SS United States granted Stay of execution

[TimothyC]

Link

Update: SS United States saved from the scrapper (for now)

Bill Barol at 4:43 PM Friday, Jul 2, 2010

Bill Barol is a former senior writer at Newsweek and his journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, Time, Slate, and elsewhere. He also blogs at True/Slant and Pix365.

A few months back, in one of my first posts for Boing Boing, I wrote about the plight of the SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever built. It was docked in Philadelphia at the time, a beautiful ghost from a pre-jet era when sea travel was both glamorous and financially viable, and the scrappers were circling. Some things haven't changed since March: The great days of the ocean liner are still gone, and "The Big U" is still sitting forlornly in her mooring on the Delaware River. But against all odds, one very big thing has transpired: The SS United States Conservancy, a volunteer group of self-described ship geeks, has managed at the 11th hour to keep the ship from the scrapyard. The Conservancy announced yesterday a deal to purchase the SSUS from its owner, NCL Group. It's an astonishing victory. The Wall Street Journal reports the purchase price to be $3 million; NCL reportedly turned down a bid of almost twice as much from a scrapper. A Philadelphia philanthropist, Gerry Lenfest, has agreed to pay the $60,000-per-month upkeep on the ship for 20 months while the conservancy looks for a partner with whom to repurpose the vessel, most likely as a hotel or mixed-use development on the Philadelphia or New York waterfront.

My last post on the ship churned up a lot of comment, as this one will probably will, and a lot of readers said, in effect, "Let the thing rust away and die." I wonder how many of them would have said the same thing about New York's Pennsylvania Station, the grand Beaux Arts railroad terminal whose destruction in the early '60s helped to spark the modern preservation movement. The problem is, once these things are gone they're gone, and with them goes a piece of our shared history, even our national identity. The good guys won one today in Philadelphia. Here's hoping that 20 months from now some of us will be lucky enough to pop champagne corks on the deck of a refurbished Big U.

Good news for all shiplovers. I doubt that she will ever sail as a liner again, but her preservation is something we can all cheer for! While I've only ever been on a cruise ship, I would love to have taken a transatlantic crossing on United States at her prime.

[eion]

My dad came back on the SS United States from Germany as a kid. I’d hate to see her scraped.

I'd love to see her refitted as a cruise-liner, for there is really no market for ocean liners anymore, though I suppose she could be converted into a floating residential community like The World. She really is a spectacular ship. The only wood on her was the piano, and that was only accepted after a special fire resistant wood was selected and demonstrated by having gasoline poured over her and a match struck.

I've also had a very nice drink at her salvaged kidney bar in Nagshead, NC.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Good lord, you mean this ship INS"T Scrapped already? I remember reading about it as a kid and figured it got scrapped years ago along with all the other great ships of her day. If she is still alive where can I donate for restoration?

[TimothyC]

Good lord, you mean this ship INS"T Scrapped already? I remember reading about it as a kid and figured it got scrapped years ago along with all the other great ships of her day. If she is still alive where can I donate for restoration?

SS Rotterdam, and the earlier RMS Queen Mary survive as hotels, and QE2 is still around (although with an uncertain fate), so the great ocean liners are not all gone, gust very very rare. As for donation, the United States Conservancy, has a donation page up here. They even have a paypal link. What really warms my heart is that Norwegian Cruise Lines, turned down the $6 million bid for the ship from scrappers, in favor of the $3 million bid from the preservation society. I know that the next cruise I take (probably the better part of a decade out) stands a higher-than-before chance of being with them.

[Razorgeist]

Thats great lets hope they can find out something to do with it. My grandparents came back to the states after WW2 while my grandmother was pregnant with my father on that ship.

[FSTargetDrone]

While this is good news for now, I am dismayed to mention that the ex-USS Olympia (berthed not far from United States) is facing possibly being sunk as a reef or worse (scrapped) off the coast of New Jersey. And that would be a fucking abomination.

Grrr...:

Opinion

Memorial Day 2010: Don't let the USS Olympia sink from memory

Failing to repair and keep afloat the USS Olympia, a heroic ship of the Spanish-American War, would say a lot about America’s priorities.

By Allen C. Guelzo / May 31, 2010

Gettysburg, Pa.

The USS Olympia was best known for serving as the flagship for Commodore George Dewey and the little squadron of warships that resoundingly defeated the Spanish Navy at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898.

“You may fire when you are ready, Gridley,” said the imperturbable Dewey to his flag captain, C.V. Gridley. In a legendary feat of naval prowess, Gridley swept the Spanish ships away without a single American battle casualty.

Now for the surprise: The very spot on the Olympia’s bridge where Dewey gave Gridley that order can still be seen, since the USS Olympia floats today, 112 years after the battle, at the Independence Seaport Museum on Philadelphia’s waterfront.

Philadelphia has been Olympia’s home since she was decommissioned in 1922, the year after she brought home the body of The Unknown Soldier in state from France.

Not for long, though.

The museum recently declared that it “can no longer afford the ship’s upkeep.” Repairs to the ship’s corroding steel hull are estimated at $20 million. Instead, the museum is leaning toward having her towed to Cape May, and sunk – yes, sunk – as an artificial reef.

There’s something slightly unsettling in these times to talk about lavishing resources on an artifact of war – especially a war which launched the United States toward acquiring a colonial empire in Asia and creating a corrupt client-state in Cuba. Saving the Olympia simply strikes us as too much like saving your great-great-grandmother’s hoop-skirt – too irrelevant to be interesting, or else too suggestive of a lifestyle we’ve junked.

But by that logic, we might as well junk Memorial Day, too, and all that goes with it.

We went into World War One to save democracy...and got Hitler. We went into World War II to save freedom...and imprisoned thousands of Americans who just happened to have Japanese names. Besides, all those parades full of doddering pensioners seem about as cool as Betty Crocker. And all that sentimental gush about departed comrades only feeds the glorification of war. We might better turn Gettysburg into a nature preserve, and recycle its war-mongering Civil War monuments as land-fill.

Except for this: Americans have never really had much of a romance with war. In 1781, George Washington fretted that the American Revolution might actually fail because Americans are “a commercial and free people” with little taste for war. Ulysses S. Grant could not stand the sight of blood.

What we remember on Memorial Day – and on the battlefields, and even on the bridge of the Olympia – is how reluctantly we have gone to war, and how determined we have been to achieve what Lincoln called “a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”

The Olympia is not a exhortation to bloodshed; she is a monument to the lengths Americans will go when they are provoked.

The sun has not yet sunk below the yardarm for the Olympia, at least for this summer. James McLane, the president of the Independence Seaport Museum, will hold the Olympia open for visitors until the fall, with the hope that someone may yet step forward to save the ship. And Harry Burkhardt, the president of the “Friends of the Cruiser Olympia”, is struggling to recruit enough donations to preserve the Olympia as a living history museum.

But I suspect that finding the money isn’t the ultimate problem, even in these days of shrunken wallets.

The ultimate problem is that we can’t find the shame.

So if, this fall, the Olympia takes her final voyage down the Delaware, I hope she takes with her all the memories of Dewey and Gridley that are left (and there probably aren’t too many, courtesy of the inept priorities of our school systems), all the memories of The Unknown Soldier and the War he died in, and all the memories of the Stars and Stripes, flung out to a stiff Pacific breeze in the days when the nation felt young and self-confidence pumped through every vein.

On the day she takes her final voyage down the Delaware, I wouldn’t want those memories hanging around to remind us of what the Olympia did for us, and what we didn’t do for her.

Allen C. Guelzo is the Henry R. Luce professor of the Civil War Era at Gettysburg College, and the author of “Abraham Lincoln: Redeemer President.”

Anyway, if I could somehow trade the United States for Olympia and her preservation (a silly hypothetical, to be sure) I would do it in a moment.

[Thanas]

My dad came back on the SS United States from Germany as a kid. I’d hate to see her scraped.

I'd love to see her refitted as a cruise-liner, for there is really no market for ocean liners anymore,

The Queen Mary 2 still manages to get along quite nicely. That said, what many people do not like to mention is that the high speed of the United States came at a cost - unlike the other ocean liners she was never profitable due to the heavy fuel cost and smaller passenger size. So she never was a very good ocean liner, though a speedy one.

though I suppose she could be converted into a floating residential community like The World. She really is a spectacular ship. The only wood on her was the piano, and that was only accepted after a special fire resistant wood was selected and demonstrated by having gasoline poured over her and a match struck.

This was also the reason she was full of asbestos and other toxins.

Don't get me wrong, she is a beatiful ship though.

[eion]

If she is still alive where can I donate for restoration?

SS United States Conservancy

The Queen Mary 2 still manages to get along quite nicely. That said, what many people do not like to mention is that the high speed of the United States came at a cost - unlike the other ocean liners she was never profitable due to the heavy fuel cost and smaller passenger size. So she never was a very good ocean liner, though a speedy one.

Speedy was a pretty good marketing advantage over the other ocean liners. And then the jets came along and good as sunk her.

This was also the reason she was full of asbestos and other toxins.

Don't get me wrong, she is a beatiful ship though.

Oh no doubt, and that will make a refit a bitch, but it does make for great marketing when you can tell your passengers that the only piece of wood on your ship only got there by being proven non-flammable by having burning gasoline poured on top of it.

A couple more travel crippling eruptions from Eyjafjallajökull and a refit might look really profitable.

[Thanas]

The Queen Mary 2 still manages to get along quite nicely. That said, what many people do not like to mention is that the high speed of the United States came at a cost - unlike the other ocean liners she was never profitable due to the heavy fuel cost and smaller passenger size. So she never was a very good ocean liner, though a speedy one.

Speedy was a pretty good marketing advantage over the other ocean liners. And then the jets came along and good as sunk her.

Not good enough to ever really compete in the big league. That one was dominated by the Cunard and French ships, who were far more fuel efficient = more price competitive. The United states only ever held the Bremerhaven-New York route in its grasp, which was always less profitable than the Hamburg route, but ideal for her because she could not carry that many passengers anyway.

[eion]

The Queen Mary 2 still manages to get along quite nicely. That said, what many people do not like to mention is that the high speed of the United States came at a cost - unlike the other ocean liners she was never profitable due to the heavy fuel cost and smaller passenger size. So she never was a very good ocean liner, though a speedy one.

Speedy was a pretty good marketing advantage over the other ocean liners. And then the jets came along and good as sunk her.

Not good enough to ever really compete in the big league. That one was dominated by the Cunard and French ships, who were far more fuel efficient = more price competitive. The United states only ever held the Bremerhaven-New York route in its grasp, which was always less profitable than the Hamburg route, but ideal for her because she could not carry that many passengers anyway.

This is probably also why Concorde never took off. People are cheap when you get right down to it.

[Simon_Jester]

Does anyone know more about Olympia? I mean, there's the group Friends of the Cruiser Olympia who are talking about pulling together private donations, but I don't know how they're doing or whether they've got a real chance. Does anyone know how much money they've collected?

[Uraniun235]

This is probably also why Concorde never took off. People are cheap when you get right down to it.

It would have been possible to make some profit off of Concorde but for one major reason - people on the ground did not like the sonic boom they created. This made it impossible to proliferate Concorde service all over the world.

Of course, it also didn't help that Concorde was released shortly before an oil crunch, severe inflation, and a recession in the early 80s.

[Alyrium Denryle]

While this is good news for now, I am dismayed to mention that the ex-USS Olympia (berthed not far from United States) is facing possibly being sunk as a reef or worse (scrapped) off the coast of New Jersey. And that would be a fucking abomination.

Sinking as an artificial reef isn't that bad... Divers can visit, and life can flourish in and around her decks.

[MKSheppard]

Fuck you Alyrium. Do you even know what USS Olympia is? We have plenty of other ships that can be sunk as artifical reefs in her stead.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Fuck you Alyrium. Do you even know what USS Olympia is? We have plenty of other ships that can be sunk as artifical reefs in her stead.

I am aware. I am also aware that if you have the option to scrap her, or sink her as a reef, you should choose the later. If there is not a sufficient amount of money to keep her in repair and if the will is not there for a private group to buy her from the museum and do the upkeep, then the best option is to keep the ship extant via sinking.

[Simon_Jester]

Fuck you Alyrium. Do you even know what USS Olympia is? We have plenty of other ships that can be sunk as artifical reefs in her stead.

Give the guy a break.

That said, Alyrium... if we had to pick a ship to sink, Olympia really ought to be very, very far down the list. If the ship had to go it would at least be a relatively decent use... but that's the thing. It doesn't, or shouldn't. We're talking about a really big part of our naval history, compared to hypothetical other ships. I mean, compare Olympia to the battleship New Jersey floating on the other side of the river. Olympia was the flagship for one of the most important naval battles in our history. New Jersey... well, she had honorable but by no means unusual service in World War Two. And a lot of other service doing shore bombardment against enemies who rarely shot back.

So if they decide not to save her, and the cost of doing so would be pocket change compared to the amount of money we spend on much less worthy causes... well, when they're towing her down the Delaware to take her out to sea and blow her hull out, she'll have every right to look across the river at USS New Jersey and ask "What hast thou given that I have not?"

[MKSheppard]

If there is not a sufficient amount of money to keep her in repair and if the will is not there for a private group to buy her from the museum and do the upkeep, then the best option is to keep the ship extant via sinking.

No actually, the best option if no private group can be found is to tow her to the Philadelphia Reserve Basin, and dry dock her there.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Look. I would be really happy if there was an option three. The repairs however just to keep her floating, to say nothing of upkeep are 20 million USD. That is a lot of money and it has to come from somewhere. Should it be the case that no one shells out that money? Fuck no. I would love to see that happen (Say, Bill Gates decides to drop some pocket change). Options however are limited in the absence of that.

If that is the case, you can try to preserve the ship for as long as possible in some form. Sinking as a reef is a good option. At least I see it as a good dignified death for a ship, and it may be possible to set up the wreck as a monument or historical site like what was done with the USS Arizona. Living things also get an artificial reef. In the absence of 20 million USD, that is a good option. Sorry if it presses people's buttons, but there it is.

No actually, the best option if no private group can be found is to tow her to the Philadelphia Reserve Basin, and dry dock her there.

That is fair, I was unaware of that option. What would that entail? Would it languish in dry dock, or would it be possible to set it up in such a way as it could be visited?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The problem is that dredging the berth to get her out will cost several million dollars already, which would make it even more of a travesty if it was only done for scuttling her. The Navy should just delete an Osprey from the budget to pay for her being put in concrete at Annapolis.

[Sea Skimmer]

The former Philadelphia naval base does have a couple dry docks that might be appropriated and filled with concrete for the purpose but its too remote an area to work. The reality is even though USS Olympia is right by center city, its location is still a pain to access because of I-95 and you can't park anywhere near the ship without paying about 15 bucks which discourages visitors to the Independence Seaport Museum in general. Meanwhile USS New Jersey across the river steals all the fucking visitors. All three vessels should have been moored together but retarded politics got in the way of that. Camden of course gains nothing from having the battleship, no one leaves the pier to spend money anywhere else because they'd rather not get murdered.

OF course Olympia might have have gotten into such dire condition in the first place, if not for the fact that Vincent J. Fumo was head of the Independence Seaport Museum for years, and was stealing money and not at all doing his job the whole time. He was also stealing from a bunch of other charities at the same time. The bastard was found guilty of every single one of 157 corruption related charges, but only got 55 fucking months instead of 10+ years which was the minimal recommended sentence. No money recovered either.

[FSTargetDrone]

Alyrium, Olympia is unique. There are no others like her in the US. She is the last of the the fleet. For the want of $20 million or so, we are contemplating throwing away an irreplaceable relic.

The problem is that dredging the berth to get her out will cost several million dollars already, which would make it even more of a travesty if it was only done for scuttling her. The Navy should just delete an Osprey from the budget to pay for her being put in concrete at Annapolis.

That, and the ship would need to be extensively cleaned before being sunk.

It's a travesty. She is relatively complete (lacking only the main guns, AFAIK--the extant weapons are reproductions), including the interior wood paneling and other features. Sinking her is no better, either. She will ultimately rust away.

I want the ship to stay in Philadelphia (because I live in the area) but anywhere is better than sunk off the coast.

One thing is for sure, I will be making several visits to her soon. Hopefully something will turn up, as with the United States, especially as a the "deadline" approaches.

The former Philadelphia naval base does have a couple dry docks that might be appropriated and filled with concrete for the purpose but its too remote an area to work. The reality is even though USS Olympia is right by center city, its location is still a pain to access because of I-95 and you can't park anywhere near the ship without paying about 15 bucks which discourages visitors to the Independence Seaport Museum in general. Meanwhile USS New Jersey across the river steals all the fucking visitors. All three vessels should have been moored together but retarded politics got in the way of that. Camden of course gains nothing from having the battleship, no one leaves the pier to spend money anywhere else because they'd rather not get murdered.

Problem is, New Jersey is hurting for money now, too. She's in no danger of being sunk, but she needs a lot of work. The decks alone are a fucking mess.

[Sea Skimmer]

Problem is, New Jersey is hurting for money now, too. She's in no danger of being sunk, but she needs a lot of work. The decks alone are a fucking mess.

Well its a huge ship in an awful location, I am not surprised, I haven't visited the New Jersey in a long while because its so out of the way. It was just dumb as fuck to place her in Camden. I mean sure, you can get a ferry across and even buy a ticket in one place for all three vessels, but who the hell wants to wait around for a ferry both ways? Ships like this need to be positioned so that lots more casual visitors can come by, they wont survive from people who are willing to make a day trip out of seeing them alone.

It's a travesty. She is relatively complete (lacking only the main guns, AFAIK--the extant weapons are reproductions), including the interior wood paneling and other features. Sinking her is no better, either. She will ultimately rust away.

The main turrets are completely replicas, and the secondary guns while real, are not the weapons ship had in 1898. Olympia was rearmed with a uniform battery of nothing but 5in guns at some point in-between 1898 and 1914, I forget just when. Encasing in concrete is the best option by far, and it would be easily to do it in such a way that the ship still has a freshwater pond around her. But that's just not going to happen, and I'd rather she sink at the pier and rust at the pier as a monument to the shear stupidity of man then be sunk as a reef.

[Kanastrous]

it may be possible to set up the wreck as a monument or historical site like what was done with the USS Arizona.

Arizona is kind of a special case, being a war grave - which incidentally makes the wreck spectacularly difficult to conserve and maintain. She's still got thousands of gallons of heavy fuel oil aboard, which are slowly escaping into the harbor waters as she deteriorates, and the Navy is very, very conservative when it comes to tampering with the wreck, since so much of her crew is still entombed there...

[CaptHawkeye]

A lot of this is just typical of the logistics in supporting museum ships. It ain't easy. Their have been plenty of cases of museum ships ending up in worse condition then a comparable ship that had been mothballed. Even when you pour tons of money and resources into a ship, it's still pretty hard to keep it 100% healthy. (IE: Floating) Plans are underway to setup USS Texas in a permanent drydock, but we'll see how long that takes. Though in Texas' case, a lot of her problems extend from the incredibly poor treatment she had from previous owners. The current museum has done a lot to restore the ship.

In USS Olympia's case, I honestly can't imagine the ship being sent to a breaker or sunk as a reef. The ship is well known in museum and military circles and I would be astounded if it was just totally abandoned by god knows how many naval museums in the United States who already have the budgets to support fucking battleships. Then again, that might go back to the precious balance a lot of these museums operate on.

[Kanastrous]

Last week we scouted USS Alabama, a South Dakota-class battleship moored on the Gulf coast. She's in really surprisingly good shape - better in a lot of ways than Missouri which is odd, considering how much more recently Missouri was in service - and Alabama (not to take anything away from her builders and crew) is not so historically significant a ship, as Olympia...but it's very expensive to keep it all going and they are dependent upon donations for funding. And that team is a pack of hardcore big-ship enthusiasts who say the same is true for most of the big military ship-preservation projects. I'm not sure that one really 'has a budget' to maintain a battleship, so much as an ongoing desperate scrabble for spare change and goodwill donations, to do it.