When I first got into the National Maritime Union ( NMU ) there were a lot of guys in the union that had sailed on the Big U. It was owned by United States Lines that had a number of freighter and passenger ships.
So sad that it’s coming to this. I used to see United States five or six times a week, taking the TRT (Totally Rotten Transit, lol) bus from my apartment in the Ghent district of Norfolk, Virginia, to the Naval Operating Base where my ship was stationed. I remember the first time I saw her, the bus rode on an overpass over what was ironically known as Terminal Boulevard. I recognized her instantly from her modern, rakish lines and two large funnels. She looked pretty neglected way back in 1985, and the more recent images tell a sad story of progress on the one hand, and obsolescence and decay on the other. Thanks for sharing this story of biggest, fastest non-fighting ship ever built in the Western Hemisphere.
This is a tough one to wrap my head around but here goes. Is it better to leave her ine one piece or totally destroyed by scrapping her I'm not a diver so, personally,. I am not going to swim with her but I truly wouldn't want to see her physically ripped apart. Damnit, it would even be by her own country's people either. Can't see any company not American to do it. She was built by pride here. I guess she should rest here too! Florida are you sure you need her that way, than let her rest in America too... It is sad😢
Thank you for this video. I had the good fortune of traveling from New York to Southampton the SS US in 1964 with my family. I was 10 years old at the time and had never traveled out of Michigan until then. We traveled first class, and I had never experienced such luxury and opulence in my young life. I remember meeting actor John Wayne in the dining room, he was sitting just a few tables from ours. I was actually kind of sad when we arrived in Southhampton because that was the end of this trip and back to reality. Sadly, I was never able to travel on the SS US ever again.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to share your memory! You're one voyage in UNITED STATES ahead of all of us, but we certainly understand! And you met John Wayne too. Kudos to your family for making it happen. Thanks again.
Save. The SS United States, the historical museum, an icon oceanliner. We need it for our history. I do not scuba dive, so that's not gonna make me go looking at it. Sunk in in ocean floor we're just polluting the ocean with our Rex hell on that. She needs to be a good museum or a hotel. On the water.
I find it difficult to fathom a use case for this vessel beyond being scuttled as an artificial reef, or sold off to ship wreckers for scrap. If she hadnt been totally gutted, then she might a museum ship make, but as she sits now, I just don't know. Maybe some eccentric billionaire who wants his own private cruise ship built from something historical will save her, but if that hasn't happened by now, it probably never will.
@@rehabmax Lol. No. I don't have friends in high places. But if someone like that exists then his existence would make for a really cool TH-cam channel.
This is a wonderfully done history of this magnificent ship on which I sailed as a seven year old boy in May of 1958 from Scotland to New York City. I haven't personally seen her since the day we arrived in New York but had hoped that some day I would. That seems very unlikely now.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to share a wonderful memory! The ship was in her heyday then. We can only imagine such a trip! Because of shenanigans involving the pier owner, the ship didn't move last Thursday and Federal Court is involved again. We'll keep the channel updated. Thanks again.
Thanks very much! And thanks for commenting! Yes, we agree, especially during the 21st Century. ... Twice Norwegian Cruise Lines investigated bringing the ship into Norwegian's fleet. We didn't mention the first attempt, but it occurred in the 1970s, while the Navy still had an interest in keeping her top speed classified. Norwegian bought SS FRANCE instead, renaming it NORWAY. Anyway, an adjustment or quirk of fate here or there, and the stars could have aligned positively.
I cannot believe that there's not 1200' of space she could be parked and turned into a massive shopping mall, heck she could/would be a huge financial benefit to whatever city she's at. Just my thoughts.👍👍🇺🇸🇺🇸
You would think so, but after 20 years, the conservancy hasn't accomplished anything. There's a reason none of the supercarriers have been saved. No one has been able to generate the kind of long term investment necessary to preserve these massive ships.
Shopping malls are going extinct for a reason, and even if they weren’t then a land building would any task better than United States would. The only things United States has going for her is historical significance and novelty, something few with the money are going to bet on in this economy.
Do a video on 10 ships that should've been saved as museums, and maybe pick some lesser known ships, instead of the standard "Enterprise, Warspite, etc"
Except that she meets zero modern building codes and has essentially no interior fittings. It would cost more just to make her a habitable space than it cost to build her in the first place.
It’s just too expensive to do anything with. It’s not like the queen Mary that had an interior. So you’re talking a billion dollars to do anything with it. Basically no one wants it in their city. Now they are past their eviction date and frankly they should be required to pay all the back rent.
I'd really hate to see this iconic ship sunk as an artificial reef, although it beats the scrappers yard. I also understand the enormous cost it would take to restore or repurpose her. A sad situation to be sure,
I prefer scrapping allowing her material to be recycled over trashing up a section of the Ocean. Same idea they had with tires that killed 300 times the reefs it was supposed to create. Those metals are toxic in saltwater in concentration especially the Aluminum.
No one cares about historical achievement , no one cares about engineering beyond comprehension, a ship that could cruise at 39 knots, today still the fastest ship in the world!
We don’t know how fast it would go or how fast many Navy ships will go. It’s all classified. Even the speed of this ship was classified because it was partially paid for by the Navy to be a troop ship in its day. So it was designed in some aspects like a battleship including the hull. But shortly after it was built we no longer had a need to troop ships in the future
You know the UNITED STATES is unraveling as a country. The Brits cared enough to save 2 queens. We have zero. We care more about the abysmally horrifyingly ugly cyber truck than our iconic Ocean Liner
There are people that have 500 times that money. Make them enthousiast. Show a restoration plan. Business plan etc. Location to restore , Trinidad , Brazil. Asbestos is already taken out.
@thememegenerator7993 This should be a Nationwide effort . Hold a telethon & raise the money & use Army engineers & volunteers to bring back this iconic liner .
@@BearingStraight Maybe briefly, but even had she been brought back, I can't help but think she would have been disposed of by NCL soon after when they downsized their NCL America division down to one cruise ship. With something other than bare bones inside she would have had an easier chance finding further life in some shoreside capacity but that wouldn't have been guaranteed.
We realize that every great and large ship cannot be preserved, but she is unique. Her loss is heartbreaking, we would suggest, because it's symbolic of our larger problems. Timing is sometimes everything too. The loss of Enterprise (CV-6) led to the effort to save the battleships we have today. Oh, well, thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.
She may be gone forever simply because no on can afford to fix her! Flag ship of American United States lines. A proud symbol of American 🇺🇸 accomplishment, a true mile stone in achievement for Great American!
There are a few 'stinking ' rich that don't know what to do next. Could easily donate. Or buy it themselves and have a whole deck with everything for themselves. And let passengers go with them on their cruise.
Imagine the SS United States restored and docked in Boston Harbor, next to the USS Constitution. Old Ironsides remains commissioned, and has been there long beyond her useful life, paid for by the Navy and manned by active-duty Navy crew. It would be a glorious display of two of the most significant ships in American maritime history. And the government could afford it!
Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. You're right, of course, and even in the Fifties I suspect USL had more than an inkling of how the story of transatlantic ocean liners would end.
Thank you for posting this video.Such a remarkable ocean liner that does NOT deserve the fate of being sunk as a reef in Florida.Shame on the pier owners who have greedily persued their financial gains resulting in a court order to evict the United States and a Florida council jumping on a divers den money making bandwagon.Shame shame shame.!.
You will NEVER see another SSUNITED STATES SHIP EVER AGAIN, you don’t get it, there are no more United States lines Ships , Ship of State, Flag ship of American, the very last one! No more ever again! You can’t stop them, they want their way! They are very determined on this matter!
Here in Quincy (next to Boston) I am looking from my Kitchen a quarter mile away is the site of the former World renowned Bethlehem Steel Shipyard , it is sad it is totally gone like so much of America but there remain two of the Drydocks without Gates , both are big enough to accommodate the Ship, nothing is being done with it , why cant it go there?
Good question. (We visited the area two years, went onboard SALEM. We need that yard.) ,,, Because of the cost, there no chance of restoring her as a working ship, museum, or centerpiece to waterfront redevelopment, so all that's left is deciding whether to move the ship from Pier 82, which unfortunately only delays the inevitable scrapping or reefing. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment!
When I went to USS New Jersey I saw that hull and thought nothing of her because I didn't know about United States, now I don't know if I can bear thinking about her being nothing but rust and flaking paint
Have the Queen Mary in Long Beach California, a beautiful British ship .....so why can't we have an American ship, Blue Ribband holder to this day for fastest crossing and a piece of OUR history saved. OUR country's namesake and this is what the deal is??!!! Especially with all the money that gets wasted....i was there a very short time ago and the ship looked beautiful , pretty sad its come to this. No one cares 🙄😕
Our sense is the Conservancy will settle for reefing. The "somehow" has been frustratingly elusive. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment!
It seems like the thing that stopped the ship from being saved restored turned into something great was the outrageous over charged expensive docking berth fees. If the ship could find a spot on the river free. Maybe something could be done.
Hey Elon Musk and other billionaire step up to the plate and buy this beautiful ship don’t let it become an artificial reef. Save it dried and clean it up. Put it back into service.
Great ship but maybe made with too much bias towards its military specs over its civilian life? This made to hard to run cost effectively and it tended to be a 'one trip ship', ie people would go on it once but then return to the Mary with its bigger interior spaces and more lived in feel :-)
Enterprises come into existence by themselves ONLY if they are commercially viable. SS United States was NEVER a commercially viable enterprise, as evidenced by the fact that they only way it came into existence was with help from the federal government, and by the fact that it could not stay in existence for much more than 15-18 years, and by the fact that non-governmental efforts to bring it back have never amounted to anything. As if further evidence is needed, witness that yet more government involvement (that county in Florida) is the only way the ship will escape the scrapper. It's over, it's done, please just let this ship be out of its misery.
It's time for her to be scrapped, I don't like the sea being used as a dumping ground. There's a lot of valuable scrap that can be made into other things. To use her as a shopping mall or hotel/ convention centre thing is a pie in the sky, there's never enough patronage to make it sustainable, the annual maintenance costs would be horrendous which is why investors steer away (pun intended) from her.
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Thanks for watching! Let us know below if there’s a topic you’d like us to cover in a future episode.
Thank you for sharing. I visited her yesterday to bid my farewells 😢
Thank you, this was very informative.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment!
A beautiful story with a sad ending.
When I first got into the National Maritime Union ( NMU ) there were a lot of guys in the union that had sailed on the Big U. It was owned by United States Lines that had a number of freighter and passenger ships.
So sad that it’s coming to this. I used to see United States five or six times a week, taking the TRT (Totally Rotten Transit, lol) bus from my apartment in the Ghent district of Norfolk, Virginia, to the Naval Operating Base where my ship was stationed. I remember the first time I saw her, the bus rode on an overpass over what was ironically known as Terminal Boulevard. I recognized her instantly from her modern, rakish lines and two large funnels. She looked pretty neglected way back in 1985, and the more recent images tell a sad story of progress on the one hand, and obsolescence and decay on the other. Thanks for sharing this story of biggest, fastest non-fighting ship ever built in the Western Hemisphere.
This is a tough one to wrap my head around but here goes. Is it better to leave her ine one piece or totally destroyed by scrapping her I'm not a diver so, personally,. I am not going to swim with her but I truly wouldn't want to see her physically ripped apart. Damnit, it would even be by her own country's people either. Can't see any company not American to do it. She was built by pride here. I guess she should rest here too! Florida are you sure you need her that way, than let her rest in America too... It is sad😢
Thank you for this video. I had the good fortune of traveling from New York to Southampton the SS US in 1964 with my family. I was 10 years old at the time and had never traveled out of Michigan until then. We traveled first class, and I had never experienced such luxury and opulence in my young life. I remember meeting actor John Wayne in the dining room, he was sitting just a few tables from ours. I was actually kind of sad when we arrived in Southhampton because that was the end of this trip and back to reality. Sadly, I was never able to travel on the SS US ever again.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to share your memory! You're one voyage in UNITED STATES ahead of all of us, but we certainly understand! And you met John Wayne too. Kudos to your family for making it happen. Thanks again.
One of a kind beauty, regretful to dump her...😢
Well Iam just happy the conservancy will no longer own her. No more of doing nothing but beg and plead for donations.
Save.
The SS United States, the historical museum, an icon oceanliner. We need it for our history. I do not scuba dive, so that's not gonna make me go looking at it. Sunk in in ocean floor we're just polluting the ocean with our Rex hell on that.
She needs to be a good museum or a hotel. On the water.
How much money have you given toward saving her?
Too late for that.
I find it difficult to fathom a use case for this vessel beyond being scuttled as an artificial reef, or sold off to ship wreckers for scrap. If she hadnt been totally gutted, then she might a museum ship make, but as she sits now, I just don't know. Maybe some eccentric billionaire who wants his own private cruise ship built from something historical will save her, but if that hasn't happened by now, it probably never will.
Do you know a billionaire who collects giant rusting and gutted ships of a bygone era.?
@@rehabmax Lol. No. I don't have friends in high places. But if someone like that exists then his existence would make for a really cool TH-cam channel.
This is a wonderfully done history of this magnificent ship on which I sailed as a seven year old boy in May of 1958 from Scotland to New York City. I haven't personally seen her since the day we arrived in New York but had hoped that some day I would. That seems very unlikely now.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to share a wonderful memory! The ship was in her heyday then. We can only imagine such a trip! Because of shenanigans involving the pier owner, the ship didn't move last Thursday and Federal Court is involved again. We'll keep the channel updated. Thanks again.
Great presentation! The problem going back thirty or more years is even with a restoration would anyone make use of the ship?
Thanks very much! And thanks for commenting! Yes, we agree, especially during the 21st Century. ... Twice Norwegian Cruise Lines investigated bringing the ship into Norwegian's fleet. We didn't mention the first attempt, but it occurred in the 1970s, while the Navy still had an interest in keeping her top speed classified. Norwegian bought SS FRANCE instead, renaming it NORWAY. Anyway, an adjustment or quirk of fate here or there, and the stars could have aligned positively.
I cannot believe that there's not 1200' of space she could be parked and turned into a massive shopping mall, heck she could/would be a huge financial benefit to whatever city she's at. Just my thoughts.👍👍🇺🇸🇺🇸
You would think so, but after 20 years, the conservancy hasn't accomplished anything. There's a reason none of the supercarriers have been saved. No one has been able to generate the kind of long term investment necessary to preserve these massive ships.
Shopping malls are going extinct for a reason, and even if they weren’t then a land building would any task better than United States would. The only things United States has going for her is historical significance and novelty, something few with the money are going to bet on in this economy.
Do a video on 10 ships that should've been saved as museums, and maybe pick some lesser known ships, instead of the standard "Enterprise, Warspite, etc"
Except that she meets zero modern building codes and has essentially no interior fittings. It would cost more just to make her a habitable space than it cost to build her in the first place.
It’s just too expensive to do anything with. It’s not like the queen Mary that had an interior. So you’re talking a billion dollars to do anything with it. Basically no one wants it in their city. Now they are past their eviction date and frankly they should be required to pay all the back rent.
I'd really hate to see this iconic ship sunk as an artificial reef, although it beats the scrappers yard. I also understand the enormous cost it would take to restore or repurpose her. A sad situation to be sure,
I prefer scrapping allowing her material to be recycled over trashing up a section of the Ocean. Same idea they had with tires that killed 300 times the reefs it was supposed to create. Those metals are toxic in saltwater in concentration especially the Aluminum.
AGREED 💯o%
No one cares about historical achievement , no one cares about engineering beyond comprehension, a ship that could cruise at 39 knots, today still the fastest ship in the world!
We don’t know how fast it would go or how fast many Navy ships will go. It’s all classified. Even the speed of this ship was classified because it was partially paid for by the Navy to be a troop ship in its day. So it was designed in some aspects like a battleship including the hull. But shortly after it was built we no longer had a need to troop ships in the future
Some people do care...but not enough do.
You know the UNITED STATES is unraveling as a country. The Brits cared enough to save 2 queens. We have zero. We care more about the abysmally horrifyingly ugly cyber truck than our iconic Ocean Liner
The cost of restoration of the Big U was estimated between 800M and 1B .
And even if funding was available, where would the work be done? ... Thanks for watching and commenting!
With inflation it’s probably over a billion
There are people that have 500 times that money. Make them enthousiast. Show a restoration plan. Business plan etc. Location to restore , Trinidad , Brazil. Asbestos is already taken out.
I like it's cameo in the revenge flick Dead Man Down.
Isn’t it ironic that we saved the Queen, but not our own ship.
Gonna dive for some history.
This needs to have a National Historic Protection ,
@thememegenerator7993 This should be a Nationwide effort . Hold a telethon & raise the money & use Army engineers & volunteers to bring back this iconic liner .
We really are living in the darkest timeline.
_SS United States_ (1949-1969) She's been a zombie since she left service and not really alive.
Norwegian Cruise Lines came oh so close to bringing her back into cruise line service this century. Thanks for watching and commenting!
@@BearingStraight Maybe briefly, but even had she been brought back, I can't help but think she would have been disposed of by NCL soon after when they downsized their NCL America division down to one cruise ship. With something other than bare bones inside she would have had an easier chance finding further life in some shoreside capacity but that wouldn't have been guaranteed.
She left service in 1969 .
Heartbreaking.
We realize that every great and large ship cannot be preserved, but she is unique. Her loss is heartbreaking, we would suggest, because it's symbolic of our larger problems. Timing is sometimes everything too. The loss of Enterprise (CV-6) led to the effort to save the battleships we have today. Oh, well, thanks for watching and taking the time to comment.
She may be gone forever simply because no on can afford to fix her! Flag ship of American United States lines. A proud symbol of American 🇺🇸 accomplishment, a true mile stone in achievement for Great American!
There are a few 'stinking ' rich that don't know what to do next. Could easily donate. Or buy it themselves and have a whole deck with everything for themselves. And let passengers go with them on their cruise.
Imagine the SS United States restored and docked in Boston Harbor, next to the USS Constitution. Old Ironsides remains commissioned, and has been there long beyond her useful life, paid for by the Navy and manned by active-duty Navy crew. It would be a glorious display of two of the most significant ships in American maritime history. And the government could afford it!
The Boeing 707 put her out of business.
Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment. You're right, of course, and even in the Fifties I suspect USL had more than an inkling of how the story of transatlantic ocean liners would end.
Goodbye ,Beautiful Ship !
Thank you for posting this video.Such a remarkable ocean liner that does NOT deserve the fate of being sunk as a reef in Florida.Shame on the pier owners who have greedily persued their financial gains resulting in a court order to evict the United States and a Florida council jumping on a divers den money making bandwagon.Shame shame shame.!.
William francis gibbs also helped renovate the vaterland into the leviathan!
You will NEVER see another SSUNITED STATES SHIP EVER AGAIN, you don’t get it, there are no more United States lines Ships , Ship of State, Flag ship of American, the very last one! No more ever again! You can’t stop them, they want their way! They are very determined on this matter!
No idea she was in imminent danger? What about the last 30 years?
Here in Quincy (next to Boston) I am looking from my Kitchen a quarter mile away is the site of the former World renowned Bethlehem Steel Shipyard , it is sad it is totally gone like so much of America but there remain two of the Drydocks without Gates , both are big enough to accommodate the Ship, nothing is being done with it , why cant it go there?
Good question. (We visited the area two years, went onboard SALEM. We need that yard.) ,,, Because of the cost, there no chance of restoring her as a working ship, museum, or centerpiece to waterfront redevelopment, so all that's left is deciding whether to move the ship from Pier 82, which unfortunately only delays the inevitable scrapping or reefing. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment!
When I went to USS New Jersey I saw that hull and thought nothing of her because I didn't know about United States, now I don't know if I can bear thinking about her being nothing but rust and flaking paint
Have the Queen Mary in Long Beach California, a beautiful British ship .....so why can't we have an American ship, Blue Ribband holder to this day for fastest crossing and a piece of OUR history saved. OUR country's namesake and this is what the deal is??!!! Especially with all the money that gets wasted....i was there a very short time ago and the ship looked beautiful , pretty sad its come to this. No one cares 🙄😕
Ship should be saved somehow
Our sense is the Conservancy will settle for reefing. The "somehow" has been frustratingly elusive. Thanks for watching and taking the time to comment!
It seems like the thing that stopped the ship from being saved restored turned into something great was the outrageous over charged expensive docking berth fees. If the ship could find a spot on the river free. Maybe something could be done.
It would take untold millions to save this ship.
Hurry up and get Trump in. He’ll pardon the SS United States. Think of the jobs it will create restoring her.
Never to latte to make it a hotel like the Queen Mary, come on New York
Everyone and everything has its time and then passes.
Hey Elon Musk and other billionaire step up to the plate and buy this beautiful ship don’t let it become an artificial reef. Save it dried and clean it up. Put it back into service.
Great ship but maybe made with too much bias towards its military specs over its civilian life? This made to hard to run cost effectively and it tended to be a 'one trip ship', ie people would go on it once but then return to the Mary with its bigger interior spaces and more lived in feel :-)
That's certainly an intriguing thought. Thanks for taking the time to comment!
Enterprises come into existence by themselves ONLY if they are commercially viable. SS United States was NEVER a commercially viable enterprise, as evidenced by the fact that they only way it came into existence was with help from the federal government, and by the fact that it could not stay in existence for much more than 15-18 years, and by the fact that non-governmental efforts to bring it back have never amounted to anything. As if further evidence is needed, witness that yet more government involvement (that county in Florida) is the only way the ship will escape the scrapper.
It's over, it's done, please just let this ship be out of its misery.
I see about 50 Million Coke Cans.
Ha! Maybe ....
It's time for her to be scrapped, I don't like the sea being used as a dumping ground. There's a lot of valuable scrap that can be made into other things. To use her as a shopping mall or hotel/ convention centre thing is a pie in the sky, there's never enough patronage to make it sustainable, the annual maintenance costs would be horrendous which is why investors steer away (pun intended) from her.
It always seems like it’s more important for this country to give away billions of $s to foreign aid than to take care of issues on our own soil.