The Last Voyage of the SS United States

The SS United States is off the coast of Florida now. Once the fastest on the ocean, the great ship is under tow toward its watery grave. It left Philadelphia last week and will soon become the largest artificial reef in the world off the coast of Okaloosa County.

As a child, I came to this country aboard this ship in 1962. It was strong then, bright and full of life, its steel halls filled with voices, its decks lined with men and women who believed in something.

Now it is gone. We saved a British flagship, but not this one, not an American ship.

It does not seem right.

Tugboats push it along, guiding it down past the long Florida coast. They will bring it to Mobile first, strip it down, and gut it so it will sink clean.

They will scrape off the paint, take out the asbestos, tear away the engine room, and when it is ready, they will send it to the bottom. They say it will take a year.

They do not know where they will sink it, but it will be about twenty miles off Destin. Out there, it will settle on the sea floor, where fish will move in, and divers will come to look at what is left.

Again and again, departure got delayed. The Coast Guard wanted to make sure it would safely tow.

Then the wind came, hard and strong, and held it back. But on Tuesday, February 19, it left.

Built in Newport News from 1950 to 1951, it sailed for the first time on Thursday, July 3, 1952. It went from New York to France and England.

It was fast, faster than any other, and still holds the record for the fastest transatlantic crossing. It was American through and through, the last great passenger ship made here.

It was 53,000 tons. From keel to funnel top, it stood 175 feet high. It could hold nearly two thousand passengers and over a thousand crew.

If war came, it could carry 14,000 troops. Four American presidents, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, and Marlon Brando, walked its decks.

But time took it.

The airlines came, and in 1969, the owner could not keep up. It passed from hand to hand.

It became a museum in 1996, tied to the dock at slip 80 in Philadelphia. It sat there, waiting.

In October, Okaloosa County bought it for ten million dollars. They say it will bring in three million a year.

They say there will be a museum on land too. They talk about the future, about what it will become, but I can only think of what it was: the ship that carried me here–sinking.