Editor’s note: Larry Bulanda of Jim Thorpe worked as an engineer at Newport News Shipbuilding, which is where the SS United States was built.

“People who work on ships get an affinity for them and in my case the ship was built well before my time but I still feel connected. I’m sure most people view it as just a big rusting hulk, maybe an interesting oddity, but the engineering behind it is remarkable. It just draws you in,” he said.

The SS United States began its final voyage on Feb. 19, prompting this article.

By Larry Bulanda

Tneditor@tnonline.com

She sits silently at Pier 82 on the Philadelphia waterfront, rising and falling with the tide. She’s been doing this for the past 29 years awaiting her fate. She is the SS United States, known as “America’s Flagship.”

For 17 years (1952 to 1969) the ocean liner SS United States made 400 crossings over the Atlantic Ocean carrying over 1 million passengers from New York to England, France and back, traveling almost 3.2 million miles.

Before commercial trans-Atlantic air travel there were many ocean liners that plied those same waters, but the SS United States has one major distinction: She holds the speed record for the fastest Atlantic crossing. On her maiden voyage in July 1952, she crossed the Atlantic in 3 days, 12 hours and 12 minutes. That was about 9½ hours faster than the previous record holder, Queen Mary, which set the record in 1938.

Her speed topped 39 mph, and those in the know say that the ship could have made faster speeds but was held back for reasons of national security.

The 2,906 nautical mile route goes from Ambrose Light in New York to Bishop Rock at the entrance of the English Channel. The ship with the fastest crossing time is awarded the Blue Riband, which the SS United States still holds to this day.

The ship was the lifelong dream of William Francis Gibbs, a self-taught naval architect who grew up in the era of big luxurious ocean liners. In those days trans-Atlantic ship travel was the domain of countries such as England, France, Germany and Italy.

The premier ships of that day included the Queen Elizabeth, Queen Mary and France’s Normandie. America was not in that league and Gibbs wanted to change that by designing and building the largest, fastest, most luxurious liner on the seas.

In addition, he wanted it to be the safest liner afloat. He felt this way because of sea tragedies such as the Titanic, the Lusitania and the Morro Castle. His plan was to design a ship that could survive fires, collisions, enemy attacks and the brutal waters of the Atlantic.

William Francis Gibbs, known as “WF,” his brother Frederic and another partner formed Gibbs and Cox, a naval architecture firm. It would be this firm along with WF’s dream that made the SS United States possible. It was difficult in the World War II era to build an ocean liner, but WF was able to broker an arrangement with United States Lines (an American shipping company) and the federal government to finance, build and operate the ship. It took Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia from 1949 to1952 to build the ship at a cost of $78 million dollars.

The federal government had one reason for becoming involved in building a commercial liner: The ship had to be convertible into a high-speed troop transport to respond to war theaters anywhere on the globe. The United States could be converted to hold 14,000 troops and transport them at speeds in excess of 37 mph, but it never saw use as a troop transport.

The beam, or width of the ship, was kept to just over 100 feet so it could transit the Panama Canal. Because of the troop transport mission, the specifics of the ship’s propulsion plant, hull shape and speed were held as secret. Thus, the ship’s top speed was never achieved or revealed.

WF wanted ship and passenger safety to be paramount, and he did this through several methods. First there were very few flammable items on the ship. It is said that the only wood on the ship was in the butcher block and the piano. WF wanted the Steinway company to build an aluminum piano rather than one made of wood, but it refused.

Textiles used in drapes and furniture were tested for resistance to fire. Fireproof asbestos panels were used throughout the ship. A double hull and special compartmentation were included to prevent it from sinking like the Titanic. Ample lifeboats were included as were firefighting stations throughout the ship.

The ship went into service in 1952 and was an immediate hit with travelers. The list of passengers over the years included the likes of John Wayne, Walt Disney, Sean Connery, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Marilyn Monroe. Despite its popularity, speed and unique design features, the ship could not survive the changing times.

Commercial trans-Atlantic air travel took hold in 1958 and soon travelers were abandoning three-day cruises for a much shorter trip by air. People were also headed away from formal, luxury travel to more casual settings.

The final blow came in 1969 when the U.S. Navy decided to discontinue troop transport ships in favor of air transport. Thus, the United States was retired from service.

Since 1969 the ship was put into storage and was sold to several owners over the years, all of whom had grand plans to put the ship back in service, convert it into a hotel or otherwise repurpose it. None of these were to happen.

The ship’s interior was stripped of its asbestos panels, and in 1984 an auction was held and all the ship’s fittings, china, furniture, linens, silverware and more were sold. Now stripped to the bone, the ship was tied up at Pier 82 in Philadelphia, under the ownership and care of the SS United States Conservancy. The conservancy has spearheaded the effort to find a new role for the ship.

Following a legal dispute over berthing fees, the conservancy was forced to dispose of the ship. Rather than scrap it, the ship was sold to Okaloosa County in Florida, which has plans to sink the ship off the coast of Florida to become the world’s largest artificial reef and tourist attraction for divers. A museum is also planned near the site.

The ship was originally to be towed in September 2024 to a shipyard for preparation to turn it into a reef. However, weather issues and inspections by the Coast Guard have delayed that trip.

Having cleared the inspections and given fair weather, the ship’s final voyage began on Feb. 19 as it was towed from Pier 82 down the Delaware River and on to a Mobile, Alabama, shipyard to begin the final phase of the SS United States’ life.