And now she’s in Mobile…
5 minute read
March 10, 2025, 9:26 AM
This is one of those subjects where you just have to let out a big sigh. I never really thought that I would see the day, but the SS United States, also known as the “Big U”, left Philadelphia under tow by the Vinik No. 6 and was taken down the east coast, around the tip of Florida, and up the Gulf of Mexico to Mobile, Alabama, where she is to be stripped of everything that isn’t metal, and then sunk to become the world’s largest artificial reef and be something of a diving tourist attraction for her new owners, Okaloosa County, Florida, while at least one of her funnels as well as her mast will be preserved to become part of a museum about the ship on land nearby. I feel like this is something that nobody really wanted to see happen to the Big U, but after more than 28 years spent sitting at Pier 82 in Philadelphia, she had overstayed her welcome, and the owners of the pier went to court to have her evicted. And at that point, with her losing her longtime berth, and no prospects for a rehabilitation on the horizon, it came down to whether it was better to scrap her or to sink her. Okaloosa County, Florida stepped up and she was to be sunk.
And of course, like everything with the United States, even her departure was long and drawn out. She was originally supposed to leave Philadelphia to begin her preparations for sinking on November 15, 2024, and Elyse and I had planned to see her off, booking a room at the Hampton Inn in Pennsville, New Jersey in order to watch her go underneath the Delaware Memorial Bridge. Then that date was scrubbed, so I cancelled the reservation. Then another date was announced that I couldn’t make, and that date came and went, with the Big U’s remaining at her longtime pier across the street from IKEA. She finally left Philadelphia on February 19 – a day that I had previous commitments that precluded our going. However, we did follow the Vinik No. 6 on MarineTraffic as she passed the Delaware Memorial Bridge that evening, and then cleared Cape May to enter the open ocean. I also enjoyed seeing all of the various photo updates showing the ship going down the Delaware, and then out at sea for the first time since the nineties. Then I got a certain feeling of sadness when she arrived in Mobile, because that meant that it was time for her preparation for her date with the bottom of the ocean to commence.
There’s something about all of this that just leaves me feeling unsettled. This isn’t how it was supposed to go. She is a rare surviving example of an American ocean liner, and she was also at the end of her era. After all, she did not leave service to be replaced by another ship in the same role, like the Olympic and Mauretania did. She left service because of the advent of the jet aircraft, which caused passenger numbers to drop to a point where it was no longer economically viable to operate her in her intended role. That she managed to avoid being scrapped after being out of service since 1969 is nothing short of amazing, even as she was stripped down to the structural members on the inside due to the extensive use of asbestos throughout her interior. We have other surviving examples of ocean liners, with the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth 2 both hailing from Britain, as well as the Rotterdam as a surviving example of a Dutch liner, the Hikawa Maru as a Japanese liner, and the Doulos Phos as an older example of an American ship (though this last one has since been hoisted onto land). It’s a shame that fate has determined that the United States is not to join them in a state of preservation, even without her original interiors, especially after the plan to convert the similar but smaller America to a hotel ship ended when she was wrecked following a storm.
Turning the United States into an artificial reef just seems like a very undignified ending for such a great ship, and seems tantamount to throwing her away with the rest of the trash. She still holds the record for the fastest ship on the Atlantic still to this day, and to see her end up on the bottom of the ocean just feels wrong. She wouldn’t be the first Blue Riband holder to find herself on the seabed, as Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse, Lusitania, Rex, and Normandie could attest to, but being deliberately placed there rather than ending up there through either malice or an accident just doesn’t feel right, especially for a ship of her stature. She also had a unique look to her, with those “sampan” funnels that Elyse refers to as “baseball caps”, and to my knowledge, she is the only surviving example of these kinds of funnels.
Additionally, with the intention to sink her relatively close to shore, it doesn’t do much to help provide closure. It’s like, she will be gone, but at the same time, because her wreck will be very accessible on account of her being marketed as a diving site, it will be like she’s still nearby. Part of me thinks that if preservation is not an option, then I would almost prefer that she be scrapped, because then we would get that closure, because then she would be completely gone and fully pass into history. Similarly, I would have preferred that she had gone out on her own terms during the tow to Mobile, i.e. start taking on water during the tow and then going down on her own, much like happened to the Monterey (later Matsonia, Lurline, Britanis, and Belofin-1), where she began taking on water and sank off of the coast of South Africa on her way to the scrappers. The Monterey sank in deep ocean waters, and I suspect that no one is ever going to go and visit her wreck, i.e. she is gone. But she went out on her own terms, entering the ocean and becoming one with it rather than whatever the humans wanted for her (by the way, if this sounds familiar, I wrote about it on here nearly 25 years ago).
I admit that I have a soft spot for preservation of transportation history. That’s why I’m on the board of Commonwealth Coach & Trolley, and why I’ve helped fund the acquisition of multiple vehicles for their collection, with a focus on rarer models. I played a large role in the acquisition of former CARTA bus 3424 (aka “Biscuit”), as well as a New Flyer Invero from an agency out west, along with other, smaller acquisitions. It’s also why I am so excited about the work that Elyse and I are doing to restore former CARTA bus 3426 (aka “Biscuit 2.0”) as a personal project. When taken together, we are doing our part to preserve examples of transportation history for others to appreciate, and see how far we’ve come. So as someone who fancies themself as something of a preservationist, losing the Big U to be an artificial reef really hurts.
So, barring a miracle, with the ship’s fate most likely sealed, Elyse and I are planning to do the only thing that we felt it suitable to do, and that is to make a trip down to Mobile in the coming months to see her one last time while the preparation work is underway. I would bring the drone along for such an outing in order to get the kinds of shots that I loved getting of her these last few years while she was in Philadelphia. I never thought I would find myself planning a trip to Alabama, but that’s how things go sometimes. We get to see the United States above water one last time, plus we get to explore Mobile, and add another state to our list, as neither of us has ever been to Alabama before.
Categories: Ships
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