THE CRUISE SHIPS ARE COMING

Lately, to judge by headlines, the tide may seem to be turning against cruise ships. Rockland’s city council set a cap of six visits per year from ships carrying more than 500 passengers. The Mount Desert Island communities of Tremont, Southwest Harbor, and Northeast Harbor banned cruise ships from dropping anchor. Bar Harbor residents recently voted against enlarging piers to accommodate big ships. Up and down the Maine coast, cruise opponents cite air and water pollution from ships, plus the overcrowding in small downtowns suddenly host to several hundred or several thousand extra guests.

But not every community is so wary of cruise traffic.

One recent morning, Tessa Chaffey Ftorek was sitting in her home in Eastport and squinting to spot whales through a picture window overlooking Passamaquoddy Bay. As a seventh-generation Eastporter, Chaffey Ftorek knows as well as anyone how those waters have shaped her city’s fortunes — trade, fishing, and canning all boomed and busted over the span of a couple of centuries. So for the past 15 years, the 67-year-old has teamed up with neighbors to pluck from the sea a different kind of catch: cruise passengers.

A study by CruiseMaine, a public-private coalition that promotes Maine ports and serves as a go-between for communities and cruise lines, found that passengers spend about $70 per shore visit in Maine (one might assume spending in Portland and Bar Harbor helps pump that number up). All in all, the study said, the state’s 400,000 cruise visitors spent $29 million here last year. And though many communities may feel like they already have plenty of tourism, thank you, Eastport and a handful of small port towns — including Bath, Bucksport, and Castine — are seeking a bigger piece of the cruise-business pie.

Eastport, Chaffey Ftorek says, is particularly well equipped to lure ships. A former Registered Maine Guide, she teaches recreational tourism at Washington County Community College (and occasionally officiates local weddings and funerals). She also spends countless hours hyping Eastport’s cruise-ship potential to industry types at conferences and through social media and coordinating volunteers to greet ships when they arrive in town.

Eastport is the easternmost city in the U.S., with some 1,300 residents on a three-square-mile island tethered to the mainland via narrow causeway. But for a small town, Eastport has outsize waterfront infrastructure, in the form of a 65-foot-deep natural harbor and two big piers. Many similar-size destinations have shallower waters and shorter docks, limiting ships to a couple hundred passengers and often requiring those passengers to take tender boats ashore. Eastport can easily accommodate ships carrying more than 1,000 people.

Port Authority director Chris Gardner is charged with keeping everything running smoothly when a ship comes in, and he’s all for bringing more visits to Eastport, even though it makes his job busier. The 44-year-old former policeman doesn’t have a hi-tech operation — he scribbles on a whiteboard in his office to sort out where ships should tie up, how they can offload trash, and, if arriving from Canada, how they clear customs. “It’s not sexy,” he says, “but it’s what the cruise lines need, and we got that.”

Eastport’s harbor has been a hub of activity for most of its history. Throughout the early 1800s, it was one of the busiest shipping centers in the country. At the turn of the 20th century, steamships offered daily passenger service to and from Boston. At the start of this century, the passenger-boat business was again trending up with about 10 cruise ships docking per year. Progress halted in late 2014, though, when the city’s 50-year-old breakwater pier collapsed. For three years, cruise ships had nowhere to dock, until the city finished construction on a new, $15 million breakwater. This year, Eastport had seven cruise visits scheduled, with ships carrying up to a couple hundred passengers who might spend anywhere from a morning on shore to the better part of a day.

Beyond good infrastructure, Chaffey Ftorek thinks the city has other draws that should help grow those numbers. Eastport has classic coastal New England charm, she says, plus a burgeoning cultural scene that, in her experience, appeals to cruisers. “They’re looking for art, for history, for the real Maine,” she says. “When I do a scenic bus tour with them, I tell them I was born here, and my ancestors were among the first settlers, and they go, ‘Wow!’ They want a genuine experience — to hear personal stories, go to Raye’s Mustard Mill, to meet a real lobster fisherman.”

When a cruise ship arrives in Eastport, Chaffey Ftorek is one of 30 blue-vested volunteers who welcome passengers ashore and help direct them to restaurants, shops, and galleries. The Tides Institute and Museum of Art has become a popular stop, with its seven buildings that house regional art and architectural-history collections as well as an international artist-in-residence program.

Still, cultural assets and a cruise-friendly vibe don’t mean the ships will automatically start showing up, CruiseMaine executive director Sarah Flink says. She spends a lot of time trying to put Maine towns on the industry’s radar, but there’s competition from ports throughout New England and Canada. One thing that can help a town pull in ships is a marquee sight that cruise lines can advertise to their prospective customers — Bar Harbor is the busiest cruise destination in Maine because it has Acadia National Park in its backyard.

Chaffey Ftorek thinks Eastport might have just such a sight too. Roosevelt Campobello International Park, on the wooded Canadian island where President Franklin Roosevelt spent summers, is only 2 miles from Eastport by water. It boasts cliff-hugging trails, historic sites, lighthouses, and an array of wildlife viewing, from seals to birds to whales.

The problem is there’s no regular ferry service between Eastport and Campobello and therefore no system in place for clearing customs when arriving by water. Gardner is working with Canadian counterparts toward a solution, but for now, the blue-vested volunteers have to drive visitors 40 miles by bus, around Cobscook Bay and over the bridge at Lubec, to reach Campobello. The drive to and fro can eat up a third of a visitor’s time ashore.

On a pinch-me-perfect day in Eastport this summer, scores of people strolled out on the pier and up along Water Street, where cars had to weave around cranes working on several multi-million-dollar renovations of once-derelict buildings. Eastport-born, 74-year-old Meg McGarvey and her business partners own two such rehab projects. One of them, the 1887 Mincton Building, now houses the Commons, an art gallery with two vacation condos on the second floor. Inside the gallery, crossing her sun-freckled arms, McGarvey proclaimed, “The cruise business is just perfect for us!”

She and her partners also own the Sea Street Pier building next door, with one of the cranes out front. Their vision is to turn the three-story, 30,000-square-foot former American Canning Company facility into another multi-use building, with shops, a boutique hotel, and four long-lease penthouse apartments. The key to the success of such projects, she said, is to continue growing Eastport as a travel destination.

Just up the street, photographer Greg Gordon was manning his Full Fathom Five gallery. He describes himself as a “willing prisoner of the sea.” A lifelong mariner, he first came to Eastport about 15 years ago, as a cruise captain on a small ship operated by the now-defunct Glacier Bay line. Gordon fell in love with the city’s people and its dramatic 30-foot tides. “It’s amazing,” he says. “The world changes in front of you every six hours.”

For Eastport, he said, change is good. And like Chaffey Ftorek, Gardner, McGarvey, and many others in town, he’s all for luring cruise business, although he cautions that he doesn’t want Eastport to change too much. “People want to see places like Eastport the way they are,” he said. “Lose that, and where are you going to take them?” — J.K.