MV Aurora

MV Aurora is a feeder vessel for the Alaska Marine Highway System, built in Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin in 1977 by Peterson Shipbuilders and commissioned by the Alaska Marine Highway System the same year. The Aurora is the younger sister ship to the MV LeConte and both serve or have served as feeder vessels that pick up passengers in small communities such as Pelican and Hoonah and take them to larger regional communities (this process is colloquially known as the "milk run"). However, unlike the LeConte, the Aurora was moved out of Southeast Alaska into Prince William Sound area in 2005 to take the place of the retired MV Bartlett. This move, however, was highly controversial as the MV Chenega, a fast ferry, was supposed to take this role and been promised for years in advance to the Prince William Sound area and specifically to be homeported in the city of Cordova. Instead, the ferry system reneged on this promise and moved the Chenega to a Ketchikan-Wrangell route. Currently, the Aurora is being hubbed out of Cordova (although, unlike the fast ferry, the Aurora operates 24-hours a day so it doesn't have a crew that lives in its homeport thus denying that city the economic stimulus of additional residents/jobs.