Ship sank to become world’s biggest artificial reef

Famed ocean liner SS United States, the largest passenger ship ever built in the US and the world’s fastest, on Wednesday headed for the sea floor near Florida in a deliberate sinking designed to transform the vessel into the world’s biggest artificial reef.

The finale to a yearlong process preparing the ship to meet its destiny, 75 years after it was first launched at sea, was presented in a livestream with aerial views of the once-grand vessel’s rusted hulk, quietly, slowly settling into calm waters of the Gulf of Mexico before succumbing to the deep.

The ship, measuring nearly 300m from stem to stern, was surrounded by onlookers and safety crews aboard dozens of tugboats and recreational vessels that accompanied the ocean liner as it was towed out to sea for its final voyage.

Boats gather at a safe distance from the SS United States as spectators watch the historic ocean liner being intentionally sunk in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida to create the world’s largest artificial reef on Wednesday.

Photo: AP

By then, work crews had spent months removing all environmentally unsafe materials from the ship, including residual fuel, wiring, glass, ductwork and other non-metal items, as well as any objects that could pose entanglement hazards for scuba divers.

The crews then cut holes strategically throughout the ship’s hull and its decks to ensure that it would sink in a gradual, level and uniform manner, a fact sheet posted online by project organizers showed. No explosives were used.

Passageways were also cut through the 12 decks of the interior to allow for marine life to thrive in and around the ship on the sea floor.

If all goes as planned, the vessel will come to rest upright on the gulf floor at a depth of 55m off the coast of Destin, Florida.

The upper deck is expected to end up about 50 feet beneath the surface, organizers said.

The sinking process was so imperceptibly slow that the majority of the ocean liner’s hull remained well above the surface as the sun set on the idle ship, surrounded by blinking lights of nearby vessels.

After hours, the sinking accelerated as the sea poured through the holes cut into the lower decks and flooded the interior. In the final moments, livestream footage showed the ship abruptly listing to its port side before gently rolling into the sea and disappearing.

Warren Jones, a spokesperson for organizers, said the SS United States would probably take 30 to 60 minutes to reach the seabed once the interior compartments were all completely filled with water.

The SS United States, a wonder of post-World War II oceanic luxury and engineering that carried the rich and famous across the Atlantic at speeds still unmatched, was retired from service in 1969 amid the rising popularity of commercial air travel.

The vessel sat moored for nearly 30 years in Philadelphia, seemingly destined to be sold for scrap, before authorities in Okaloosa County, in Florida’s panhandle, stepped in to purchase the ship as part of a US$13 million project.

“We worked year after year to keep that ship from going to the scrap yard,” said Jones, a boyhood passenger of the ship and representative of the SS United States Conservancy, a group that sold the ship to Okaloosa County.

After obtaining permission from the US Coast Guard and other agencies, the county had the vessel towed to a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, where it was prepared for disposal at sea.

The SS United States will be in good company, joining a collection of more than 500 smaller underwater sites created from the remains of various sunken ships and concrete structures to create a divers’ haven known as the Destin-Fort Walton Beach Artificial Reefs.

Some wreck divers were already gearing up to explore the sunken remnants of the ocean liner as early as yesterday morning, Jones said.

Jones, recounting memories of riding the ship as an eight-year-old passenger with his family in 1961, said he was “comforted seeing it settle on the floor of the gulf and being embraced by the sea.”