The decision, in November 1969, that the world’s fastest ocean liner, the SS United States, would be laid up indefinitely, brought to an end her 17-year reign as queen of the American merchant marine.
For some, who watched with pride the career of this great ship, the significance of her retirement is that America’s last transatlantic passenger liner was unable to compete effectively in the economic arena of a jet-age world.
Other observers, aware of some of the military capabilities designed into the United States, may have had a different reason to question the immobilization of an important element of national maritime strength.
Built during 1950-52 at Newport News, Virginia, by the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company for the United States Lines, the 51,000-gross-ton (28,000 d.w.t.) United States broke all speed records for passenger ships on her maiden voyage 3 July 1952. She logged an average speed of approximately 35 knots, becoming the first American-built liner to take the Atlantic Blue Ribbon in 100 years.
The designer of this ship was the remarkable William Francis Gibbs (above). Though he had many naval and commercial ships to his credit—and the world’s largest fire engine, too—he believed the United States to be his greatest creation, and he kept close watch on her until his death a few years ago.
The photographs on the following pages, most of which were made during one of the last voyages of the United States, serve both as a depiction of her dual personality and as a salute to a queen on her retirement.
The United States possesses certain unusual design features intended to permit her rapid transition from passenger liner to troop transport. Until recently, for security reasons, information about many of these qualities was classified.
While many of the United States’ general specifications have been common knowledge—990-foot length; 101.5-foot beam; 32½-foot draft; $80 million cost—other details have been less widely known. Her underwater lines, for example were long kept secret, and even the display model (above right) was enclosed in a wooden case which concealed everything from the waterline down.
Similarly, the configuration of the ships’ bow, the unusually high, close-to-the-surface position of her propellers—even the fact that her propellers were five-bladed—were all details generally withheld until revealed last year.
Perhaps the most closely guarded design characteristics of the United States were those of her twin bilge keels (also referred to as “rolling chocks”). Each 200 feet long, these keels project about four feet out from the hull at a point about halfway down from the waterline to keel. So effective have they been that the United States has never needed stabilizers.
Additional “special” design characteristics are her relatively shallow draft—ten feet less than Navy ships of comparable size—and her beam which permits passage through the Panama Canal.
The extensive use of aluminum in her construction, especially in her superstructure—more was used in the United States than in any other structure on land or sea, at that time—provided a weight saving of some 8-to-10,000 tons.
Believed by her owners to be probably the safest passenger liner ever built, both from a structural viewpoint and also with regard to fire, the United States has no wooden decks. All her furniture and decorations are either completely fireproof or fire resistant. So rigid is this exclusion of inflammables, it is pointed out, that the only wooden items of equipment on board the liner are “two pianos and the butcher’s chopping block.”
Evident in the above view of the unusually narrow wake of the United States are the important benefits (more speed, less fuel consumption) derived from her advanced hull design that created a minimum of hydrodynamic “drag.”
The United States has been described as the most “over-designed” ship ever built, and perhaps with reason, for, as her owners point out, she was over-designed in the sense of extra strength, extra power and extra safety beyond the needs normally ascribed to a passenger liner.
Most of these “extras,” say the owners, represent the special qualities dictated by her potential military role. Her naval identity is even further enhanced by the installation of watertight doors as far up as A-deck (left).
Though the United States has eight boilers, only six were ever used during normal operations, and these were operated only up to 60 per cent of their capacity.
In fact, the engine plant was not opened up to full capacity even on her record-breaking maiden voyage, but her estimated maximum power is 220,000 h.p., and her estimated flank speed is 42 knots—in which condition she would be consuming 12,000 barrels of oil a day. Her double engine rooms, double piping, and double electric wiring further support her potential naval role as a troop transport.
And, of course, her basic spaces such as boiler rooms, engine rooms, control centers, and shaft alleys would merely shift to their new troopship identity with a minimum of the difficulty traditionally associated with the “coal-in-a-Cadillac” conversion process.
Operationally, perhaps the proudest boast of the United States is that in 17 years and over 2.6 million steaming miles, her power plant has never been stopped because of malfunction. By customarily operating on six boilers, with two in maintenance, tubes have been replaced routinely at sea to cut down shipyard time.
The United States cost approximately $21 million a year to operate. Of this sum, $7.5 million was paid out in crew wages; $3.5 million went for fuel; subsistence and stores added up to another $3.3 million; normal repairs and maintenance amounted to $1.3 million; port expenses and items, such as handling mail, cost $2.4 million, and the annual insurance premium was something over $1 million; brokerage commissions averaged about $1 million, and nearly $1 million was earmarked for welfare and social security costs.
But because, as her owners assert, one-third of her original cost is invested in her military potential, the United States could have become, if required, a troopship capable of carrying 15,000 men 10,000 miles at 30 knots without refueling.
More than 900,000 passengers have travelled on board the United States, and can remember the splendor of her appointments—exemplified by the enamel-on-copper sand paintings of the Navajo Lounge and the cut glass, edge-lighted panels of the ballroom. Most likely, only those who can also recall the Spartan decor of wartime ship accommodations can appreciate the magnitude of any transformation from luxury liner to troop transport.
Today, her 17-year reign terminated by the exigencies of economics, the queen of the American merchant marine lies quietly at her berth at Newport News (right).
Here, far removed from the familiar bustle of New York’s Pier 86, the United States’ promenade decks are silent, and the spacious lounges and saloons and swimming pool all lack the one essential element necessary to complete the picture—people.
Nor will there recur on the United States the familiar, noisy activity of people-at-play until the difficult problem of her appropriate disposition, in a manner satisfactory to all concerned parties, is resolved.
There are of course, rumors of several possibilities—that the owners have offered the ship to the government as a troop transport, and that interest has been expressed by Greek shipowners and by at least one major British line. The latter proposals suggest strong support for the premise that the United States can, indeed, be a profitable enterprise, in an other-than-American operating environment.
Whatever the outcome, many arrangements must now be completed before America’s proud lady of the Atlantic will be permitted to shrug off her restraining lines once more and move gracefully and swiftly into her natural element—the open sea.