By Sandra J. Pennecke
PUBLISHED: November 13, 2024 at 10:41 AM EST
A 34-ton propeller from the SS United States at the entrance to The Mariners’ Museum and Park in Newport News is a reminder of the golden age of ocean liners.
Equipped with powerful steam-driven turbines, the SS United States was the fastest ocean liner ever to cross the Atlantic Ocean. “America’s Flagship” was built at Newport News Shipbuilding and delivered in 1952 as a secret Cold War military transport ship ready to carry 15,000 soldiers across the Atlantic Ocean if then Soviet Union forces invaded Western Europe.
The 990-foot ship, larger than the Titanic, is slated to make its final resting place at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico off Florida’s coast to become the world’s largest artificial reef.
The historic vessel, mothballed in 1969, remained in Hampton Roads before it was docked pier-side at the Philadelphia waterfront in 1996. It will be towed to Mobile, Alabama, this month for work over the next year to remove toxic materials and prep the ship’s exterior before its final journey to join other shipwrecks, fishing boats and barges deep in the waters off the Destin-Fort Walton Beach area in Okaloosa County, Florida.