After more than 800 Atlantic crossings and more than 70 years since the first voyage, the SS United States, once the world’s fastest passenger ship, has been sunk off the coast of Florida and will become the world’s largest artificial reef. No explosives were needed. It took about 5 hours.
The tFastest transatlantic ever builtyesterday made its last journey to the seabed. There SS United Stateswhich crossed the Atlantic in 1952 in a time never since beaten by a liner, was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico, off the coast of Florida to become, over time, the largest artificial coral reef in the world.
The descent towards the bottom ended on Wednesday 11 November at 9.00 pm local time (4.00 am on Thursday 12th in Italy). The precise point is located approximately 22 nautical miles southwest of Destin-Fort Walton Beachin Okaloosa County.
It was initially scheduled for Thursday, but was brought forward a day due to incoming bad weather. For such an operation, as communicated by county officials to FOX Weather, precise weather conditions were necessary: wind below 17 mph (about 27 km/h) and waves under a meter, because such a large ship can be moved by the wind from the established point.
The United States was built in Virginia, at the shipyard Newport News Shipbuildingby over 3,000 workers between 1950 and 1951, designed by naval engineer William Francis Gibbs. It was the flagship of the United States Line company and was designed at the height of the Cold War with a dual role: luxury liner in peacetime and troop transport in the event of conflict, capable of hosting 14,000 soldiers.
The first voyage left from New York on July 3, 1952 with approximately 1,700 passengers, including Margaret Truman (daughter of President Harry Truman), Princess Grace of Monaco and Salvador Dalí. The ship crossed the Atlantic to Europe in 3 days, 10 hours and 40 minutesat an average speed of approximately 66 km/h (35.59 knots), and conquered the Blue Ribbonthe award for the fastest crossing. That record for a liner has never been broken.
It’s long 302 metersabout 30 more than the Titanic, and is the largest passenger ship ever built in the United States weighing in at 47,000 tons.
In 17 years of service, the United States has crossed more than one ocean 800 times and transported over a million of passengers. In addition to the celebrities present on the first voyage, American presidents such as Eisenhower and Kennedy, the young Bill Clinton (1968), the former British King Edward VIII, Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor came on board.
Then theairplane made ship crossings less convenient, and in 1969 it was withdrawn from service. Several conversion projects failed, and the ship remained docked in Philadelphia since 1996 until February 2025. In 2024, Okaloosa County purchased it to turn it into a artificial reefwith a project for approximately 13 million dollars.
Before sinking, the ship spent about a year in Mobile, Alabama, for the environmental remediation.
Following Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and US Maritime Administration (MARAD) guidelines, they were removed non-metallic materials, electrical cables, fuel residues and other potentially polluting substances. All have been cleaned 128 tanks and removed hundreds of portholes and internal doors, so that the marine fauna can enter the wreck.
The two famous ones were also removed smokestacksapproximately 20 meters high and preserved for a future museum on land, and part of the aluminum superstructure. This keeps higher bridges closer to the surface. On November 9, the vessel was towed to the site.
To sink it, no explosives were used: a controlled flooding. Specifically, two valves connected to the original sea water intake pipes which in the past were used to cool the machinery were opened. Meanwhile, a fire vessel pumped water into the hull. The combined action of these operations, combined with some specially drilled holes in the steel, allowed the ship to fill evenly and begin its journey to the seabed.
The technicians predicted a descent of approximately 45 minutesbut the ship took much longer. For hours, little could be seen from the outside. Then, in the last minutes, the United States she leaned onto her side and disappeared beneath the surface of the sea in a few moments. The buoyancy and exact position on the seabed will be verified with a survey by divers from the county and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
According to the project, the wreck rests at approx 55 meters deepwith the upper decks at approx 17 meters from the surfacereachable even by inexperienced divers. The Destin-Fort Walton Beach area already has 580 artificial reefs. The new wreck surpasses the aircraft carrier USS Oriskany, which sank in 2006 off Pensacola, as the largest coral reef in the world.
In the northern Gulf of Mexico the seabed is mostly sandy so structures like this offer fish, corals, algae and other marine organisms footholds and shelters to colonize. However, it will take years for the hull to fill with life.
