha’s Vineyard representative to the Steamship Authority board, supported the decision to promote Amundsen, saying that he was a highly experienced maritime professional.
Malkin told the Times promoting Amundsen allows the ferry service to review positions below the COO that it wants to focus on.
“This allows the authority to look at its structure,” he said.
Amundsen joined the Authority in 2019 and has served as the marine operations director and engineering and maintenance director. He has been overseeing the conversion of the ferry line’s three newest freight vessels — the Barnstable, the Aquinnah, and the Monomoy — at Alabama Shipyard. One of these vessels, the Barnstable, is currently serving on the Nantucket route.
The release states Amundsen brings more than 30 years of experience in “operations, strategic planning, technical management, and engineering in the international shipping industry.” According to the Steamship Authority, his expertise include strategic transportation business development, overseeing safety compliance, structuring and negotiating long-term contracts, cost control and purchasing elements, and presiding over dry-dockings globally.
One of Amundsen’s positions before joining the Steamship Authority was as CEO of Nova Star Cruises, a ferry service between Portland, Maine and Yarmouth in Nova Scotia, Canada that filed for bankruptcy after a short stint. According to CBC reporting, the ferry line had launched in 2014 but had lackluster performance during its two-summer run, including failing to meet ridership goals.
The company was chosen by the Nova Scotian government to sail between the two countries, but the service ended up costing Canadian taxpayers around $40 million Canadian in subsidies. The Nova Scotian government severed ties with Nova Star Cruises and selected Bay Ferries, a Canadian company with a much smaller ferry, to be the new operator of the Maine-Canada route in 2015.
Nova Star Cruises filed for bankruptcy in 2016 and needed to pay back millions of dollars to creditors and vendors. This was a joint effort between ST Marine, a Singaporean company that owned the over-500-foot long vessel MV Nova Star, and Quest Navigations, which Amundsen was president of.
In a Wednesday morning interview, Amundsen told The Times he had approached the Nova Scotian government in 2012 to propose reviving a ferry route between the province and Maine that had ceased in 2008. He said Nova Scotian officials later issued an “expert panel report” identifying the number of passengers and the type of ferry needed as part of a bidding process.
The effort was meant to increase tourism in southern Nova Scotia, but Amundsen said the passenger market was not the same in 2014 as it was before 2008, the time the other service ceased.
“The expert panel report projected 95,000 passengers per year, and we were only able to transport about 60,000 passengers per year,” he said. “Into the second year, we were about the same level … we were short probably about 20,000 to 30,000 passengers a year to make this commercially viable.”
The province eventually found the MV Nova Star was too large for the route it was running between Maine and Nova Scotia, which led to the decision to go with Bay Ferries instead.
“This is a large ferry. It’s not like the ferries we [use to] go back and forth,” Amundsen said. “This was 528 feet, it carried 80 tractor trailers, and 386 cars. So it was quite large for the service.”
Amundsen also said the subsidies Nova Star Cruises included forgivable loans and bonds, and an escrow fund was established to return money to the province over time. He said Nova Scotia withheld around $2 million in funding, which caused a “ripple effect” leading to the seizure by U.S. Marshals, which was taken care of by ST Marine.
ST Marine would move the MV Nova Star to Spain after ending the Gulf of Maine route, and it continued to work with Amundsen. Amundsen said he operated the vessel from 2016 to 2018 between Algeciras, Spain and Tangier, Morocco.
Amundsen’s overall experience, including in various parts of the world, has gained him support from Steamship Authority officials, including Malkin.
“Based on my knowledge, there was no issue with his performance,” Malkin said of Amundsen’s time at Nova Star Cruises.
Amundsen received his bachelor’s degree in marine engineering at Maine Maritime Academy in Castine, Maine, and is a licensed chief engineer of steam and motor vessels.
Updated with comments from Mark Amundsen and Jim Malkin.
