A final voyage

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 25th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Remembering America’s Flagship!

The SS United States is the fastest passenger ship ever built and the largest ever made in America. She stretched 100 feet longer than the Titanic and carried presidents and celebrities across the Atlantic. Yet, today the old gal is largely forgotten.

REICHARD: Isn’t that just how it goes!?! WORLD’s Myrna Brown introduces us to one woman on a mission to preserve the legacy of the ship.

PAM PAFLAS: How old am I now? I’d have to stop and think..

MYRNA BROWN: Pam Paflas doesn’t like to talk about her age.

MYRNA TO PAFLAS: What’s that in your hand?

PAFLAS: That’s my brownie instamatic camera.

But ask the silver-headed grandma about her biggest adventure, you’ll get an earful.

PAFLAS: I was 11 when I went on the cruise. And it was so cold that year that they had to have some kind of boat to break the ice up to get the ship away from the dock.

Paflas was a passenger on the SS United States. Her memories of being on the ship are as vivid as the old photographs she’s treasured since then. Dozens of them, sealed in large ziploc bags and organized with paper clips.

PAFLAS: What did it look like when you were 11 years old? When I was 11 years old, that red white and blue on the stacks stood out. It was, I would say, in pristine shape back then.

NEWSREEL: Christened the SS United States. She was five city blocks long and grossed over 53,000 tons.

Audio from June 23, 1951—the day the SS United States launched. She was built to be a super ship. Although never used in wartime, it could be quickly converted into a naval vessel. In peacetime, it was a luxurious passenger ship.

NEWSREEL: To her passengers, she’s not a machine, but a grand hotel which also turns out menus, wine lists and so on.

But oceangoing travel wasn’t just for the rich and famous. Immigrants heading to America also sailed on the ship. And there were middle class families, too, like the Paflas, taking a sixteen-day cruise from New York to the Caribbean.

PAFLAS: First stop was Nassau and then we went to St. Thomas, Morocco, Martinique, Trinidad and Cristobal.

The SS United States sailed on numerous transatlantic routes, carrying close to a million passengers over its 17-year-career.

NEWSREEL: The only way to know what it’s like is to travel on the American Champion of the ocean

But as air travel took off, passengers chose speed over the glamour of an ocean crossing. In 1969, six years after the Paflas family cruise, the SS United States was retired. But Paflas says she never forgot the experience or the ship.

PAFLAS: Actually I flew over it one time about ten years ago while it was docked in Philadelphia.

In 1996 the SS United States was anchored on a pier on Philadelphia’s Delaware River, the only major port large and deep enough to accommodate such a massive vessel. The ship sat dormant there for nearly thirty years. A legal dispute over rent ensued between pier representatives and the SS United States Conservancy, the organization responsible for the ship. After years of haggling, a Philadelphia District Court ordered the ship to be removed from the pier. But weeks before the eviction, the Conservancy accepted an unusual offer from the state of Florida. Sink the ship and turn it into an artificial reef.

SOUND: [Ship being tugged out to sea]

It took 12 days and several tug boats to guide the 990-foot-long ship down the Delaware River…

SOUND: [Perdido Queen horn]

…to the coast of Alabama where Pam Paflas lives.

CAPTAIN WILLIE JONES: You’re not going to believe me when I tell you this…

That’s Willie Jones. He runs a boat tour agency that offers scenic cruises along the Alabama coast.

JONES: Pam, that lady you met up there called me and said, “ I was on this boat when I was 11 and I want to go see it. I’m sure other people would want to go see it. You’re a boat company in Mobile. Why don’t you do that”?

Taking Paflas’ advice, Captain Willie, as he’s called, began offering rare looks at the SS United States from his two-story, mock paddle wheel boat.

AUDIO: We’re getting very close. If you want to make your way up to the decks…

It turned out to be a good business move.

JONES: We’ve already taken out 450 people. And we’ve got another 550 people booked in the future.

For Paflas it’s been bittersweet. She’s been on every one of Captain Willie’s special SS United States tours.

PAFLAS: It was sad to see. You can tell it was deteriorating. Everyday I come out they’re taking more things off. It just looks sadder.

But Paflas says it’s also an opportunity to break out her collection of photographs and a few of her favorite SS United States stories.

AUDIO: Here are some menus. Oh Wow. I think I’d pass on the Kangaroo Tail. I’m sure I did.

The SS United States will spend the next six to twelve months in Mobile getting “reef-ready”. Crews will remove the ship’s prominent smoke stacks, the fuel from the tanks and any other hazardous material on board. Then the ship will be towed to Okaloosa County, Florida, its final destination and its last mission.

PASSENGER: I’m so glad you kept all of this. Aren’t you?

PAFLAS: Oh yes. It’s been the most fun. Just having people come up and saying thank you for bringing this. Oh my goodness.

PASSENGER: Thank you for bringing this. We’re going to add our voices to that. Thank you. yes….

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Myrna Brown in Mobile, Alabama.

AUDIO: [Trailing off] I am so proud that I kept that. Oh wow! That is very cool….

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.