The first US cruise ship in nearly 40 years was crossing the Florida Straits from Miami to Havana today, restarting commercial travel on waters that once represented a half-century of Cold War hostility.
The 704-passenger Adonia was to finish its nearly 17-hour journey at 9:30 am EST, becoming the first US cruise ship to dock in Havana since President Jimmy Carter eliminated virtually all restrictions of US travel to Cuba in the late 1970s.
Travel limits were restored after Carter left office and US cruises to Cuba only become possible again after Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro declared detente on December 17, 2014.
The Adonia's arrival is the first step toward a future in which thousands of ships a year could cross the Florida Straits, long closed to most US-Cuba traffic due to tensions that once brought the world to the brink of nuclear war.
The straits were blocked by the US during the Cuban Missile Crisis and tens of thousands of Cubans have fled across them to Florida on homemade rafts -- with untold thousands dying in the process.
The number of Cubans trying to cross the straits is at its highest point in eight years and cruises and merchant ships regularly rescue rafters from the straits.
Before the 1959 Cuban revolution, cruise ships regularly travelled from the US to Cuba, with elegant Caribbean cruises departing from New York and USD 42 overnight weekend jaunts leaving twice a week from Miami, said Michael L Grace, an amateur cruise ship historian.
New York cruises featured dressy dinners, movies, dancing and betting on "horse races" in which steward dragged wooden horses around a ballroom track according to rolls of dice that determined how many feet each could move per turn.
The United Fruit company operated once-a-week cruise service out of New Orleans, too, he said.
"Cuba was a very big destination for Americans, just enormous," he said.
Cruises dwindled in the years leading up to the Cuban Revolution and ended entirely after Castro overthrew the US-backed government.
After Carter dropped limits on Cuba travel, 400 passengers, including musical legend Dizzy Gillespie sailed from New Orleans to Cuba on a 1977 "Jazz Cruise" aboard the MS Daphne.
Today, the Cuban government sees cruises as an easy source of revenue that can bring thousands more American travellers without placing additional demand on the country's maxed-out food supplies and overbooked hotels.
Before detente, Americans made surreptitious yacht trips to Cuba during Caribbean vacations and the number of Americans coming by boat has climbed since 2014, including passengers on cruise ships registered in third countries and sailing from other ports in the Caribbean.
