(CN) — For 17 years from 1952 to 1969, the SS United States transported more than 1 million passengers on more than 800 transatlantic voyages, racking up enough miles to make 120 trips around the Earth.
Its famous passengers included humans (U.S. presidents, early Hollywood celebrities) and inanimate objects (the Mona Lisa, who in 1963 traveled home to Italy aboard the SS United States after an art tour).
But the SS United States is a steamship — and as time went on, transatlantic passengers increasingly turned to other modes of travel like airplanes.
The SS United States soon retired. It spent 27 years laid up in a Virginia shipyard before moving to the Philadelphia waterfront in 1996, where it slowly deteriorated despite efforts to turn it into a museum or mixed-use development.
Now, the SS United States will soon have an unlikely new home: the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico.
Facing eviction from its berth in Philadelphia, citizens in Okaloosa County, Florida purchased the ship for $1 million last year.
Officials there plan to sink the ship, spending another $10 million to turn what was once a transatlantic cruiser into a draw for tourists and scuba divers.
In public statements to Courthouse News and other outlets, they’ve touted the plan as part of a broader strategy to boost local tourism and protect the environment.
“Our artificial reef system has shown impressive growth through the years,” said Paul Mixon, chair of the county commission. “This accomplishment confirms our commitment to remain good stewards of the environment, while also enhancing our community’s status as a premier diving and fishing destination.” Jennifer Adams, Okaloosa County’s tourism director, likewise said that having “the world’s largest artificial reef will continue to elevate Destin-Fort Walton Beach as a premier destination to visit for scuba diving and fishing.”
Naval architect William Francis Gibbs designed the SS United States. He was proud of his creation, calling it the perfect ship.
Today, his granddaughter Susan Gibbs serves as president of the SS United States Conservancy, where she works to keep his legacy alive.
Preserving the SS United States above water would have been ideal, Gibbs said in a phone interview. Still, faced with the prospect of scrapping it entirely, she said turning the ship into a reef was a “dignified and honorable path.”
“I think there are so many reasons she’s such a powerful expression of American history,” Gibbs said of the ship. “She’s drop dead gorgeous. She’s a symbol of our post-war movement and just full of pride [and] full of purpose.”
In March, the SS United States was towed from its former berth in Philadelphia to Mobile, Alabama, where it’s in the process of being stripped down and cleaned of oils, lead, asbestos and other pollutants. It was an unusual sight along the Eastern seaboard and Gulf Coast this winter, as this relic of mid-20th century America floated on by.
Since arriving in Mobile on March 3, the ship has attracted thousands of sightseers. Among them are the Odeoye family, who pulled off Interstate 10 on a sunny recent Monday while on a road trip from Houston to Universal Studios in Orlando.
“I saw it on the news, but it is so much bigger standing here,” father Daniel Odeoye said as his two young children climbed up an embankment for a better view. “To me, it is beautiful.”
Clik here to view.
Resembling great ocean liners like the RMS Titanic, the SS United States was hailed for its design, construction and speed when it launched in 1951.
The 990-foot vessel became the fastest ocean liner to ever cross the Atlantic, with its two quarter-million horsepower engines giving it a top speed of more than 35 knots or 40 miles per hour. That shaved more than 10 hours off the average Atlantic Ocean sea voyage, reducing travel times between New York City and Southampton, England to a meager three-and-a-half days.
Speed wasn’t the only remarkable feature of the SS United States. The federal government subsidized its design and construction, in case it needed to be used for troop transport during a hypothetical flare-up of Cold War tensions.
To that end, the ship’s lightweight aluminum hull featured a high degree of compartmentalization. Only damaged compartments would be flooded in the event of a breach, minimizing the risk of water weight dragging the whole ship down. To limit fire risk, no wood was used in the ship’s design. Gibbs quoted her grandfather on the impressive vessel: “You can’t set her on fire, you can’t sink her, you can’t catch her.”
Okaloosa County commissioners first began talks to purchase the SS United States in 2023. “When the previous owner was ordered to move the ship from the pier, the county spoke with the conservancy about the possibility of it becoming a reef,” county spokesperson Nick Tomecek explained dryly in an email.
In discussions at the time, officials cited data from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission showing that artificial reefs generate $138 in revenue for every public dollar spent. So lucrative is the potential tourism draw that neighboring Bay County recently offered to buy the SS United States from Okaloosa County from $3 million, three times what Okaloosa officials initially paid for it.
Coral reefs are like cities of the ocean, offering food and habitat for countless marine species. They thrive on hard, stable surfaces and particularly ones with lots of nooks and crannies, making shipwrecks and other human structures a natural fit for them.
Coral reefs are in stark decline thanks to climate change, but humans can make more of them — for example, by sinking a storied ocean liner off the Florida coast. People have built artificial reefs since ancient times, as a way to gather sea resources or even as defensive structures. Increasingly, they’ve also become a tool for conservation and tourism.
Under the $1 million deal with the SS United States Conservancy in September, Okaloosa County commissioners agreed to preserve artifacts from the ship in a new museum. That museum will be on land, and the conservancy will continue to exist to support it.
Clik here to view.
Among those artifacts are the ship’s distinctive exhaust stacks, a five-bladed propeller, its radar mast, bridge equipment, smoking room bars and other fixtures.
“She’s the only remaining great American ocean liner,” Susan Gibbs said. “There’s no equivalent here in this country. She was unique throughout her career, and she continues to be unique as we embark on this reefing.”
The ship’s beauty is timeless, Gibbs said, and will remain so even as she disappears beneath the waves.
“Even in her deteriorated state, she still has so much strength and resilience in her lines and her grace,” she said. “I think my grandfather is smiling, wherever he is.”
Besides providing marine habitat, officials hope the new shipwreck will boost Northwest Florida’s scuba-diving sector. According to one economic analysis from 2014, the industry brings more than $414 million to the region each year, supporting 8,000 jobs.
USS Oriskany, the ship sunk in 2006, already attracts divers to the region. But at a depth of around 80 feet, it’s better suited for experienced divers, said Kerry Freeland, who’s run the Dive Pros scuba shop in Pensacola for more than 30 years.
“We’ve been lobbying for another big wreck for a long time,” Freeland said in a phone interview. “It should be accessible to all levels of divers.” He’s hopeful officials will sink the SS United States at a shallower depth — say, around 60 feet. Nonetheless, it’s ultimately up to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to decide the ship’s final resting place.
Once sunk, the SS United States will join a multitude of other shipwrecks in the region. Those include U.S. military ships from the Civil War, as well as European ships from the 16th and 17th centuries.
All of it, Freeland said, has helped make the Florida Panhandle one of the country’s top diving destinations.
“There is a lot for divers to see around here,” Freeland said. “The biodiversity is incredible. We have visibility up to 100 feet on calm days, and some really interesting things to explore.”