Updated May 1, 2023 | By Matthew Christopher
Going aboard the SS United States had been something I dreamed about for years, but after numerous rejected requests and unreturned phone calls, it seemed as though it would never happen. Looming above the Port Authority terminals in Philadelphia, it was at once both tantalizingly close and frustratingly far away. The docks where it is housed are governed by the Department of Homeland Security, and even if one could somehow sneak in and sprint all the way to the ship undetected, entry is impossible without a jetpack. The SS United States' deck towers over the waterline and the hatches are closed and locked except for the rare instances when the maintenance crew is aboard. Like so many other places I've longed to see yet ultimately never was able to gain access to, the ship was just out of reach.
In 2008 I was at a barbecue with some friends who were former passengers. I met their suggestions that I photograph the derelict ocean liner with the dejected reply that I would love to but doubted I would ever be able to manage permission. Two other guests chimed in that they had a connection who could help. People saying they can finagle access to a site and then failing to do so is a rather familiar disappointment in my line of work, so I gave them my contact information and thanked them but didn't put much stock in the offer. Months passed and I nearly forgot about the discussion when I received a call from a state representative's office, asking when I would like to set up an appointment to photograph the ship. I was floored, and made plans as quickly as I could, afraid that the opportunity would somehow evaporate.
The SS United States is currently moored in Philadelphia.
The SS United States, nicknamed “The Big U”, isn't just any passenger liner. At 101 feet wide and 990 feet long, she is 100 feet longer than the Titanic, and is in fact the largest ship ever built in an American shipyard. She is also the fastest, though for many years her top speed was classified; even now there is some dispute but it seems generally agreed that it is approximately 38 knots, the equivalent of 44 miles per hour (although I've seen it listed as over 44 knots, or 50 mph, elsewhere).
Built at a cost of $79.4 million in 1952 for the United States Lines, the United States government subsidized $50 million of the construction costs, but for a price - the SS United States was to be used as a troop ship with a capacity for carrying 15,000 soldiers in the event it was needed in wartime. For this reason, her top speed was a closely guarded secret. In the meantime, however, she was to serve as the pinnacle of American engineering and sophistication, an erudite retort to the very best that competing companies like Britain's Cunard Line or the French Line (which would later be purchased by Norwegian Cruise Line) could offer. Celebrity passengers are numerous and according to her current owners include Marlon Brando, Coco Chanel, Sean Connery, Gary Cooper, Walter Cronkite, Salvador Dali, Walt Disney, Duke Ellington, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Charlton Heston, Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe, Prince Rainier and Grace Kelly, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, and the Duke and duch*ess of Windsor. By all accounts, the SS United States was modern and impressive without being ostentatious. The interior motifs were a mixture of Native American and aquatic designs, paying homage to the elements with Modernist flourishes and a prevailing use of greens and blues. By the time I saw it, though, the interior of the ship was almost entirely gone, having been stripped to the steel substructure.
The contact at the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority who was to accompany me aboard gruffly informed me, "We don't even allow our own workers on the SS United States, but when the person who controls our funding asks us for a favor, we have to do what they want." It was clear that he was not pleased by my presence. We met two representatives of Norwegian Cruise Line, the company who owned it at the time, and while they were much friendlier, they couldn't have looked less comfortable in their dark suits on the brutally hot afternoon. As we neared the service entrance, it was hard not to marvel at the magnitude of the liner. It blocked the sun and seemed to stretch on forever, like a canyon wall covered with peeling black, white, and red paint.
When we entered it was disheartening to see that nearly every recognizable feature inside had been entirely stripped. William Francis Gibbs, the ship's designer, was terrified that a horrific inferno like the one that had destroyed the Morro Castle would devastate his masterpiece liner as well. Gibbs had designed and redesigned many illustrious vessels, including the seized German liner Vaterland, which he re-envisioned as the gargantuan SS Leviathan - but it was the SS United States that he reportedly followed along as she left the port, snatching as much time with her as he could before she was off to sea again. As a safety measure, the ship was designed to be as non-combustable as possible. While wood was used in the butcher’s blocks and the grand piano, the rest of the fittings were custom designs that excluded it. Even the clothes hangers were aluminum. The grand piano was originally specified to be made out of aluminum as well, but it wound up being a fire-resistant mahogany. Gibbs only consented to the change after gasoline was poured on the piano and set alight and the wood did not burn.
The only entry to the SS United States is via a gangplank that gives access to the lower decks.
This fear of a mid-voyage blaze led to the liberal use of asbestos on every deck and bulkhead. Its fire-resistant quality appealed to Gibbs, who was unaware at the time of its carcinogenic properties. After the ship was retired in 1969, she sat docked at Norfolk for over two decades until purchased for $2.6 million by Marmara Marine, Inc., a company that hoped to reuse her as a cruise liner. The project proved to be much more complicated than they had anticipated. The once proud ship was turned away again and again at ports that wanted nothing to do with removing the 15,000 square meters of asbestos. Greenpeace referred to her as "a floating coffin" and boarded the liner to hang a banner on the side that read "Toxic Waste Return To Sender." Eventually the Ukrainian shipyards in Sevastopol took the job in 1993, but even this was not without controversy. During the ship’s time there, two of the 18-foot propellers were removed and placed on the aft deck, damaging the railing in the process. It was hoped that Cunard might turn her into a partner liner for their recently refurbished RMS Queen Mary, but they were losing money and then were purchased by Carnival Cruise Line, who had no interest in the SS United States. After scuffles over payments for the remediation and unauthorized scrapping of the lifeboats, davits, and plumbing, the SS United States was finally towed to Philadelphia in 1996. She ultimately wound up at Pier 82, where shoppers at the IKEA across the road could stare out the windows in wonder at the mothballed masterpiece as they dined on Swedish meatballs in the store's cafeteria.
I found it nearly impossible to tell what the areas inside the SS United States had been, although the exterior decks were an awesome sight to behold and still bore the faint traces of the shuffleboard courts the passengers once enjoyed. Areas like the promenade decks were the easiest to imagine in their former splendor, but the grand staircase was shrouded in an obscure gloom. I worked as quickly as I could, but the representatives from Norwegian Cruise Line were eager to leave, and the Port Authority representative was glad to oblige them. After an hour and a half I was escorted off the ship, happy to have had the extraordinarily rare opportunity to photograph her, but dazed by both the pace at which we had gone through the visit and the amount of work I felt I had left to do. For example, I still hadn't seen the enormous engines, capable of churning out an astonishing total output of 240,000 shaft horsepower, which had propelled the liner across the Atlantic in 3 days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes to secure the coveted Blue Riband award. I feared I'd never get another chance to do a more thorough job. There were, as there always had been in the years since she was retired, constant rumors that she would be towed to one of the ship breaking yards like the ones in Pakistan or Bangladesh and cut up for scrap. It seemed to me oddly prescient in a heartbreaking way that this former incarnation of American strength and ingenuity - named after the nation itself, no less! - appeared destined to be chopped up under miserable, unsafe working conditions by underpaid laborers abroad.
The remains of the grand staircase on the SS United States
For some, it's hard to imagine why saving this last American fragment of the vanished era of luxury ocean liners is so important to so many people. Every time I post about it online, there are those who trip over themselves in their rush to leave comments to the effect of, "Who cares about that rust bucket! Sink it and turn it into a coral reef!" I have never really understood the mentality that relishes the thought of destroying the relatively benign accomplishments of previous generations. Every other liner of that era save for the aforementioned RMS Queen Mary, which is now a floating restaurant/museum/hotel in Long Beach, California, has been scrapped or lies in the murky depths of the ocean’s floor - either way lost forever, save for the breathless legends of their unfathomable beauty and opulence in books and in grainy black and white photographs.
One could argue that if the SS United States wasn't an obsolete relic, she wouldn’t have been retired. She was designed to be the last word in modern American shipbuilding and in a way that was likely never anticipated, she was. Even now the SS United States remains unsurpassed in speed by passenger liners and retains her Blue Riband. It seems a hollow victory in a world that has moved beyond the necessity of a ship that was losing money in her final years in part because of how expensive she was to fuel, and in part because of the rise of inexpensive air travel. The costs just to keep her docked and minimally maintained are astronomical - reportedly $850 a day, or roughly $310,000 a year - and plan after plan to turn her into a casino or a hospital ship or a museum have all faltered. Everyone has ideas. She's still quite sound and the gutting of the interior might actually make it easier to repurpose her. None of the proposals have led to restoration, though. Is there an inherent value to such a unique historic specimen that goes beyond its financial worth? Are those that devotedly follow the ship and bid outlandish amounts on original scraps of memorabilia hanging on to it out of a misguided nostalgia for a doomed anachronism that can never be resuscitated?
The engine rooms of the SS United States were in remarkable shape, although the entire area was pitch black.
Personally, I passionately believe that it can and should be restored in much the same way that the former ruins of the immigration hall on Ellis Island were rehabilitated into the Ellis Island National Museum of Immigration. Even so, I must admit that the path to doing so has seemed extraordinarily difficult and expensive, and that, like so many others, I’m merely putting forth my opinion with no means of transforming it into a reality. I was ecstatic when Norwegian Cruise Line sold the SS United States to the SS United States Conservancy in March 2011. The Conservancy, headed by William Francis Gibbs' granddaughter Susan Gibbs, was backed by a $5.8 million donation from philanthropist H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest, but they had only 18 months to turn the liner into an attraction. The date came and went and despite aggressive fundraising and an exhaustive search for developers, the Conservancy seemed little closer to its goal of saving the ship. New plans were heralded then quietly dematerialized. Desperate pleas to donate lest the ship be scrapped dotted the following years. Critics grew weary of what they perceived to be a lack of transparency by the Conservancy, an approach to connecting with the public that at times seemed counterintuitive and aimless, and no significant signs of progress.
It is hard to form an accurate and fair assessment of whether or not the SS United States Conservancy has been successful or not. Advocating for preservation is considerably easier than actually maintaining such an expensive ship or attracting developers, and I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. As I am quick to remind myself, it's easy to lob stones at a group's efforts when you can't see the labor, the love, and the trial and error that go into them. Nonetheless, for many it is maddening to see substantial donations go towards goals like the fundraising drive in February 2015 for planning of an onboard museum, when the museum never solidified and the Conservancy was back to looking into bids to scrap the ship by October 2015. In 2016 Crystal Cruises conducted a feasibility study on reusing the SS United States and covered docking costs for the year, but backed out due to “technical and commercial challenges.” In 2018 the Conservancy solicited assistance from then-President Trump to restore “America’s Flagship” and consulted Damen Ship Repair & Conservation about redevelopment. Neither effort proved successful.
A Canada Goose's nest inside the doorway of the SS United States
At the end of 2018 commercial real estate firm RXR Realty entered an agreement to potentially rehabilitate the liner as a hotel, museum, and event venue and in March 2020 RXR announced they were looking for “expressions of interest” from a number of US cities including Philadelphia, New York, Boston, Miami, and San Francisco. The SS United States was pitched as a new waterfront centerpiece destination that they estimated would create over 1,000 jobs. RXR, which was founded in 2007, owns 93 properties in New York City and has developed many others, including the recently reopened Pier 57 complex, so it’s not unrealistic to imagine that they could pull off a mammoth undertaking like repurposing the SS United States. Having said that, I haven’t been able to find any progress updates on RXR’s plans since March 2020 and as we all know, things have changed a lot since then.
A recent legal battle between the Conservancy and the landlord of Pier 82, where the SS United States is docked, is an unsettling development though: Penn Warehousing & Distribution Inc. raised the daily rent for the SS United States from $850 a day to $1,700 a day in August 2021, and the Conservancy continued paying the original amount, arguing that their original lease had no provision for the increase. As of January 2023, Penn Warehousing & Distribution is seeking the removal of the liner from their docks and $160,000 in back rent, and the Conservancy has filed a counterclaim. A trial will take place in the fall of 2023 which will determine the fate of the liner. The Conservancy estimates that it will cost tens of thousands of dollars and take months of planning to move to a new dock since the SS United States is incapable of self-propulsion. This means that without another stroke of luck, the worst-case scenario of the ship being destroyed might become a reality.
I was able return to the SS United States with the permission of the Conservancy in 2012, and even conducted two photography workshops benefiting them that literally sold out the minute they went online. They generated over $3,300 for the group, which is admittedly a tiny fraction of even one month's operating expenses, but people were so happy to finally get a chance to see the decks of the beautiful liner that had carried celebrities and presidents across the Atlantic. I was also able to visit areas I hadn't been able to before, including the once top-secret engine room and the crow's nest. As I looked out of the latter over the strip malls and parking lots that sprawled out before the ship's bow, it struck me that maybe as a culture we are losing the capability to incorporate things of such remarkable grandeur into the fabric of our lives. We see something magnificent and instead of feeling that transcendent awe and humility, maybe we view it as a threat to the worth of the generally shabby architectural constructs we pepper our cities with today. Rather than a cause for celebration, things of beauty are merely to be gleefully demolished or to be hacked apart for the base elements they are made of. The real failure is in our own inability to save something like the SS United States, not in its inability to integrate itself into our world. We may now have massive cruise ships serving as seaborne vacation metropolises, but it would be hard to argue that they approach the class or elegance of the passenger liners that preceded them. Maybe as a symbol of who we are, we just don't deserve the SS United States any more. Maybe we never did. I leave that judgment to you.
As of this writing, I have no idea what the fate of the SS United States will be. It’s easy to be pessimistic when the odds seem continually stacked against reuse, the mooring costs are so great, and so many development plans have come and gone. I would argue that the creation of such a ship seems equally improbable, though, and yet it still occurred. As frustrating as it is to have seen so many preservation plans for so many different historic locations falter over the years, no grand ambition is realized without that most fundamental element: the seemingly foolish, resolutely stubborn belief that something that appears outlandish is, in fact, possible. There’s always a chance that belief will result in failure, but without that hope, failure is inevitable.
I hope that the SS United States is saved. I hope future generations can gaze up at its prow in the same awe and wonder that I did. I hope that it will find a new home and a new purpose and be appreciated for decades to come. It may not be the most likely outcome, but as long as the SS United States is intact, those hopes will always remain.
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