SS United States carried presidents and stars across Atlantic hundreds of times

Ship spent nearly 30 years docked in Philadelphia before reef conversion

Before its retirement, the SS United States was known for carrying royalty and celebrities from the United States to Europe, beginning in 1952 and ending in 1969, after a service career in which the historic liner crossed the Atlantic Ocean hundreds of times. The ship will be sunk off the coast of Destin, Florida, on Wednesday in a precision operation without explosives and turned into the world’s largest artificial ocean reef.

A young Bill Clinton, before he was president, used the ship to cross the Atlantic. Former presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy also traveled on the vessel.

Stars including Marlon Brando, Coco Chanel, Duke Ellington, Salvador Dali, Walt Disney, Judy Garland and Cary Grant also boarded the ship during its sailing tenure.

Once sunk, the ship will soon become a home for sea life and an underwater attraction for sea enthusiasts, and it will be added to the dozens of artificial reefs already off the state’s coast, as a land-based museum detailing the ship’s history is also planned.

The ocean liner, once the fastest ship in the world and measuring longer than the Titanic, spent nearly 30 years docked in Philadelphia before it was moved from Philadelphia to Alabama last year for cleaning and remediation work.

On Monday, it took its final journey from Alabama to the coast of Destin, Florida, where it is to be sunk on Wednesday.

Activists unsuccessfully fought for the historic liner to be preserved as a museum. Before its purchase by the municipal Florida government, a number of proposals that would have seen the ship live a second life as a museum or a floating hotel failed. A Florida county purchased the liner.

Instead, the famed ship sat at various docks with various owners as legal battles played out.

The SS United States Conservancy group repeatedly attempted to keep the ship above water, but was unsuccessful.

Conservancy President Susan Gibbs, whose grandfather helped design the SS United States, said she was glad that the story of the ship would live on. “[The ship] has always been this unabashedly American symbol that brings so many people together,” Gibbs told CBS News, the BBC’s US partner.