A personal reminiscence of the SS United States.
A personal reminiscence of the SS United States.
T he SS United States, the embodiment of U.S. honor, greatness, and prestige, will soon become the world’s largest artificial reef, 20 miles off the Florida coast, to be explored by divers and invaded by fish. Despite its history and prestige, it has been sold many times but no owner has transformed it into a successful business.
Her departure resurrects key events in my life. I may be one of the few living persons to have sailed on the SS United States — still the world’s fastest ship at the equivalent of 44 land miles per hour with the fastest transatlantic crossing — and to have met and interviewed General Dwight D Eisenhower as he sailed back to the United States.
In August 1963, Eisenhower was returning to the United States via this storied ship after he and Walter Cronkite had just completed “CBS Reports (1964), D-Day Plus 20 years-Eisenhower Returns to Normandy.” (Available on YouTube)
My Dutch heritage provided me the opportunity to be on the ship with Eisenhower. My late father, a supply sergeant in the Royal Netherlands Armed Forces reserves, was a salesman for his family’s tulip bulb business, “Van de Kamp Brothers.” He had finished a business trip to the United States and was sailing back to Rotterdam from New York on a Dutch ship on May 10, 1940, when the Wehrmacht parachuted into his air base, Valkenburg.
The British forced his ship into port and interned the passengers. The Foreign Office let him sail back to the United States, through the Battle of the Atlantic, with Jewish refugees, evading German U-boats.
Drafted into the U.S. Army Air Corps, he became a United States citizen and kept B-26 bombers flying in the 9th Air Force as Patton’s 3rd Army moved forward from France to Germany. After the war, he returned to the U.S., married, raised a family, built a successful business, and became a community leader.
He sent me, alone, to England and the Netherlands from June through August 1963 to meet my relatives and visit their countries before entering the Air Force Academy in June 1964, the newest US military academy, authorized by President Eisenhower in 1954. I was 16 years old.
After an overnight train to New York, I boarded the ship at the United States Lines terminal at Pier 86, with the Twin Towers of the New York World Trade Center just four and one-half miles down the street.
After the stevedores untied the giant hawsers, the ship slowly inched backward into the channel, flags flying and horns blowing, all of us elbow-to-elbow waving to those we left behind.
After sailing past the Statue of Liberty and exploring the entire ship, I had my bearings from tourist class through cabin class to first class. Every “class” had dining rooms with multicourse four-star meals served by professional waiters; comfortable passenger lounges for books or bridge; live entertainment through the evening with a nearby cocktail lounge; outdoor decks with chaise lounges; two theaters with afternoon and evening first-run movies like Bye Bye Birdie; live music by small combos; and a small saltwater swimming pool.
This was paradise, with constant activities all over every part of the ship and no one to keep you restricted to any “class” on the ship. It contained intelligent, interesting people, great conversationalists, live entertainment every night for dancing until at least 2:00 a.m., starry nights on the fantail deck where every star and planet didn’t dare fade away, with the endless sea 360 degrees around.
The world’s elite sailed on the SS United States, including four U.S. presidents: Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, and Bill Clinton.
Prominent passengers included the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Prince Rainier and Princess Grace of Monaco, Marlon Brando, Gary Cooper, Salvador Dalí, Walt Disney, Judy Garland, Bob Hope, Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor, and John Wayne.
The ship was a magnet for U.S. business executives; foreign service officers and senior military officers headed for assignments in London or Paris, with their young children and teenagers enjoying the ship and preparing to travel or live in England or France; college students; and me.
If Hemingway’s Paris was his moveable feast, this voyage was a moveable eden, ending in four days. The ship docked in the early a.m. in Le Havre, discharged passengers, and sailed on to Southampton, where I met my cousins and traveled to their home outside London.
During my visit, President Kennedy met Prime Minister Macmillan at his home. My congressman was “glad that President Kennedy’s trip has been a great success and hopes that world tensions can be eased.” My cousins asked, “Do you know President Kennedy?”
Boarding the ship in Southampton in August, we knew immediately that General Dwight D. Eisenhower was on board after making the D-Day documentary with Walter Cronkite.
Would he be visible, or just stay cooped up in his stateroom?
That afternoon, passing by his cabin, I saw him, glasses perched on the end of his nose, pen-in-hand, reading a large volume propped in his lap.
That same day, I had written him a letter, which I gave to Ann Whitman, his personal secretary, who promised to try to arrange a meeting for me and other students. In the First Class dining room on Gala Night, she introduced me to the general, his brother Milton, and his wife Mamie, who asked me to give her a call.
The next day and last day of the voyage, August 14, I was escorted into the general’s suite at 10:10 AM.
A general knows how to relate to a young man headed for a military career in a service academy he had authorized. I discovered a friendly, considerate, and very intelligent man, a good conversationalist.
For most of his time aboard, he had been writing installments for his series of books about his presidency; Doubleday would release the first volume in September.
He questioned me about my age, my high school, and the size of my class and seemed pleased when I told him about Smith-Cotton High School in Sedalia, Missouri, its students, and the courses in American History and Contemporary Issues I would take next year.
Stressing the importance of courses in these areas for high school students and also in economics, he stated that the student with benefits from such courses will be better prepared to take his place as a functioning member in our American society and play his individual part in selecting officials of our local, state, and national governments.
He next asked me about my European trip and seemed pleased that I had seen both England and the Netherlands. He had kind words for the Dutch and English since he had worked with them during the war and since his family had stayed in the Netherlands and that general area after leaving Germany following the Thirty Years War, which raged from 1618 to 1648.
After learning that I had lived in Moberly, Missouri, for several years, he commended his fine friend and West Point classmate General Omar Bradley, whom he had selected to command the D-Day Invasion, Operation Overlord, who once lived there.
I could only ask several questions I had prepared about current issues — the upcoming presidential campaign (later Lyndon B. Johnson versus Barry Goldwater in 1964) and the possibility of a joint Polaris sea-launched ballistic missile force with Great Britain when Prime Minister Macmillan left office.
Eisenhower stated that he would like to see an open convention where they could pick a good man from the many available. The only two names mentioned by many people were Goldwater and Rockefeller, but there were other men to consider, like General Lauris Norstad, General Lucius Clay, and Governor George Romney of Michigan.
As for the possibility of a joint Polaris force with England: For Eisenhower, it seemed questionable. The Labour Party had always been friendly to the United States but might not head too far in that direction.
Prime Minister Macmillan, he said, was a “good man,” just caught up in a terrible situation with which he had nothing to do.” (Secretary of State for War John Profumo lied about his extramarital affair, in the House of Commons, damaging Macmillan’s government and leading to Macmillan’s resignation in October 1963.)
He had met Mr. John Profumo in Paris several years ago, and said that he seemed to be young, charming, and intelligent, certainly well-liked by all the delegates in Paris. “I never expected to see his name in connection with such a scandal.”
He said that he found a disturbing element among young people, either stating that they were conservatives, as he is, or liberals, yet having no opinions on rural, urban, or other problems. “Quite a few said that they followed Mr. Goldwater,” he said, “but none seemed to have minds of their own.”
At this time, the general’s bodyguard told me that my time was up. I thanked General Eisenhower for permitting me to talk with him and left.
After the interview, I noted, “Talking to such a great man is an unforgettable experience which more people should have. It gave me a deep appreciation of General Eisenhower and our great country.”
I arrived home late Thursday evening, August 15, 1963. My parents received a personal letter from the general one week later:
This trip was a valuable education and confidence-building experience made possible by a father who had also traveled great distances to foreign countries at a young age and gave me the background for my career in national security positions.
In 1963, the star-crossed SS United States was six years away from beginning a tragic history, because multiple owners, culminating in the SS United States Conservancy, couldn’t make it a profitable business. The 990-foot-long ship now has no working engines. The first owner completely gutted the interior, leaving bare, stark, ugly halls, lounges, and rooms, many reduced to their studs.
As the United States Lines kept facing financial difficulties, she stopped sailing in 1969, after 17 years.
Although the ship was also a U.S. Navy Reserve troop carrier, it never served this way. Designed to be quickly converted to a troop carrier, aluminum rather than steel saved 8,000–10,000 tons of weight; she had four powerful engines and eight boilers; was Panama Canal transit-capable; could carry 14,000 troops, 1,444 crew members, and a 400-bed hospital. Government subsidies ended in 1968.
On September 7, 1969, she docked in New York, discharged passengers, canceled all future travel, and departed on September 8 for Hampton Roads, Virginia, and permanent layup — placed out of commission indefinitely. The U.S. Navy kept the ship in reserve until 1978 when the U.S. Maritime Administration sold it.
The first corporate owner planning to convert the ship into seagoing time-share condominiums encountered financial difficulty and auctioned off all the interior furniture, lights, glassware, silverware, and artwork. This had to have made it extremely difficult to sell the ship.
The next owner, planning to resume cruising, removed hazardous material and towed it to Pier 82 in South Philadelphia in 1996.
In 2002 it was sold again after the third owner’s death.
After Norwegian Cruise Line bought her in 2003, U.S.-flagged cruising and an attempt in 2009 to sell her failed, so they planned to scrap her.
The SS United States Conservancy, a non-profit, bought the ship in 2010, preserved and maintained it, attempting to “create a sustainable waterfront attraction.”
A series of events led to a decision to sell the ship to Okaloosa County, Florida, after Penn Warehousing doubled the ship’s daily rent in 2021, terminated the berthing agreement on March 26, 2022, and demanded that the vessel be moved as of that day, suing the Conservancy in federal court for “ejectment” and money damages.
On June 14, 2024, senior judge Anita Blumstein Brody ruled that Penn Warehousing could terminate the berthing agreement with reasonable notice; the termination was effective September 12, 2024. The Conservancy must remove the ship from Pier 82 within approximately 90 days from that date but wasn’t obligated to pay the additional berthing fee.
Well before the court’s ruling, the Conservancy searched for a new temporary or permanent location. Due to the ship’s size and nearly 28-foot-draft, piers are extremely limited. The U.S. Navy had no available piers, and no cities contacted had a pier available.
On September 23, 2024, the Conservancy signed a purchase agreement with Okaloosa County, Florida, transferring title to the County, which prepared to move the ship beginning on November 14, 2024, continuing into November 15, into the Delaware River and then into the Atlantic.
During the next two weeks, two to three tugs would have towed it to Mobile, Alabama. Contractors there will remove hazardous paint, and all metal parts, empty and clean fuel tanks, and modify the ship so it will remain upright when sunk as a reef.
In 2026, it would be towed to an area off of Destin-Fort Walton Beach and sunk to become an artificial reef for sport fishing and diving. The county will partner with the Conservancy to develop a land-based museum and visitor center, which will include artifacts from the ship and its archival collection.
Storms off the Florida Coast delayed its departure on November 14, and a new date is pending. It must be towed out of its port in Philadelphia before December 12, 2024. The Conservancy has published the best sites to view the ship as it sails away.
It did not have to end this way. Two historic ships are profitable businesses.
Queen Mary is a three-star hotel in Long Beach. The city purchased it in 1967 as a tourist attraction.
Queen Elizabeth II is a four-star floating hotel near the Dubai Mall. In 2008, Dubai World, a conglomerate owned by the Dubai government, bought the QE2 from Cunard, and opened it in April 2018.
But assuming the fate of the SS United States is already sealed, all we can do now is remember.
In Barry Levinson’s Avalon, Grandfather Sam reminisces. “If I knew things would no longer be here, I would have tried to remember better.”