The 1,000-foot ship, longer than the “Titanic,” once carried celebrities and politicians across the Atlantic in midcentury style. Now, after decades of uncertainty and rust, it’s taking on a second life as an underwater refuge for marine creatures and curious divers
Gabby Shell | Editorial intern
November 12, 2026 1:51 p.m.
On June 29, 1952, a state-of-the-art ocean liner, nearly 1,000 feet long, opened up to the public. Some 70,000 people flooded to its berth in New York City to catch a glimpse of the S.S. United States before it hit the Atlantic for its maiden voyage.
Almost immediately, the liner proved worthy of the intense interest. On July 3, 1952, the S.S. United States reached England in a record-breaking three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes, a speed that has yet to be surpassed to this day by any passenger liner. In its 17-year run, the ship would go on to host numerous notables, including Marilyn Monroe, Walt Disney, Salvador Dalí and even the Mona Lisa, after the painting’s one and only trip to the United States.
On Wednesday, more than 70 years after its record-setting maiden voyage, crowds once again came out in droves to see the legendary liner depart on one last journey. This time, the S.S. United States was heading to the bottom of the sea for a new life as an artificial reef and diving destination in the Gulf of Mexico.
Designed by the prolific 20th century naval architect William Francis Gibbs, the ocean liner represented the peak of post-World War II maritime technology. Over 100 feet longer than the Titanic, the United States contained no wood except the ship’s grand pianos, built with fire-resistant mahogany. “She will have more aluminum in her than Mr. Gibbs cares to say, a design feature that will contribute to the dual goal of strength and relative lightness,” George Horne reported for the New York Times in 1951. “There are other metals that are even more secret.” In fact, its construction was kept entirely out of the public eye.
Throughout the 1950s and ‘60s, the liner completed more than 800 journeys across the Atlantic, carrying more than 1 million passengers, including many celebrities and politicians.
Did you know? Presidential passengers
Throughout its 17-year tenure, the S.S. United States carried four presidents: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and a young Bill Clinton, who took it to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar in 1968.
With its intricately designed interior featuring patriotic art, amenities including a movie theater and its unparalleled speed, the S.S. United States provided many passengers with lasting memories.
“The ship going at this incredible speed—it was almost dangerous sometimes for a kid my size to go out on the deck,” Warren Jones, a board member for the nonprofit S.S. United States Conservancy who sailed on the liner as a child, tells FOX Weather’s Julian Atienza and Brandy Campbell. “Those engines, you felt the vibrations and sailed past the Statue of Liberty. It was unforgettable.”
But as airline travel became more accessible, the age of luxury ocean liners soon drew to a close. In 1969, the S.S. United States was abruptly decommissioned. Even crew members were shocked by its sudden withdrawal from service. Several left personal belongings on board, assuming they would go back to work the next day, only to show up to locked gangway doors.
For the next nine years, it languished as a reserve ship for the U.S. Navy, ready to for action if the need arose. But there was no need, and in 1978, the ship was put up for sale.
In the following decades, the ship passed from port to port, from owner to owner, each with different plans for the ship: floating condominiums, hazardous waste removal in Ukraine, a revived cruise liner. But no idea garnered enough money or momentum to last. By 2024, the ship had foundered on a Philadelphia pier for decades.
When the pier’s landlord raised the daily dockage fee to $1,700—$620,500 per year—the S.S. United States was evicted and faced the possibility of getting scrapped. Instead, Florida’s Okaloosa County purchased the ship for $1 million, with plans to turn it into the world’s largest artificial reef. The county already has a fleet of sunken ships off its coast, but the S.S. United States is its crowning jewel.
Officials expect the liner-turned-reef will become home to a variety of marine species, including red snapper, grouper, amberjack, mackerel and tuna. The ship will also be open to divers.
“She’s being reefed and will remain intact and will become a vibrant and dynamic marine habitat,” Susan Gibbs, the conservancy’s president and granddaughter of the ship’s designer, tells the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe.
The conservancy plans to run a museum adjacent to the pier where diving expeditions will set out, featuring the ship’s iconic smokestacks, alongside other parts of the ship’s interior and a collection of artifacts and memorabilia.
Unlike the liner’s legendary maiden voyage, the trip from Philadelphia to the ocean floor was far from speedy. After a handful of false starts and a last-ditch lawsuit, it took months of preparation at a port in Alabama to ready the vessel for its voyage to the bottom of the sea, the New York Times’ Jesse Pesta reports.
Workers removed the ship’s wiring, ductwork, glass and anything that could potentially pose a danger to divers or marine life. They also cut strategic passages through the ship’s interior to create open pathways that would reduce stagnant water and enable divers to easily pass in and out. Finally, they removed off the ship’s two iconic, six-story smokestacks, earmarked for the future museum. The S.S. United States was finally ready for sinking.
SS United States Sinking
On Wednesday afternoon, the ship set out from Destin, Florida. A crew cut holes in the ship and removed more than 400 portholes. Water flooded in, but as night descended, it still hadn’t sunk.
“She was designed to be unsinkable, and that fact has definitely given our crews some challenges today,” Nick Tomecek, a spokesperson for Okaloosa County, told ABC 6.
Or, as William Francis Gibbs once bragged, “You can’t set her on fire, you can’t sink her and you can’t catch her.”
But in the end, only two of those bold claims held true. At 8:59 p.m. Central time, the S.S. United States slipped below the waves, starting a new chapter as a home for marine life and a destination for divers from across the world.
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Source: Smithsonian Magazine · Gabby Shell
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