The Steamship Authority promoted its director of engineering and maintenance to the position of chief operating officer last week, replacing former COO Mark Higgins.

Starting last Friday, Mark Amundsen became responsible for all aspects of the Steamship’s marine and shoreside operations, as well as the engineering department and communications center.

His promotion to the second highest position comes at a critical time for the boat line. The Steamship Authority is in the middle of building a new terminal in Woods Hole, working to add new freight ferries to the fleet and developing a new reservation system, all while undertaking a search for a new general manager.

Mark Amundsen.

Courtesy Steamship Authority

Mark Amundsen.

Courtesy Steamship Authority

“I look forward to the challenges,” said Mr. Amundsen, a veteran of the international shipping industry who joined the Steamship Authority in 2019 for the newly-created position of director of marine operations. The job was renamed last year to director of engineering and maintenance.

During his six years at the SSA, he has overseen the purchase and conversion of the three new freight ferries, M/V Barnstable, M/V Aquinnah and M/V Monomoey, as well as the dry docking and maintenance of the rest of the fleet.

In an interview with the Gazette this week, Mr. Amundsen detailed his decades of experience in the field, working at other ferry services, in the military transportation sector and at busy shipyards.

A life of vessels and voyaging came naturally to him and his brother, who both graduated from Maine Maritime Academy. Their father was an oceanographer whose great-great-uncle was famed Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, first to reach the South Pole in 1911.

It’s a proud heritage, said Mr. Amundsen, whose son and nephew also followed the family calling to a maritime career.

“We’ve been in the marine business for generations,” he said.

His own career began beneath the surface, using skills gained scuba diving for lobsters in his home waters of Ipswich on the North Shore, Mr. Amundsen said.

Diving for crustaceans led to diving for science, he told the Gazette.

“I used to work with Dr. [Harold] Edgerton of M.I.T.,” he said, naming the pioneering electrical engineer who developed stroboscopic photography — his image of a bullet passing through an apple is famous — as well as the side-scan sonar imaging used in deep-sea exploration.

“I got a chance to do a lot of diving for developing side-scan sonar, in the pool,” Mr. Amundsen said.

After graduating from Maine Maritime, Mr. Amundsen worked for Military Sealift Command, the U.S. Navy’s logistics unit for transport ships, before hiring on with an oil tanker company where he rose over several years to become port engineer.

Dry-docking one of the tankers in Halifax, Nova Scotia, he found a new opportunity to expand his skills and experience.

“I ended up being director of ship repair for one of the largest shipyards in North America for a number of years, and I think that’s really given me an advantage [at the SSA],” Mr. Amundsen said.

“I was doing literally, I would say, more [than] 100 dry docks per year, and that’s really where I got my extensive training,” he said.

Many of the vessels serviced at the shipyard were ferries traveling the Canadian and northern New England coast, and Mr. Amundsen eventually found himself in the ferry business himself, running a boat between Nova Scotia and Portland, Me. for four years until another operator won the contract.

He then spent three years overseas, running a ferry service across the Strait of Gibraltar between Algeciras, Spain and Tangier, Morocco, before returning to the United States, Mr. Amundsen said.

The new hire comes at a critical time for the ferry line.

Ray Ewing

The new hire comes at a critical time for the ferry line.

Ray Ewing

In his new position at the Steamship Authority, Mr. Amundsen will have to grapple with the boat line’s technological challenges, which include selecting a firm to develop a new automated reservations system and launching a new website.

On the maritime side, Mr. Amundsen said, his number one priority is to tackle the need for electric propulsion in future vessels.

The next newly-built Steamship Authority vessel will have to be at least a hybrid vessel, he told the Gazette.

“That’s what we’re studying, and that’s what we want to do, because we recognize that that is a requirement of how our stakeholders would like to go forward,” Mr. Amundsen said.

The challenge, he said, lies not aboard the future vessels but on the shore, where they will have to be recharged.

“The real thing is going to be how fast we can get to shore-side development of the infrastructure that drives everything,” Mr. Amundsen said.

Mr. Amundsen was promoted by outgoing general manager Robert Davis, who praised his extensive experience. The timing of the hiring and the lack of outside candidates raised questions from some Vineyarders.

At the Feb. 18 meeting of the Steamship Authority board of governors, several Martha’s Vineyard residents objected to naming a new chief operating officer before a new general manager is in place.

Mr. Davis, the former SSA treasurer/comptroller who became general manager in 2017, agreed last year to step into an advisory position once a new general manager has been hired.

A search subcommittee of Steamship Authority board and port council members has interviewed four executive search firms and will meet the first week of March to determine a finalist, subcommittee chair James Malkin told the Gazette.

Mr. Malkin, who represents Martha’s Vineyard on the board of governors, said he was not in favor of waiting for the next general manager to hire a COO.  

“There are lots of things that are underway at the Steamship Authority that are critical,” he said, citing the transition to a new automated reservations system and an updated website.

“Waiting for the … search process would delay all of those efforts,” he said. “We need to focus on getting things done.”