So much symbolism in this passage:
"The SS United States, once the fastest passenger liner in the world, is scheduled to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico"
Have they tried renaming the ship to something else before sinking it in gulf of America?
So much irony, given the trend lines of reefs, and of the US.
You took the words right out of my mouth. LOL
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.
Good example of the meaningful distinction between opponent and competitor.
Also, the CEO of Mistral AI is called Mensch (Human).
You are right - Mensch is german for Human.
The name is Arthur Mensch and he comes from France. Odd to have this as last name in France.
> Odd to have this as last name in France.
It's really not. Even without considering Alsace Lorraine, there is a lot of people with German origin in France. In general, it's very common to see people with family name from Spain, Italy, … And also from the old colonies / protectorate like Lebanon or Vietnam.
You should read up on the 'saxon' part of 'anglo-saxon'
spoiler: saxony is in germany
Reminds me of this: https://scontent-sjc6-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t39.30808-6/649087907...
"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!"
Or CK Williams, about the "United States" itself:
The rusting, decomposing hulk of the United States
is moored across Columbus Boulevard from Ikea,
rearing weirdly over the old municipal pier
on the mostly derelict docks in Philadelphia.
I’d forgotten how immense it is: I can’t imagine
which of the hundreds of portholes looked in
on the four-man cabin five flights down
I shared that first time I ran away to France.
We were told we were the fastest thing afloat,
and we surely were; even from the tiny deck
where passengers from tourist were allowed
our wake boiled ever vaster out behind.
That such a monster could be lifted by mere waves
and in the storm that hit us halfway across
tossed left and right until we vomited
seemed a violation of some natural law.
At Le Havre we were out of scale with everything;
when a swarm of tiny tugs nudged like piglets
at the teat the towering mass of us in place,
all the continent of Europe looked small.
Now, behind its ravelling chain-link fence,
the ship's somnolent carcass, cables lashed
like liliputian leashes to its prow, its pocking,
once pure paint discoloring to blood.
Upstream, the shells of long-abandoned factories
crouch for miles beneath the interstate;
the other way the bridge named after Whitman
hums with traffic towards the suburbs past his grave;
and "America's mighty flagship" waits here,
to be auctioned, I suppose, stripped of anything
it might still have of worth, and towed away
and torched into pieces on a beach in Bangladesh.Meanwhile, this monstrosity and its two sister ships: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_of_the_Seas#/media/File... which are only slightly longer than the United States, but around five times as heavy, are according to Wikipedia the largest passenger ships in the world.
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straight fire
Was strangely difficult to find on Wikipedia what the "SS" actually means
Thanks, TIL!
Apparently the RMS prefix on the RMS Titanic stands for "royal mail steamer" as it was authorised to carry the post.
huh!
i thought it was richard matthew stallman
as a kid I thought it meant Royal Majesty's Ship
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.
The German one isn't relevant for post-war American ships. Hope that helps.
They aren't. I think that's the point. If you type "SS" into Wikipedia you get straight to Schutzstaffel. It's hard to find what it means in the context of ships.
In all fairness, the term is much older than what that acronym's come to mean.
I always thought it stood for "Set Sail", but this definition is more pragmatic.
I assume the problem was that prominence of certain German use makes finding other meaning of this phrase tricky.
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.)
Even in German speaking forums for pregnant women it’s used liberally to abbreviate “Schwangerschaft” (pregnancy), which can result in some pretty funny phrases.
Or Social Security.
Here is a great video on the topic.
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.
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.
There's still one sea-going paddle steamer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PS_Waverley.
Gilligan's Island lied to us all. The Minnow clearly wasn't a steamer...
It's a sad day. I crossed the Atlantic in it long ago. Some great memories.
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.
you can also swim down to the top of it if you're good at holding your breath.
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.
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.
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...
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.
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 :-/
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?
Can they handle rogue waves?
Although, I guess rogue waves can appear anywhere deep and rough.
> The captain announced that they were changing course to avoid a storm. I was disappointed
The cruise ship will drive around the storm because it doesn't want the cargo to spill their drinks and get pissy. The liner has a schedule to keep.
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
Lasted three quarters of a century, not bad!
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)
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
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
>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
Between 55 feet and 55 meters, how poetic.
Or about 33 wash machines or half of a (US) football field
Are those imperial or metric washing machines?
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.
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.
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.
A two day ferry to Spain will set you back more than that!
Worth noting, though, being able to "afford" this kind of thing isn't just about the money. Most people get only a few weeks holiday per year, and many aren't allowed to take more than a couple of at a time. To get the most out of something like this you'll ideally have a month at the very least to holiday, which is not possible for most.
I wonder if Cunard/Carnival will ever build a replacement to her.
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.
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.
I always wondered if there is not a market for old-school travel using such liners, not just for recreation.
Many people hate or fear flying. Some might also just prefer the laid back, retro, travel style. Not all are in a mad rush to get somewhere.
But I guess the market might be too small for regularly scheduled trips.
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.
Forget the Greeks, have a look at Clive Palmer. Not just dreaming about building a replica Titanic, but also wanted to revive zeppelins commercially.
Maybe you're right.
> 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...
Thank God for billionaires, but why can't he stop Google from creating dystopia instead?
Probably much, much easier to make a zeppelin
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.
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.
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.
At first I didn't notice 'SS' in the title and had quite the double-take
This podcast entry has more about the ship's history https://www.omnibusproject.com/episodes/ss-united-states-ent...
Only love from all the Philadelphians who have sat eating Swedish meatballs and looking at it in wonder. Will be dearly missed
Wouldn't it be more environmentally friendly to reuse/recycle most of the steel?
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.
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"
>Gulf of Mexico
well, that depends on who's naming it these days...
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
https://youtu.be/hQVNtXIy3B4?si=SJWzQiYfpVQSPaL4
Extracting it seems to be pretty nasty business
Probably interesting, but unwatchable with ads every two sentences.
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?
I'm surprised there's HN folk without ad blockers, what gives?
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.
Are ships natural enviroment for fish and other marine organisms?
Now we have seen video footage of occupation of the areas there. But one needs to calculate all trade-offs before one can conclude whether downing ships helps improve the environment. I have not read a scientific paper that objectively tries to determine this with all costs and counter-costs.
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?
Hasn't this been the plan for years now?
Only since 2024, and the date is now approaching so that gives it renewed interest in the news media.
A bittersweet end. The SS United States was a magnificent-looking ship.
I'm sure a Youtuber could have saved it :)
Beautiful ship, that’s going to be awesome to dive on.
Headed for Davey Jones' Locker.
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.
Ain’t that symbolic.
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.
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.
Ikea in south philly will never be the same :<
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.
We are running out of metaphors.
Over the past 9 years, my genealogical research has taken me to some interesting places. Among other discoveries, I found that I have 5 grandfathers. One of my "surprise" grandfathers brought his family over from Scotland on the USS Leviathan. Now, the interesting part about gigantic ocean liners is that they often have Wikipedia pages about them, and this was no exception: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Vaterland_(1913)
So it turned out that the Leviathan had belonged to Germany under a different name, until it was seized by the USA during WWI. It was very interesting to discover all these facts about a vessel that is an intrinsic part of my quite recent family history, that was completely unknown to me, being adopted, until the miracle of DNA and digging into available public records began to reveal it all.
Why was it using asbestos?
asbestos on military/science stuff is/was used longer after it left the home.
Honestly read this as satirical after my brain inserted "intelligence" after reef. It certainly feels like that.
I've had a lot of chick-fil-a sitting in my car looking at this thing.
i read "United States to be sunk as largest artificial reef" and thought, thats no news... /s
Can you imagine what a beautiful world we would live in if only washington dc was nuked to death in august 1945
They should sink the US as artificial reef.
Might not be great for the fish tbh.
> The SS United States, once the fastest passenger liner in the world, is scheduled to be sunk in the Gulf of Mexico in November, creating what will be the world’s largest artificial reef.
This sentence may anger someone into causing a controversy... hope this doesn't hit his favorite channels.
It's a British magazine, they (like the rest of the world) don't really have a reason to care about his Executive Orders.
Without judging, this is the first I've heard of deliberately sinking ships to create artificial reefs.
This is somewhat common. Once cleaned up, they provide refuge for sea life, and increased economic activity for nearby communities via fishing and diving.
The program in the Florida Keys is huge.
https://gis.myfwc.com/boating_guides/florida_keys/pages/art_...
Your mind may be blown by https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbird_Reef
That is really cool, thanks
Yeah, that was pretty interesting.
> From 2001 to 2008, within the vicinity of the reef, the amount of marine food per square foot has increased 400 times.
> The site has become so popular that fishermen steal from each other, and other states apply for the next subway cars to be dumped in their waters.
I guess the biggest problem in the ocean is the inability to stay in place. There was an interesting discussion of something similar on Twitter a couple years ago: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1760058156632142058.html
> Hyenas can strip a dead elephant clean in less than 48 hours.
> But in the ocean, whale carcasses drift around for months before they eventually sink.
> Land animals have gravity privilege. Any random stray dog can tear into a dead cow, even if the cow is a lot larger.
> But when bunch of sharks come up on the floating whale carcass, it's essentially a game of bobbing for pumpkins... it's not really possible to hold on to it or tear it open.
Regardless of the location, there's editorial cartoon/headline grist in it, e.g.: "As Trump does $VERB this weekend, the United States will sink to its doom."
I would not be surprised if Ron DeSantis (Florida governor, Republican) somehow abuses his position to force a rename of the ship at the last moment, purely to avoid snarky headlines.
It's being sunk 20 miles offshore, which is out of Florida control (that extends only nine miles there; which is kind of odd since for most US states the control only extends three miles).
It's not a matter of geographic jurisdiction, it's a matter of simple ownership.
The vessel is being being purchased by Okaloosa County, Florida. There are many ways for the state government to lean on a county to file some paperwork.
Seems we have angered his supporters given how the voting has changed on this since the day ago we made these comments. Their voting is not going to stop me from saying it like it is about the worst president in US history.
Kind of frustrating that our comment times get changed when a story is given a second chance (not sure why this story should qualify for a second chance on HN...) and misrepresent when we made these comments
Too on the nose.
Rename it USS Trump for the lulz.
The SS United States was a beautiful ship from an era past that was the crown jewel of the USA merchant marine that in part represented the technology contests of civilian ships after WWII.
Trump is not deserving of its name.
From two years ago: What's Going on With Shipping? SS United States - Fastest Cruise Liner and Flagship of US Merchant Marine - To Be Sunk! https://youtu.be/XFIPAJEl1TE