> The SS United States, once the fastest passenger liner in the world, is scheduled to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico in November, creating what will be the world’s largest artificial reef.
This sentence may anger someone into causing a controversy... hope this doesn't hit his favorite channels.
This is somewhat common. Once cleaned up, they provide refuge for sea life, and increased economic activity for nearby communities via fishing and diving.
Bittersweet, perhaps? I've never seen the ship in person but I've been following its story. It seems that Okaloosa County snatched it out of the jaws of the scrapyard just in the nick of time.
It won't be floating anymore, but it will at least be somewhat physically intact. It was already pretty well stripped bare back in the 80s, and further gutted after that asbestos abatement project a few years back. And it will be available for people who can SCUBA dive to visit.
I’ve seen it at least once a week if not more for 10 or 15 years. It’s really startling that it’s missing from the waterfront. Super big bummer no one could make it work.
United States was withdrawn from service in a surprise announcement in 1969. All planned cruises were canceled, and the ship changed owners repeatedly for the next several decades. Every owner attempted to make the ship profitable, but she was aging and poorly maintained. In 1984, her interior furnishings were sold at auction, and the rest of her interiors were stripped to the bulkheads in 1994. In 1996, she was towed to Philadelphia, where she remained until February 2025.
(not sure it should have been much of a surprise, jetliners were taking all the high paying traffic)
I sailed in a similar liner, originally the SS America, though renamed the SS Australis by the time my family took it in 1974 for the 5 week journey from UK via Cape Town to Australia.
The SS Australis passed through multiple owners until it ran aground while being towed near the Canary Islands and broke into two.
A sad end to a majestic ship.
One memory of the trip was the week in the Indian Ocean midway between Africa and Australia where the waves were so large the ship's dining rooms made the tablecloths wet to stop the plates sliding off as we tried to eat breakfast...
I believe the America was essentially a testbed for the United States. They were both amazing ships designed by William Francis Gibbs and the United States was specifically designed with conversion to a troopship in mind, if necessary. Its propulsion system was classified as a state secret for a time and there are pictures of models shown to the public early on where everything below the waterline was covered up.
That’s more for comfort than anything I would think, a modern cruise ship can easily take pretty insane storms? They have active stabilization systems and huge amounts of mass while still powered by relatively strong engines?
Right. The S.S. United States was built for winter North Atlantic conditions,
with a power plant, hull, and watertight compartments more like a warship than a cruise ship. She could be converted to a troop carrier if necessary, something that had been done to big liners during WWII. Cruising speed 30MPH, top speed 44MPH.
Great for getting across the Atlantic in 3 1/2 days. Not so great on fuel economy.
Cruise ships today look like hotels mounted on barges [1]. About half the speed. A refurbished SS United States was never going to compete in that market, and plans to do so were never funded.
The fastest transatlantic crossing by a passenger liner was set by the SS United States in July 1952, averaging 35.51 knots (65.76 kmh) earning her the Blue Riband
Would a metall ship, that is artificially erroded a a solar driven scarficial annode, count as geo-engineering, when the resulting algea bloom fell out over a dead spot of the ocean?
Other than it changing hands a couple of times and it languishing for decades, both of which are pretty normal, the cleanup of the ship sounds largely successful. Almost like an example of how all cleanup projects should go.
I had a coworker whose not a fan of flying who has done a couple crossings now, really enjoys it! I think of the Queen Mary 2 a bunch because of them, their tales. A little world of fans who really enjoy doing the crossing.
No. Possibly Kishore Patil, who was born yesterday in Mumbai, will build a replacement for her on a whim using self-assembling nanobots, or possibly next century the Creative Cold War Re-Enactment Society will cosplay 20th-century steel-mill workers and welders long enough to build a replacement for her in a period-correct fashion, but nothing really resembling Cunard will exist in a future where building a replacement for her is possible.
Not to toss cold water in the face of your maudlin science-fictional musings (kidding I’m totally doing that), QM2 is the 51st largest passenger ship afloat.
They call them “cruise ships” now, because the only reason to float around like that is fun, not business. So they have waterslides and such. Slightly less old-growth hardwood paneling, fewer places where one is allowed to smoke cigars.
But no. There are ten Greeks who could build another Queen Mary as a lark, and that’s just counting Greeks. However rich you think the world is? It’s richer than that.
Zeppelins, though. Those, I will grant you, have gotten scarce. Oh, the humanity.
> Zeppelins, though. Those, I will grant you, have gotten scarce.
Just saw a Zeppelin cruising over Woodside today. It's Sergey Brin's personal project, Pathfinder. It's a true Zeppelin, a rigid airship, not a blimp, and the world's largest air vehicle. [1] First flew in 2025, but, unlike the Airship Ventures craft we used to see giving tours over Silicon Valley, it's not flown often. It's normally parked in Hangar One at Moffet Field.
Cruise ships and ocean liners are two different kinds of ship. An ocean liner has higher freeboard, higher service speed, longer bow, greater draft, and other features that make it more suitable for crossing oceans.
Are there plans to scrap it anytime soon? It's modern, built in the early 2000s, and seems in some ways more like a modern cruise ship than an ocean liner of the last century.
It's actually not that expensive if you take an inside cabin, I remember seeing prices of about 900usd at some point, which isn't more than a plane ticket if you take into account the food/entertainment. Right now there's some crossing from the UK to New York starting at about 450 pounds, you have to call though.
A two day ferry to Spain will set you back more than that!
Worth noting, though, being able to "afford" this kind of thing isn't just about the money. Most people get only a few weeks holiday per year, and many aren't allowed to take more than a couple of at a time. To get the most out of something like this you'll ideally have a month at the very least to holiday, which is not possible for most.
Huh, that's a lot more affordable than I thought. I think I'd prefer an inside cabin anyway, on a ship like that you don't really wanna spend time in the cabin.
Their website currently has inside cabins listed at “CA$600.57” per person with a note that says “All prices in US dollars.” They have a deal now where third and fourth guests travel free so you could take four people to London for $1200 Canadian/US. I have no idea what currency Canadian/US is and as a general rule, I like it when big floating things are run by companies with a lot of attention to detail.
the video claims it "Steam Ship" and not "Screw steamer". But later claims TSS is "triple screw steamship". So I'd be hesitant to trust the rest of the video's content.
If those are the most prominent things you find for that abbreviation, I have to start doubting Wikipedia. As a German seeing that abbreviation so freely used is always a little bit shocking.
Even in German speaking forums for pregnant women it’s used liberally to abbreviate “Schwangerschaft” (pregnancy), which can result in some pretty funny phrases.
That’s a rather interesting interpretation. Why would a ship name prefix stand for a verb phrase rather than something that describes the vessel? To be honest the exact meaning was TIL for me too, I always assumed the obvious "Steam Ship", similarly to other common prefixes like "MS" for "Motor [ICE] Ship" or "SY" for "Sailing Yacht".
They aren't. I think that's the point. If you type "SS" into Wikipedia you get straight to Schutzstaffel. It's hard to find what it means in the context of ships.
Incase anyone was unaware part of the consideration for where to sink it is access for divers -- the top will be around 55ft deep which will make it accessible for recreational divers
>The ship is expected to rest in approximately 55m (180ft) of water, with her upper decks reaching depths of around 17–18m (55–60ft), making the wreck suitable for recreational and technical divers alike.
The rusting, decomposing hulk of the United States
is moored across Columbus Boulevard from Ikea,
rearing weirdly over the old municipal pier
on the mostly derelict docks in Philadelphia.
I’d forgotten how immense it is: I can’t imagine
which of the hundreds of portholes looked in
on the four-man cabin five flights down
I shared that first time I ran away to France.
We were told we were the fastest thing afloat,
and we surely were; even from the tiny deck
where passengers from tourist were allowed
our wake boiled ever vaster out behind.
That such a monster could be lifted by mere waves
and in the storm that hit us halfway across
tossed left and right until we vomited
seemed a violation of some natural law.
At Le Havre we were out of scale with everything;
when a swarm of tiny tugs nudged like piglets
at the teat the towering mass of us in place,
all the continent of Europe looked small.
Meanwhile, this monstrosity and its two sister ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Seas#/media/File... which are only slightly longer than the United States, but around five times as heavy, are according to Wikipedia the largest passenger ships in the world.
The economics and constraints of shipping favour ugliness in this era I think. A sailing ship kind of has to be pretty to be good at its job, and a lot of early passenger steamers inherited the same design features which made sailing ships pretty. While modern shipping is much more efficient the constraints favour maximising how many containers (or tourists) you can fit on a ship instead, which produces boxy, slab-sided things.
Curious readers might appreciate another "monstrosity" for it's time, the SS Great Eastern, which was built nearly 100 years before the SS United States:
> The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
.. courtesy of a corrupt narco terrorist state exporting lethal poisons to it's neighbor resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans. Let the tanks roll, baby, send in the Boy Scouts to finish the job.
Most of the comments here mention divers, I would have expected thus to be focused on fishing. When I lived on the gulf coasts there were quite a few sunken ships marked as common fishing spots.
In some areas a lot of nets and other fishing tackle ends up snagging on shipwrecks. This "ghost fishing" gear still ends up killing a lot of marine life. The Ghost Diving Foundation has been cleaning that up but it's a slow and expensive process.
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[ 0.21 ms ] story [ 16.2 ms ] threadThis sentence may anger someone into causing a controversy... hope this doesn't hit his favorite channels.
The program in the Florida Keys is huge.
https://gis.myfwc.com/boating_guides/florida_keys/pages/art_...
It won't be floating anymore, but it will at least be somewhat physically intact. It was already pretty well stripped bare back in the 80s, and further gutted after that asbestos abatement project a few years back. And it will be available for people who can SCUBA dive to visit.
(not sure it should have been much of a surprise, jetliners were taking all the high paying traffic)
The SS Australis passed through multiple owners until it ran aground while being towed near the Canary Islands and broke into two.
A sad end to a majestic ship.
One memory of the trip was the week in the Indian Ocean midway between Africa and Australia where the waves were so large the ship's dining rooms made the tablecloths wet to stop the plates sliding off as we tried to eat breakfast...
Some years ago I was on a cruise ship. The captain announced that they were changing course to avoid a storm. I was disappointed :-/
Although, I guess rogue waves can appear anywhere deep and rough.
Cruise ships today look like hotels mounted on barges [1]. About half the speed. A refurbished SS United States was never going to compete in that market, and plans to do so were never funded.
[1] https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-ships/icon-of-the-seas
The cruise ship will drive around the storm because it doesn't want the cargo to spill their drinks and get pissy. The liner has a schedule to keep.
Buy a ticket while you can.
They call them “cruise ships” now, because the only reason to float around like that is fun, not business. So they have waterslides and such. Slightly less old-growth hardwood paneling, fewer places where one is allowed to smoke cigars.
But no. There are ten Greeks who could build another Queen Mary as a lark, and that’s just counting Greeks. However rich you think the world is? It’s richer than that.
Zeppelins, though. Those, I will grant you, have gotten scarce. Oh, the humanity.
Just saw a Zeppelin cruising over Woodside today. It's Sergey Brin's personal project, Pathfinder. It's a true Zeppelin, a rigid airship, not a blimp, and the world's largest air vehicle. [1] First flew in 2025, but, unlike the Airship Ventures craft we used to see giving tours over Silicon Valley, it's not flown often. It's normally parked in Hangar One at Moffet Field.
[1] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/big-helium-airship-spott...
Many people hate or fear flying. Some might also just prefer the laid back, retro, travel style. Not all are in a mad rush to get somewhere.
But I guess the market might be too small for regularly scheduled trips.
Worth noting, though, being able to "afford" this kind of thing isn't just about the money. Most people get only a few weeks holiday per year, and many aren't allowed to take more than a couple of at a time. To get the most out of something like this you'll ideally have a month at the very least to holiday, which is not possible for most.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_steamer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_prefix
https://youtu.be/ZOXymrplqCg
It's not unusual for acronyms to have multiple meanings, the S in HMS can mean submarine, as submarines aren't ships.
(Officially USSS, but it's often abbreviated to SS in common parlance.)
I always thought it stood for "Set Sail", but this definition is more pragmatic.
Apparently the RMS prefix on the RMS Titanic stands for "royal mail steamer" as it was authorised to carry the post.
I find it funny that it changes between his and her depending on the reigning monarch at the time.
i thought it was richard matthew stallman
It should be very good for both
55 tacos, 55 pies...
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Ironsides_(poem)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Great_Eastern
> The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
From George Orwell's 1984.
It would be funny if Mexico started calling it "el arrecife del imperio moribundo"
"The Reef of a Dying Empire"
well, that depends on who's naming it these days...
I'd say don't throw stones if you live in a glass house, don't think Mexico has much of a high horse to ride on lmao.
Its all deep sea fishing around there, you drop a line near the artificial reefs looking for bottom feeders.
https://www.ghostdiving.org/