American Grace

American Grace does not exist yet. American Cruise Lines announced her in 2025 as one of ten US-built ships due through 2028, and she is the third riverboat of the American Encore generation: Encore herself delivered in 2026, American Anthem due in 2027, Grace in 2028, with American Beauty alongside her that year. She is being built at Chesapeake Shipbuilding in Salisbury, Maryland, the yard the line owns outright.

This page is thin on purpose. There is no christening to describe, no first season to report and no photograph of a finished interior, the line’s own page for her illustrates the ship with pictures of American Encore. What follows is what has been announced.

What has been announced

She will carry 180 guests over five decks, with a private balcony on every stateroom, elevators to every passenger deck, a multi-story glass atrium, more than one dining venue and a fitness center. The published stateroom range for this generation starts around 300 square feet for a standard room, which is noticeably larger than the 250- to 275-square-foot rooms on the riverboats of 2018 to 2021, and the line’s claim is more square footage per guest than any other small cruise ship in the world.

At the top of that range sits one Signature Suite of more than 1,500 square feet, the room American Encore introduced and the largest stateroom on any riverboat anywhere. It has 180 degrees of glass, a wraparound balcony with a dining set and loungers, a living room with a wet bar and a powder room, and a bathroom with heated floors and a freestanding tub facing the river. There is one of them on the ship.

There is no tonnage, length or beam in the box above because none has been published for this hull. The line has quoted round press figures for ships in this series before and the sisters have then differed from one another in exactly those numbers. Anyone quoting you dimensions for American Grace is reading them off American Encore.

Where she actually sails

The Columbia and the Snake, the same river her elder sisters were built for, and nothing else. Every departure on her calendar begins at Portland, Oregon, and the announced deployment and the sold one agree, which is worth checking on a hull this far out, because they often do not.

The backbone is the eight-night Columbia & Snake Rivers cruise, one-way upriver from Portland to Clarkston, Washington, running week after week from the spring to the middle of November. It is the standard Northwest river week: Astoria where the river meets the Pacific bar, Kalama, The Dalles, a scenic transit of the Columbia River Gorge, Richland in the Tri-Cities, Pendleton out on the Oregon high desert, and Lewiston and Clarkston at the head of navigation, eight lock chambers above the sea. She lays up from late November until spring, as everything on this river does.

The rest of her year is the Grand Columbia & Snake Rivers cruise, a fortnight round trip out of Portland that covers the same water at half the pace and adds the calls the one-way week cannot fit, St. Helens and Stevenson below the Gorge, Burbank at the confluence, and Walla Walla out in the Washington wine country. Unlike two of her sisters she has no overland national-parks extension on the schedule: what she sells is the river, twice over.

The case that she will actually appear

The line owns its shipyard, which removes the usual reason a small-ship newbuild slips, and it has publicly said it intends to hand over a ship every four months. The recent record supports the ambition: American Patriot in June 2025, American Pioneer in October 2025, American Encore through sea trials in March 2026 and on station in the Pacific Northwest by early May, having sailed herself around by way of the Panama Canal.

None of which guarantees a specific hull two years out. It is a reason to treat 2028 as a realistic date rather than an aspirational one.

Who she suits

A traveler who wants the newest riverboat on the Columbia and is content to buy a description rather than a review: 180 guests, one open seating, an American crew, no passports, shore excursions and drinks with meals inside the fare, and a cabin bigger than most ocean-ship suites. The fortnight round trip is the better half of what she sells, because it is the version of this river that does not spend its last day rushing.

She does not suit anyone who wants a review first, because there will be none until 2028. She does not suit anyone with inflexible connecting travel; first seasons move, and a hull selling this far ahead of its own delivery is asking for patience. And if it is the Columbia and the Snake you want rather than a new ship, American Encore, American Harmony, American Song, American Jazz and American Pride run the identical Portland-to-Clarkston week today, and Jazz, Song, Harmony and Encore also sell the fortnight that leaves the river at the top end for Glacier, Yellowstone and Grand Teton, which is more trip than anything on Grace’s calendar.