"The SS United States, once the fastest passenger liner in the world, is scheduled to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico"
SS United States to be sunk as largest artificial reef (divemagazine.com)
136 pointsby geox2 days ago96 comments
dsabanin an hour ago
So much symbolism in this passage:
N_Lens 23 minutes ago
So much Symbolism everywhere these days.
Altman (Alternate Human) is ushering in AI. Amodei (Beloved of God, or Lover of God) is his opponent in this endeavour.
GolfPopper 10 hours ago
"Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale!"
ezrabuenk an hour ago
straight fire
geokon 10 hours ago
Was strangely difficult to find on Wikipedia what the "SS" actually means
scrollaway 10 hours ago
Here is a great video on the topic.
geokon 9 hours ago
the video claims it "Steam Ship" and not "Screw steamer". But later claims TSS is "triple screw steamship". So I'd be hesitant to trust the rest of the video's content.
RobotToaster 9 hours ago
The first steam ships were paddle steamers, wiki even says SS can just be a generic term for steam ship.
It's not unusual for acronyms to have multiple meanings, the S in HMS can mean submarine, as submarines aren't ships.
tengwar2 8 hours ago
There's still one sea-going paddle steamer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Waverley.
silisili 9 hours ago
Gilligan's Island lied to us all. The Minnow clearly wasn't a steamer...
zelphirkalt an hour ago
If those are the most prominent things you find for that abbreviation, I have to start doubting Wikipedia. As a German seeing that abbreviation so freely used is always a little bit shocking.
Xirdus an hour ago
Wait until you learn about SS the government security service. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Secret_Service
(Officially USSS, but it's often abbreviated to SS in common parlance.)
loeg an hour ago
Or Social Security.
loeg an hour ago
The German one isn't relevant for post-war American ships. Hope that helps.
foo42 an hour ago
Thanks, TIL!
Apparently the RMS prefix on the RMS Titanic stands for "royal mail steamer" as it was authorised to carry the post.
tylergetsay 10 hours ago
Incase anyone was unaware part of the consideration for where to sink it is access for divers -- the top will be around 55ft deep which will make it accessible for recreational divers
adamheath 6 hours ago
>The ship is expected to rest in approximately 55m (180ft) of water, with her upper decks reaching depths of around 17–18m (55–60ft), making the wreck suitable for recreational and technical divers alike.
It should be very good for both
Ericson2314 5 hours ago
Between 55 feet and 55 meters, how poetic.
WalterBright 11 hours ago
It's a sad day. I crossed the Atlantic in it long ago. Some great memories.
bunderbunder 10 hours ago
Bittersweet, perhaps? I've never seen the ship in person but I've been following its story. It seems that Okaloosa County snatched it out of the jaws of the scrapyard just in the nick of time.
It won't be floating anymore, but it will at least be somewhat physically intact, at least relative to the state it was already in. It was pretty well stripped bare back in the 80s, and further gutted after that asbestos abatement project a while back. And it will be available for people who can SCUBA dive to visit.
quietsegfault 8 hours ago
I’ve seen it at least once a week if not more for 10 or 15 years. It’s really startling that it’s missing from the waterfront. Super big bummer no one could make it work.
waltbosz 8 hours ago
You must be in Philly. Every time I visit IKEA, I'd have a meal in the cafe and sit by the window to look at it.
31carmichael 2 hours ago
you can also swim down to the top of it if you're good at holding your breath.
rkagerer 10 hours ago
Lasted three quarters of a century, not bad!
fsckboy 6 hours ago
United States was withdrawn from service in a surprise announcement in 1969. All planned cruises were canceled, and the ship changed owners repeatedly for the next several decades. Every owner attempted to make the ship profitable, but she was aging and poorly maintained. In 1984, her interior furnishings were sold at auction, and the rest of her interiors were stripped to the bulkheads in 1994. In 1996, she was towed to Philadelphia, where she remained until February 2025.
(not sure it should have been much of a surprise, jetliners were taking all the high paying traffic)
stevesimmons 9 hours ago
I sailed in a similar liner, originally the SS America, though renamed the SS Australis by the time my family took it in 1974 for the 5 week journey from UK via Cape Town to Australia.
The SS Australis passed through multiple owners until it ran aground while being towed near the Canary Islands and broke into two.
A sad end to a majestic ship.
One memory of the trip was the week in the Indian Ocean midway between Africa and Australia where the waves were so large the ship's dining rooms made the tablecloths wet to stop the plates sliding off as we tried to eat breakfast...
Zafira 3 hours ago
I believe the America was essentially a testbed for the United States. They were both amazing ships designed by William Francis Gibbs and the United States was specifically designed with conversion to a troopship in mind, if necessary. Its propulsion system was classified as a state secret for a time and there are pictures of models shown to the public early on where everything below the waterline was covered up.
WalterBright 6 hours ago
At one point there was a storm. I was very impressed with the size of the waves and the ship would just muscle through it.
Some years ago I was on a cruise ship. The captain announced that they were changing course to avoid a storm. I was disappointed :-/
buildbot 6 hours ago
That’s more for comfort than anything I would think, a modern cruise ship can easily take pretty insane storms? They have active stabilization systems and huge amounts of mass while still powered by relatively strong engines?
Animats 6 hours ago
Right. The S.S. United States was built for winter North Atlantic conditions,
with a power plant, hull, and watertight compartments more like a warship than a cruise ship. She could be converted to a troop carrier if necessary, something that had been done to big liners during WWII. Cruising speed 30MPH, top speed 44MPH.
Great for getting across the Atlantic in 3 1/2 days. Not so great on fuel economy.
Cruise ships today look like hotels mounted on barges [1]. About half the speed. A refurbished SS United States was never going to compete in that market, and plans to do so were never funded.
[1] https://www.royalcaribbean.com/cruise-ships/icon-of-the-seas
fsckboy 6 hours ago
The fastest transatlantic crossing by a passenger liner was set by the SS United States in July 1952, averaging 35.51 knots (65.76 kmh) earning her the Blue Riband
kragen 10 hours ago
If this is interesting to you, there's still one ocean liner left: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Mary_2
Buy a ticket while you can.
jauntywundrkind 10 hours ago
I had a coworker whose not a fan of flying who has done a couple crossings now, really enjoys it! I think of the Queen Mary 2 a bunch because of them, their tales. A little world of fans who really enjoy doing the crossing.
whyenot 10 hours ago
I wonder if Cunard/Carnival will ever build a replacement to her.
kragen 10 hours ago
No. Possibly Kishore Patil, who was born yesterday in Mumbai, will build a replacement for her on a whim when he is 70, using self-assembling nanobots, or possibly next century the Creative Cold War Re-Enactment Society will cosplay 20th-century steel-mill workers and welders long enough to build a replacement for her in a period-correct fashion, but nothing really resembling Cunard will exist in a future where building a replacement for her is possible.
samatman 8 hours ago
Not to toss cold water in the face of your maudlin science-fictional musings (kidding I’m totally doing that), QM2 is the 51st largest passenger ship afloat.
They call them “cruise ships” now, because the only reason to float around like that is fun, not business. So they have waterslides and such. Slightly less old-growth hardwood paneling, fewer places where one is allowed to smoke cigars.
But no. There are ten Greeks who could build another Queen Mary as a lark, and that’s just counting Greeks. However rich you think the world is? It’s richer than that.
Zeppelins, though. Those, I will grant you, have gotten scarce. Oh, the humanity.
kragen 7 hours ago
Maybe you're right.
Animats 6 hours ago
> Zeppelins, though. Those, I will grant you, have gotten scarce.
Just saw a Zeppelin cruising over Woodside today. It's Sergey Brin's personal project, Pathfinder. It's a true Zeppelin, a rigid airship, not a blimp, and the world's largest air vehicle. [1] First flew in 2025, but, unlike the Airship Ventures craft we used to see giving tours over Silicon Valley, it's not flown often. It's normally parked in Hangar One at Moffet Field.
[1] https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/big-helium-airship-spott...
kragen 6 hours ago
Thank God for billionaires, but why can't he stop Google from creating dystopia instead?
derwiki 6 hours ago
Probably much, much easier to make a zeppelin
ornateelephant 6 hours ago
Forget the Greeks, have a look at Clive Palmer. Not just dreaming about building a replica Titanic, but also wanted to revive zeppelins commercially.
dn3500 4 hours ago
Cruise ships and ocean liners are two different kinds of ship. An ocean liner has higher freeboard, higher service speed, longer bow, greater draft, and other features that make it more suitable for crossing oceans.
rootusrootus 9 hours ago
Are there plans to scrap it anytime soon? It's modern, built in the early 2000s, and seems in some ways more like a modern cruise ship than an ocean liner of the last century.
kragen 9 hours ago
Not that I know of, but it's the only ocean liner left, so when it does get scrapped (perhaps unexpectedly), there won't be any ocean liners.
Maxion an hour ago
Definitely can't afford that, this is going to be one of those life regrets I think that I won't be able to do.
boelboel 31 minutes ago
It's actually not that expensive if you take an inside cabin, I remember seeing prices of about 900usd at some point, which isn't more than a plane ticket if you take into account the food/entertainment. Right now there's some crossing from the UK to New York starting at about 450 pounds, you have to call though.
williadc 9 hours ago
This podcast entry has more about the ship's history https://www.omnibusproject.com/episodes/ss-united-states-ent...
jparishy 10 hours ago
Only love from all the Philadelphians who have sat eating Swedish meatballs and looking at it in wonder. Will be dearly missed
icepush 3 hours ago
At first I didn't notice 'SS' in the title and had quite the double-take
disillusioned 2 hours ago
Interestingly, we honeymooned on the Celebrity Infinity, and its "theme" at the time (and possibly still?) was the SS United States. They had several pieces of art related to it, and more interestingly, the original china pattern for their plateware in the fancy restaurants.
_heimdall 7 hours ago
Most of the comments here mention divers, I would have expected thus to be focused on fishing. When I lived on the gulf coasts there were quite a few sunken ships marked as common fishing spots.
xrd 8 hours ago
Th SS United States going into the Gulf of Mexico.
It would be funny if Mexico started calling it "el arrecife del imperio moribundo"
"The Reef of a Dying Empire"
Metacelsus 7 hours ago
>Gulf of Mexico
well, that depends on who's naming it these days...
asanineassasin 10 hours ago
Would a metall ship, that is artificially erroded a a solar driven scarficial annode, count as geo-engineering, when the resulting algea bloom fell out over a dead spot of the ocean?
CableNinja 5 hours ago
Why are we sinking huge amounts of already processed resources... yes theres cost but, thats a lot of steel, copper, brass who knows what else. So crazy and ridiculous to me
weird-eye-issue 5 hours ago
https://youtu.be/hQVNtXIy3B4?si=SJWzQiYfpVQSPaL4
Extracting it seems to be pretty nasty business
_ink_ 2 hours ago
Probably interesting, but unwatchable with ads every two sentences.
weird-eye-issue an hour ago
Complaining about ads is generally discouraged here because it doesn't add anything. Buy YouTube Premium if you don't want to see ads, it's pretty simple.
This is a very high quality documentary and it's not like running YouTube is free either so exactly what are you expecting?
randunel an hour ago
I'm surprised there's HN folk without ad blockers, what gives?
ropable 7 hours ago
A bittersweet end. The SS United States was a magnificent-looking ship.
mig39 10 hours ago
Hasn't this been the plan for years now?
Jtsummers 10 hours ago
Only since 2024, and the date is now approaching so that gives it renewed interest in the news media.
Gee101 7 hours ago
I'm sure a Youtuber could have saved it :)
ungreased0675 9 hours ago
Beautiful ship, that’s going to be awesome to dive on.
hackernud3s 7 hours ago
Headed for Davey Jones' Locker.
cratermoon 4 hours ago
I wish they could have left her funnels on to sink with the rest of the ship. I suspect if they did the tops would be too shallow and a hazard to navigation. Or maybe they didn’t want them to rust and fall unexpectedly on some divers.
thrance 9 hours ago
Feels relevant:
> The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built.
From George Orwell's 1984.
analog8374 10 hours ago
Well that's symbolic as heck. A component in a piece of ritual magic maybe. Somebody should feature it that way in a comic book.
dmead 10 hours ago
Ikea in south philly will never be the same :<
iJohnDoe 10 hours ago
Other than it changing hands a couple of times and it languishing for decades, both of which are pretty normal, the cleanup of the ship sounds largely successful. Almost like an example of how all cleanup projects should go.
bparsons 6 hours ago
We are running out of metaphors.