MidShipCinema: A Return to the S.S. United States

The S.S. United States, once the largest and most celebrated American ocean liner, and, to this day, the fastest ever to cross the Atlantic, continues to be remediated at Mobile, Alabama, for sinking as the world’s largest artificial reef. 

Since my childhood, even before I became a bonafide ocean liner aficionado and historian, I have been fascinated with the S.S. United States.  I first discovered her by looking up “ship” in the World Book Encyclopedia, where she and the first Queens Mary and Elizabeth were featured. 

I made my first trek to see the S.S. U.S. in 1984 at Norfolk and volunteered as a tour guide when she was opened up to visitors before the auction was held and then returned several times to Philadelphia to visit her between 1996 and 2024.  At one point, I even hired a helicopter to get some aerial views of her when the concept of drones was just sci-fi folly.

I made another pilgrimage to Alabama in February for my final land-view of the ship. Watch my final return to the SS United States before her sinking:

(For more fascinating ship documentaries, please visit Peter Knego’s MidShipCinema on Youtube.)

She Keeps Her Secret

The United States was only in service for 17 years (between 1952 and 1969) but she was a technical and architectural marvel with her symbolic, twin, 55-foot tall, red-white-and-blue funnels.  Her top recorded speed remains a mystery, but she won the Blue Riband for fastest Atlantic crossing in 1952, averaging 35.59 knots (or 41 miles per hour). 

After being sold by the U.S. government to a private entity, her furnishings and fittings were auctioned off in 1984 and she was further stripped in the early 90s, when she was towed to Ukraine for removal of all asbestos on board.  Since 2011, the ship was owned by the S.S. United States Conservancy and was the subject of several propositions, none of which came to pass, for use as a floating hotel and museum or being rebuilt for cruise service. 

In 2024, the Conservancy could no longer pay the exorbitant docking fees to keep the ship in Philadelphia (where she had been berthed since 1996) and were forced between selling the ship for scrap or to Okaloosa County in Florida, who plan to reef her some 22 miles off the coast of Destin.

The sinking (or in Orwellian terms, “deployment”) is now scheduled for early May, weather permitting.