For Sale: The SS United States
For years now, we’ve been hoping that someone, anyone, would purchase the SS United States in its lonely dock on the Delaware, and transform it into the historical attraction it has every right to be. Though it’s difficult to imagine as you stare at it from the window of Ikea, the SS-US was once the pride of the entire nation, and still holds the record for fastest westward trans-Atlantic crossing: 3 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes. But as you’ve probably noticed, the great ship has sat in neglect and disrepair just off Delaware Avenue since 1996. Those days could be coming to an end quite soon, though, as the ship is up for sale, and according to this excellent PlanPhilly story by Steven B. Ujifusa, it will most likely go to scrap, providing an utterly awful national metaphor: It would most likely be “towed to Asia, and run aground on a foul, oil-smeared beach,” where it would be destroyed and sold off as hunks of metal to Asian junkmen. Owch. There is a conservancy group, The S.S. United States Conservancy, but it doesn’t look good. So if you’re an enterprising soul with lots of local and national pride, and with millions to spare, why not take a ride down to South Philly and take a look? We think you’ll find that the SS United States is a gorgeous boat, and the Swedish meatball lunch special across the street is really without peer.
PlanPhilly: If Not For The Courage A Fearless Crazy Millionaire, The SS-US Will Be Lost
March 23rd, 2009 at 12:53 pm
The United States
by C. K. Williams
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/poetry/2007/04/16/070416po_poem_williams
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.
Now, behind its ravelling chain-link fence,
the ship’s a somnolent carcass, cables lashed
like lilliputian leashes to its prow, its pocking,
once pure paint discoloring to blood.
Upstream, the shells of long-abandoned factories
crouch for miles beneath the interstate;
the other way the bridge named after Whitman
hums with traffic toward the suburbs past his grave;
and “America’s mighty flagship” waits here,
to be auctioned, I suppose, stripped of anything
it might still have of worth, and towed away
and torched to pieces on a beach in Bangladesh.
March 23rd, 2009 at 1:35 pm
And if you want to know what’s in store for it at the hands of Indian shipbreakers, this 2000 piece from the Atlantic’s (now VF’s) William Langewiesche is probably the best longform magazine piece of the decade:
http://www.wesjones.com/shipbreakers.htm
March 23rd, 2009 at 3:28 pm
Perhaps we can move the Boyd Theatre to the SS United States, allowing the both preservation groups to join forces.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:37 am
Apparently the insides are a hollowed out shell – with everything that would have been of any value gone. Once you think about that you realize how amazingly expensive it wold be to maintain this as anything more than a landmark. Such a shame – I’d love to see it in its original glory.
I’ve been dying to get down there for pictures. Looks like I need to do it now.
March 24th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Its a real shame that this once great ship will never amount to anything other than scrap. I need to get down there for pictures as well…I know that a lot of old WWII ships, tanks, etc. are cleaned up and made environmentally sound, then sunk off the coast of the jersey shore to create reefs for sealife habitation. There are quite a few off of the coast of LBI that I fish in the summer. I wonder if the ship could be pared down and donated to the reef program. It honestly looks like it will never get the care and money that it needs, especially in our current economy…at the very least it could have a final resting place in the sea while contributing positively to the marine environment by creating habitats for sealife to flourish in…just a thought. way easier said than done, i know.