Historic U.S. ocean liner sets sail on final voyage to become artificial reef

A tugboat this week began towing the SS United States from its dock in Philadelphia down the Delaware River toward what’s expected to be its final resting place off the coast of Florida. The more than 70-year-old ship on Wednesday started the two-week journey to Mobile, Ala., where workers will strip it of hazardous materials. From there it will be transported to an area off the coast of the Destin-Fort Walton Beach where it will be sunk to become the world’s largest artificial reef. It had been located in Philadelphia since 1996.

Okaloosa County, Fla., last October won a bid to acquire the 990-foot ocean liner from the SS United States Conservancy, which had managed the ship for more than a decade. Under the purchase agreement, the conservancy will construct a museum with funding from Okaloosa County to commemorate the ship’s history. Remediation work to prepare the ship is expected to take more than a year and officials anticipate spending an additional six months to one year to determine where the ship will be sunk and to finalize the project. Officials had planned to move the ship late last year, but concerns about its ability to make the trip and poor weather delayed the journey.

What is the ship’s history? Completed in 1952, the SS United States was constructed as a luxury cruise liner capable of being converted into a troop ship. The U.S. government subsidized its construction with the understanding that it could be requisitioned for military purposes, according to the conservancy. During her maiden voyage the ship crossed the Atlantic Ocean in just shy of three and a half days, a world record that has never been broken. Though the vessel never carried troops, U.S. presidents Harry Truman, Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and Bill Clinton did travel aboard the ship.

The ship was withdrawn from active service in 1969 and it remained docked as it changed hands between a series of owners. Over the decades, the various owners made plans to convert the ship into condominiums, rehabilitate it as a cruise ship, sell it for scrap, or turn it into a museum. The conservancy in the 1990s fought to protect it from the scrap yard and in 2010 the organization received a grant to purchase the ship.

Dig deeper: Listen to Kim Henderson’s report in The World and Everything in It about the lessons we can learn from the story of the Titanic.