American Eagle

American Eagle is the first of American Cruise Lines’ Coastal Cats, and the distinction matters more than it sounds. She is a catamaran (twin hulls, a squared-off naval bow, 241 feet by 56) not one of the line’s Mississippi riverboats and not one of its paddlewheel replicas. The number that decides where she can go is her draft: six and a half feet.

Named at Chesapeake Shipbuilding of Salisbury, Maryland in August 2023, she is the lead ship of the Coastal Cat class, twelve of which are planned at the same yard under American Cruise Lines’ Project Blue newbuilding program. She is the second American Cruise Lines ship to carry the name; the first, a small coastal vessel of 2000, ended her life as contractors’ housing at the yard and was sold for scrap.

Where six and a half feet takes her

Almost none of the water she works is water a conventional cruise ship can enter, and her year splits neatly at the equinoxes.

Summer and autumn belong to the Hudson. More of her calendar goes on that river than anywhere else. The eight-night Hudson run between Albany and New York is sailed in both directions through the warm months and repeated as a foliage cruise into late October, some of those round-trip from Albany. It is a river itinerary in everything but name: West Point, Sleepy Hollow, Hyde Park, Kingston and Catskill, plus a full day simply cruising the river through the Highlands. Above Kingston the Hudson is a dredged channel rather than deep water, which is why a six-and-a-half-foot draft is what puts a ship at Albany at all.

Winter and spring belong to the Southeast. She runs the sea islands week between Charleston and Amelia Island, threading the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway behind the barrier beaches with calls at Beaufort, Hilton Head Island, Savannah, St. Simons Island and Jekyll Island. Filling in around it are round-trips from Jacksonville up the rivers of north Florida, the Tolomato, St. Augustine, Green Cove Springs and Blue Spring State Park.

The remainder is small and worth naming anyway: a Potomac and Chesapeake week from Washington to Baltimore by way of Yorktown, Williamsburg, Annapolis, Cambridge and St. Michaels; a fortnight-long inland passage from Baltimore all the way down to Amelia Island; and an occasional Northeast harbors run between Boston and New York.

What that adds up to is a ship that almost never puts to sea. Both of her main routes are inside (a dredged river channel in one case, the ditch behind the barrier beaches in the other), and the exposed water on her whole schedule amounts to a few short hops. Whether that reads as a limitation or as the entire appeal depends on what you came for, but it is the honest description of the class: this is inland cruising in a hull that happens to be certified for the coast, and the towns arrive at walking pace rather than after a night at sea.

None of that is open to a foreign-flagged ship. Carrying passengers between two US ports requires a US-built, US-flagged and US-crewed vessel, which is why this fleet exists in the form it does and why every itinerary on it is domestic.

The ship herself

One hundred guests, fifty crew, fifty-six staterooms across four decks, and two elevators serving all of them. Every stateroom is an outside one: eight lower-deck rooms have fixed windows and are 230 square feet, and the other forty-eight have a private balcony. The largest are four Sky Suites of 425 square feet and a pair of 550-square-foot Grand Suites on the top deck, the latter with a separate bedroom and a dining table out on the balcony. Single cabins are sold without a supplement, as across the fleet.

The room that defines her is the forward lounge, with something close to a 270-degree view. That is the right room for a ship whose scenery is usually a few hundred yards off the beam rather than out on a horizon. Beyond it there is one restaurant, a casual café, a fitness room, a games room, a sun deck and a platform aft for the kayaks and the tender.

Who she suits

Travelers who want the American coast at close quarters and are content for that to be the entertainment. The days are short-legged (a town most mornings, a lecture or a local guide, dinner at one open seating, early nights), and the shore program is included rather than sold on top. Mobility is straightforward: her draft puts her alongside in the middle of small towns, the gangways are short, and there is an elevator to every deck.

Not the ship for anyone wanting a casino, a theater, a second dining venue or a choice of company at dinner. Ninety-nine other passengers is the whole passenger list for the week. Nor is she a true expedition ship, despite the marketing language around the class: she sails protected water, and the adventure on offer is a shallow one measured in feet of draft rather than in latitude. And she is the wrong Coastal Cat if New England is what you want; the Hudson is a river, not a coast, and her sisters American Glory and American Legend are the ones that spend their summers among the islands off Rhode Island and Massachusetts.