The rise and fall of the fastest passenger ship ever built

The decades following the end of the Second World War were a golden age for ocean liners, with some of the most sumptuous passenger ships ever built regularly crossing the North Atlantic. A cavalcade of ritzy vessels offered suites of lavish rooms and opulent dining salons, as well as speeds once unthinkable.

But one ship outpaced all the others. On her maiden voyage from New Yorkto Le Havre in July 1952, the SS United States set a transatlantic speed record of three days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes, at an average speed of 35.59 knots (41 mph).

The coveted “Blue Riband” is an accolade for the fastest crossing of this vast ocean by a commercial passenger ship. The SS United States claimed the title more than 70 years ago, setting a record that has still not been surpassed. The high price of marine fuel now prohibits such bold, gas-guzzling endeavours. For comparison, Cunard’s Queen Mary 2 takes a leisurely seven days to travel from Southampton to New York at a maximum speed of 30 knots (34.5 mph).

A top-secret construction

The express liner was certainly the most technologically advanced passenger ship ever to sail the Stars and Stripes. With her two 65-ft-high winged funnels painted red, white and blue, a low hull stretching 990 ft, and a beam calibrated to navigate the Panama Canal, this sleek ship of state broke the mould.

The design of the “Big U” – the ship’s affectionate moniker – was so innovative that the details of her construction were kept top secret. Built at the Newport News Shipbuilding yard in Virginia, the vessel was a joint effort between the owners, United States Lines, and the United States Navy. Two-thirds of the $78m construction costs were subsidised by the Pentagonin order that the liner could be requisitioned by the military and easily converted to a hospital ship or transport ship able to carry an army division of 14,400 troops over 10,000 miles without refuelling. The transformation was never needed, although the ship was briefly on standby for mobilisation during the Cuban Crisis in 1962.

The ship’s top speed of 38.32 knots (44 mph), achieved during the 1952 speed trials, was not disclosed because it was considered a military secret. Its eight boilers and four massive steam turbines were the most powerful ever installed on a merchant vessel. Another attribute that remained a Cold Warstate secret was the novel combination of four-bladed and five-bladed propellers. To reduce weight, this streamlined Atlantic greyhound was the first to use an innovative process that fused the all-aluminium superstructure with a battleship-grade, two-inch-thick steel hull. The famed designer William Francis Gibbs wanted his ship to be fireproof, so he insisted that no wood was used in the construction or fittings.

Sailing with the stars

Travellers soon embraced “America’s flagship”, which had the right mix of 1950s glamour to attract the rich and famous. Among the passengers who boarded the ship in the Fifties and early Sixties were Marlon Brando, Coco Chanel, Sean Connery, Gary Cooper, 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 John F. Kennedy.

The capacity was 1,972 passengers in a tiered system of first class, cabin class, and tourist class. Some viewed this as incongruous in such a classless democracy. With its mid-century modern décor, the ship defined America on the high seas in terms of atmosphere, food, and service. It was less stuffy than its European counterparts, such as the venerable Cunard “Queens”, with their imposing double- and triple-height salons crafted from 56 of the world’s rarest woods.

Some passengers loathed the SS United States, however, complaining that its black and silver palette of black linoleum flooring and oyster-white walls appeared too much like a warship. One caustic critic referred to it as “dull early Sheraton”. The novelty of being the first ship to be fully air-conditioned, as well as the first to use microwave ovens, didn’t carry enough sway for certain members of the travelling elite who sought grace versus pace.

For 17 years, America’s greatest ocean liner operated a regular transatlantic service at a racy operational speed of 30 to 32 knots (35 to 37 mph), enabling the ship to maintain a schedule of five-night crossings from New York to Le Havre, Southampton and, occasionally, Bremerhaven. There were also winter cruises to South America, Africa and Europe. In September 1958, the ship logged her millionth mile, but dark clouds lay on the horizon. The introduction of the Boeing 707 that year shifted the global travel paradigm. Jets carrying over 180 passengers at speeds of up to 600 miles per hour made transatlantic flights accessible to the masses.

The unwanted wonder

Following the sudden financial collapse of United States Lines in 1969, the Big U was laid up at her birthplace in Virginia. Voyage number 400 would be her last. By 1978, the US Navy decided it was no longer relevant to their needs, and the ship was put up for sale. The rusting hulk passed from owner to owner, each with audacious plans for a secure future.

One such venture saw the ship towed to Turkey and then Ukraine for hazardous material removal in 1992. Stripped of asbestos, it returned to Philadelphia’s Delaware River four years later. Another purchaser, Norwegian Cruise Line, announced plans in 2003 for an exotic service around the Hawaiian Islands. Like all the others, this endeavour foundered.

In 2009, the SS United States Conservancy launched a “Save Our Ship” campaign to build public support for the vessel, prevent her sale for scrap, and raise funds for her purchase and restoration. In July 2010, a philanthropist gifted $5.8m, enabling the ship’s purchase by the faithful caretakers. This bolstered several plans to restore the ship, all of which were unfulfilled. In 2024, after decades moored in Philadelphia, the forsaken ship was evicted from its berth because of a rent dispute.

The cost burden and challenge of finding a suitable location as a tourist attraction or hotel became insurmountable. With all other options exhausted, Florida’s Okaloosa County purchased the vessel for $10.1m, with the sole purpose of deploying her as an artificial reef. This undertaking is a fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars that it would have taken for a full restoration of the vessel.

Few could have imagined the ignoble final resting place for this beacon of American ingenuity. In the next few months, devoid of her funnels, the SS United States will make her final voyage. The former pride of America’s merchant marine will be scuttled in the Gulf of Mexico, 23 miles south of the Florida Panhandle, to become the world’s largest artificial reef.

Underwater footage will capture this sad spectacle of the vessel’s live sinking and final placement on the ocean bed. The submerging is intended to create a marine ecosystem and dive site, with the ship’s artefacts preserved in a land-based museum. The fastest transatlantic ocean liner in history will have been transformed into a barnacle-encrusted carcass.

The fates of five other great ocean liners

SS Normandie

This was certainly the most extravagantly decorated transatlantic ocean liner of her day, perhaps of all time. Sadly the flagship of the French Line sailed for less than five years before being laid up at New York in August 1939, as war broke out in Europe. During conversion to a troopship for Allied service in 1942, she caught fire at New York’s Pier 88 on West 49th Street and later capsized. The burnt-out hulk of the former holder of the Blue Riband in 1935 and 1937 made a forlorn sight. The destroyed ship was finally broken up for scrap in 1946.

RMS Queen Elizabeth

In 1970, Hong Kong shipping magnate C.Y. Tung bought Cunard’s decommissioned RMS Queen Elizabeth to convert it into a floating campus called Seawise University. The largest ocean liner in the world at that time arrived in Hong Kong in July 1971 for an extensive refit. On January 9 1972, several mysterious fires broke out on the leviathan, and she capsized in shallow water in Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour.

RMS Queen Mary

Her former sister ship enjoys a more noble retirement in the sun. The majestic RMS Queen Mary, which held the Blue Riband in 1936 and again in 1938, was sold to the City of Long Beach, California, in 1967. Permanently moored, the former Cunarder is a popular tourist attraction with a museum and a hotel where guests can slumber in the art deco dreamscape of original first class suites and cabins.

Queen Elizabeth 2

Having crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times, the renowned QE2 was sold to Dubai World in 2007. The longest-serving ship in Cunard’s history has been saved from the acetylene torch and given a new lease of life, opening as a floating hotel in 2018. Towering over Port Rashid, the sympathetically refurbished liner features 447 original staterooms, nine bars and restaurants, retail outlets, and a swimming pool.

SS Rotterdam

Another European flagship was saved from an ignominious demise at the knackers’ yard. Holland America Line’s fifth SS Rotterdam was launched in 1958 at a shipyard in her home port. After 13 years crossing the North Atlantic, the liner assumed a new role cruising the world. A succession of tenures, each resulting in bankruptcies, followed this sun-kissed heyday. Finally, in April 2013, WestCorp Hotels took over the running of SS Rotterdam, which is now permanently moored at the Maashaven. Embodying 1950s design, the 254 hotel rooms and restaurants offer nostalgia in spades.

[Source: Daily Telegraph]