S.S. United States, Historic 20th Century Ocean Liner, Sets Out for Final Voyage

The ocean liner that ferried four presidents across the Atlantic Ocean, hosted Duke Ellington and Sylvia Plath, and captured the world’s imagination in the mid-20th century has begun its final voyage. Leaving Philadelphia, where it has been rusting for decades, the ship, the S.S. United States, is bound this time for the bottom of the sea.

Many supporters — including former passengers who traveled on the ship before it docked largely for good in 1969 — had hoped to see the ship restored and opened to visitors. Instead, it is on its way to become the world’s largest artificial reef, off the coast of the Florida Panhandle.

But first, the 990-foot-long ship, nicknamed the Big U, will make a 14-day journey to Mobile, Ala. There, workers will remove hazardous materials, including the fuel still sitting in its tanks, so the ship can be sunk safely. Because it can no longer move under its own power, five tugboats are taking it out of the Delaware River and Bay on Wednesday. Once the ship is in the open waters of the Atlantic, just one of the tugs will be needed to tow it slowly southward.

The United States, built in the early 1950s, is the largest passenger ship ever built in America, more than 100 feet longer than the Titanic. The naval architect William Francis Gibbs designed it to be a luxury ocean liner in peacetime that could switch to quickly transporting 14,000 troops if needed in wartime. The vessel broke the trans-Atlantic speed record on its maiden voyage, crossing eastbound in three days, 10 hours and 40 minutes at an average of more than 35 knots.

The S.S. United States went on to cross the Atlantic 800 times, carrying the rich and famous as well as immigrants setting out for new lives and middle-class Americans eager to experience Europe. But over time, travelers increasingly chose the speed of air travel over the comfort and mystique of an ocean crossing. The ship was withdrawn from service in 1969.

On Friday afternoon, a crowd of about three dozen people peered through a chain-link fence in South Philadelphia to watch the first small step of this last journey: moving the ship from the pier where it has been docked since 1996 to another one nearby.

The ship’s peeling black hull towered over the industrial riverfront at Pier 82, opposite fast-food restaurants and an IKEA store across South Christopher Columbus Boulevard, as tugboats nudged the ship about 100 feet across the slip, a process that took hours.

Despite its state of disrepair, the ship had been a beloved landmark for some residents over the decades. Ocean liner enthusiasts who watched the move on Friday, including a truck driver from North Carolina, traded trivia about the ship’s history and power, like the unrealized expectation that it might be deployed during the Korean War. And people with a personal connection to the ship came from near and far to pay their last respects.

For Stephen Kosciesza, 70, who traveled from Silver Spring, Md., the S.S. United States gave his parents their start in its namesake country. His father, a “stateless Polish person” after World War II, and his mother sailed aboard the ship in February 1954 as they emigrated to the United States from Britain.

“My father, apparently, was seasick,” Mr. Kosciesza said. “The famous family story is that all the way over, he was saying, ‘Commodore, stop the ship! I’m getting out.’”

Some of the onlookers on Friday lamented that the ship would not be preserved. Devin Harrison, an equipment mechanic and maritime enthusiast from York, Pa., said he was glad the ship was not being scrapped, but that he had imagined a more dignified fate for it.

“I think it should be a national treasure,” Mr. Harrison said.

The S.S. United States Conservancy, a nonprofit organization that bought and began caring for the ship in 2011, shares that sentiment. The group planned the ship’s final chapter so that its legacy could continue, albeit in a different setting.

Once it is sunk in about 180 feet of water off the Gulf Coast, the uppermost part of the ship will be about 60 feet below the surface. But there will also be a land-based museum in Okaloosa County, Florida, dedicated to the ship and its history. The design of the museum will incorporate some preserved parts of the ship, including at least one of its funnels.

Alex Fogg, natural resources chief for Destin-Fort Walton Beach, said that as an artificial reef, the ship will be a habitat for sea creatures like snappers, urchins and crabs. He predicted that it would become a major destination for divers from all over the world.

If they had been given more time to find a new home for the ship, leaders of the conservancy said, the outcome might have been different. But a federal court ordered the ship evicted from the Philadelphia pier last summer, following a long legal battle between the conservancy and its landlord.

That began a race against the clock to find a temporary or permanent new location, said Susan Gibbs, the head of the conservancy and granddaughter of the ship’s designer.

Warren Jones, a member of the group’s board and a former passenger, said the group contacted every major port on the East Coast, as well as some on the West and Gulf Coasts, but every potential berthing spot turned out to be too small, too shallow or too hard to reach for such a huge ship.

The head of the Navy’s Inactive Ships Office told Mr. Jones that it wanted to help, but that pier space was in short supply.

As Ms. Gibbs said about the ship, “she’s just so darn big.”

Like many admirers of the S.S. United States, Linda Silva, 80, is sorry to see it go. But she is thankful for the time she had on it.

She sailed aboard the vessel on an improbable trip to Paris before she was 20. No one in her family had ever done anything like that, she said, and the voyage changed her life, exposing her to new experiences and possibilities.

“It’s not that life is a decline,” Ms. Silva said. “It’s just that sometimes your usefulness kind of terminates abruptly, as hers did. But it doesn’t overshadow the magnificent journey you took to get there.”