SS United States sinks off Florida to become an artificial reef

Coleen Marine maintained the liner’s recognizable hull for underwater viewing

Coleen Marine is sinking the retired SS United States on purpose off Okaloosa County, Florida. NPR host Michel Martin said the retired ocean liner will become the world’s largest artificial reef, and NPR host Steve Inskeep said the U.S. Coast Guard will not stop the sinking. Martin said the whole operation is being live-streamed as the almost 1,000-foot vessel goes down.

The SS United States entered service in 1952 and was designed by William Francis Gibbs. Susan Gibbs, William Francis Gibbs’s granddaughter and chair of the SS United States Conservancy, said: “She embodied the spirit of a nation so confident in its ability to accomplish the extraordinary. She blasted across the sea on her maiden voyage, smashing the speed record, which, back then, was a big deal.”

For Gibbs, the planned transformation combines grief with hope. “It’s a combination of grief that I will be saying goodbye to her in her current form, but gratitude and hope in terms of what she will continue to give to the world,” she said.

The Conservancy tried to save the retired liner and at one point planned to convert it into a hotel or museum. “We came so close. But ultimately, it proved legally, financially, politically, just too daunting,” Gibbs said. The ship was subsequently sold to Okaloosa County, where it is being sunk.

The SS United States is bigger than the Titanic and almost 1,000 feet long, Inskeep said, a scale that “should make for an incredible playground for divers and fish.”

Inskeep said he had toured the liner a couple of years before it was towed from Philadelphia. An unidentified guide led visitors up spiral stairs and through cabins stripped back to the walls, identifying the space as first-class cabin area. From the deck, Inskeep walked to the bow and said, “I’m the king of the world,” before relating the ship to the movie Titanic and Leo DiCaprio. He said he wanted to dive to see the vessel again someday. The NPR report closed with Celine Dion’s song, “My Heart Will Go On.”

Coleen Marine specializes in creating artificial reefs from old ships, and Coleen O’Malley, part of the team responsible for sinking the liner, said keeping the SS United States upright is the operation’s biggest challenge.

“The biggest thing with sinking a ship is not how much water you put in. It’s making sure the air comes out,” O’Malley said. If the air remains, the liner could capsize and flip over like the plastic boats a child might play with in the bath.

“We’ve maintained the actual hull, so she’s very recognizable. We’ve made it so that the structure under the water is going to look like she did above the water,” O’Malley said.

The live-stream lets observers see whether Coleen Marine succeeds in sinking the liner upright, Martin said. The plan is to leave the recognizable hull underwater as a structure for divers and fish, while ending the preservation effort that had planned to convert the liner into a hotel or museum.