Is There Still Hope for the Big U?

by Tom Rinaldi

SS US

(Above photo by John McFarlane)

In July of 1996, a 990-foot-long, twelve-story high historic landmark appeared suddenly on the Philadelphia skyline. Almost immediately, scores of people came to see it-- even though a barbed-wire fence kept them hundreds of feet away. Guards had to be posted round-the-clock to keep anxious sightseers from trying to get a closer look. The SS United States, one of the last surviving transatlantic liners, had arrived in Philadelphia.

Five years later, the ship continues to languish on the Delaware River. Once the pride of the American merchant marine, the United States was withdrawn from service in 1969, as jet aircraft brought an end to the era of the Atlantic liner. Now two organizations have dedicated themselves to saving the ship, but with very different ideas on how to go about doing so.

The SS United States Foundation was established in December of 1997. Three years later, the Foundation has a membership of over one thousand. Ideally, Foundation president Robert Westover envisions the ship restored in a way that preserves its historic profile and innovative engineering, perhaps brought to New York's West Side to be tied-in with the USS Intrepid-- a WWII aircraft carrier now part of a Sea-Air-Space Museum located at the United States' former Hudson River pier-- and the Jacob Javits convention center, both of which are adjacent to the city's passenger ship terminal.

But one of the Foundation's greatest adversaries may be the ship's other key proponent: its owner. Ed Cantor acquired the "Big U" in 1996. Last March (2000) he founded the SS United States Project. While the SS US Project also aims to see the ship saved, Cantor hopes to have the liner restored as a cruise ship rather than "stuffed and mounted" like Britain's Queen Mary, the only preserved Atlantic liner, now permanently moored as a hotel and convention center in Long Beach, California.

This plan however has drawn criticism for what some see as its disregard for the ship's historical integrity. "We want her to return to sea," says Project spokesman Tom Margiotti. "The QE2 has been altered tremendously over the years," he adds citing the Cunard Line's 32-year-old flagship, now the last ship to make regularly-scheduled Atlantic crossings: "but I think most people would say she looks better today than ever." Margiotti concedes that the ship would have value as a museum, but he says she would have more value as a cruise ship: "with the boom in the cruise industry, turning her into a cruise ship also makes sense from a financial point of view." The renovation would cost upwards of $200-300 million.

But industry analyst Theodore Scull is skeptical as to the ship's potential in the cruise market. "I'm not optimistic for seeing her sail again," he says, pointing to the ship's superstructure and revenue-producing space, which he explains was large by 1952 standards, but not by today's.

The problem is not so much the ship's age, but that it was built to cross rather than to cruise. Before air travel became popular, crossing the Atlantic meant going by sea. To fill this niche, a unique breed of ships was developed. The ideal was a ship big enough to carry large numbers of people comfortably from point A to point B, and to move them as quickly as possible through what in the winter months are among the world's roughest seas. On many liners-- the United States included-- swimming pools and dining areas were enclosed and located on lower decks. Passengers were shielded from the elements, premier staterooms designed so that those inside them would be least effected as the ship pitched and rolled through an Atlantic storm. Today's cruise ships sail at relatively slow speeds and through much more tranquil seas. Where the liners sought to keep the elements at bay, cruise ships try to embrace the outdoors. Swimming pools are outside, dining facilities are moved up and-- most problematic for ships like the Big U-- superstructures extend higher, with decks of verandah cabins stacked above the lifeboats. "To make the ship pay," fears Scull, "it's possible that they would have to add extra decks, which would ruin or destroy the ship's classic profile-- one of her greatest assets."

If the liners provided only basic transportation, this was transportation at its best. The age of the Atlantic liner brings to mind a cavalcade of glamorous and dramatic images. The elaborate christening ceremonies, the streamers on sailing day, celebrities waving from the rail, hoards of immigrants getting their first sight of the new world-- it was for most of the last century, as historian John Maxtone-Graham put it, "the only way to cross."

It was a time when the ships themselves were celebrities-- from the Titanic to the Queen Mary, from the Île de France to the Andrea Doria, their names continue to resonate in popular culture long after these ships have vanished or been retired.

The United States was among the greatest of the transatlantic ships. On her maiden voyage in 1952, she outpaced the Queen Mary to become the world's fastest ocean liner-- a title she holds to this day. An American triumph in the first years of the cold war, "she was the last word in speed and technology" says maritime historian Bill Miller, "and certainly one of the most important ships of the 20th Century." The largest passenger vessel ever built on American shores, the list of those who traveled on her reads like a who's who of mid-century notables: from the Windsors to the Kennedys; Katherine Hepburn, Sir Laurence Olivier, Cary Grant, Salvador Dali-- they all sailed on the Big U.

But for all their mystique, the great liners couldn't keep up as air travel offered a faster and cheaper alternative. "We noticed that the passenger traffic was falling off in the early sixties," recalls Commodore Leroy J. Alexanderson, now 90, the ship's former captain. One by one, the great ships vanished. Today, only a handful survive. While ships of war, such as the Intrepid, the New Jersey, and the Missouri have found new careers as floating museums, the liners, triumphs of peacetime, have been largely ignored by preservationists. Since the United States was withdrawn, many plans have come and gone for the ship. Nearly auctioned for scrap in the early 1990s, she went instead to Ukraine for conversion to a cruise ship. But work had hardly begun when financial difficulties were encountered and the project fell through. Then, in 1996, she was brought to Philadelphia.

A visit aboard the ship today reveals how thirty years of neglect have taken their toll: decks where Hollywood stars and world leaders once strolled are now littered with flaking paint, while the ship's grand public rooms lie dark and empty, having been stripped bare when asbestos was removed in Ukraine. Streaks of rust mark the ship's massive black hull, and her twin red white and blue funnels, which dominate Philadelphia's waterfront, continue to fade. To date, both the SS US Foundation and SS US Project have made significant progress toward their respective goals. The Foundation spearheaded a successful campaign to have her placed on the National Register of Historic Places and has endorsed a proposal by a New York development firm which hopes to make the ship an east-coast version of the Queen Mary. The Project meanwhile is presently in negotiations with an unnamed cruise line.

In the meantime, the United States continues to deteriorate in Philadelphia. As she sits in lay-up, other historic ships continue to disappear-- her former running-mate, the America, was wrecked in the Canaries in 1994, while the SS Britanis, which at 68 was the oldest large passenger ship in existence, sank in October of 2000 en-route to scrappers in Pakistan. Until she is saved, such threats will continue to loom for the United States. Now in her fourth decade of neglect, this one-time American flag-ship still faces an uncertain future.