An ocean liner that is longer than the Titanic and was once the fastest on the seas headed Wednesday toward its final home on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico as the world's largest artificial reef.
The SS United States floated placidly under a cloudy sky off the coast of the Florida Panhandle, most of it still above the water at dusk, even after workers flooded the hull to push it under.
The event – described by officials as a controlled sinking – was a long-planned $13.5 million project aimed at attracting more divers and fishing enthusiasts to the area while creating a home for tuna, marlin and swordfish.
The process of sinking the behemoth vessel stretched through the entire afternoon and into the evening, despite predictions that it could happen in less than an hour once flooded. Smaller boats remained around and even up beside it.
The project will keep what had been a technological marvel when it made its maiden voyage in 1952 from becoming scrap metal. The ship's scuttling was streamed live online.
The SS United States crossed the Atlantic more than 800 times, carrying old Hollywood stars like Grace Kelly and Elizabeth Taylor. Other passengers have included Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy, and Britain’s former King Edward VIII. In 1968, a young Bill Clinton took it when he went to Oxford University, decades before he was elected president.
Once aboard, passengers were treated to dinners that included caviar, roast duckling, smoked ox tongue and Calf's Head en Tortue.
In preparation for the sinking, organizers removed the 65-foot (20-meter) smokestacks and plan to have them anchor a new museum that celebrates the ship.
"We're not destroying anything,” Tim Mullane, a Navy veteran and chief operating officer of Coleen Marine, the company sending the ship to the ocean floor, said in a video aired online by local officials. "It's going to serve a second life.”
Federal environmental and explosives rules prevent Okaloosa County, Florida, and its contractor from using explosives to scuttle the ship, said Nick Tomecek, the county's spokesperson. Concerns about inclement weather prompted officials to move up the sinking by a day.
The SS United States has pipes that pulled seawater into tanks as part of the system that cooled its boilers, he said, and those tanks have been removed so that once the valves are opened, water will flood the hull. Workers also have cut 10-foot by 10-foot (3-meter by 3-meter) holes in the decks, and more than 400 portholes have been removed.
The ship is to sink in about 180 feet (55 meters) of water, with its top deck about 60 feet (18 meters) below the surface - shallow enough that inexperienced divers can visit. It will settle on the floor of the waters about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southwest of Destin, between Panama City and Pensacola.
More than 3,000 workers helped build the SS United States in 1950 and 1951 in Virginia. An Associated Press (AP) reporter and Truman's daughter, Margaret, were among 1,700 passengers for the first voyage.
The ship's average speed for that trip was almost 41 mph (66 kph), besting a record set by Britain's RMS Queen Mary in 1938 by 4.5 mph (7.2 kph), according to the AP's dispatch.
The SS United States set the record even though its journey ended in the face of a full gale that reached 69 mph (111 kph) — "so strong it blew a ping pong table off the deck,” AP reported.
At 990 feet (302 meters), the ship is 108 feet (33 meters) longer than the ill-fated Titanic, which hit an iceberg and sank on its first voyage across the Atlantic.
"She really embodies and expresses this country’s best,” said Susan Gibbs, the granddaughter of the ship's designer. "She represents pride and resilience and strength and beauty.”
More than 500 artificial reefs are located in the waters near where the SS United States will rest.
Previously, the largest artificial reef came from the 2006 scuttling of an aircraft carrier, the USS Oriskany in the Gulf off of Pensacola — near enough to the SS United States site that an experienced diver could visit both in the same day, Tomecek said. The Oriskany, launched in 1950, was 911 feet (278 meters) in length.
"We're trying to be the best diving destination in the world,” Tomecek said.
The ship was decommissioned in 1969. Attempts by a hotel magnate and Norwegian Cruise Lines to use the ship never floated, and from 1996 until recently, it sat along a dock in Philadelphia.
Mullane called the huge funnels – the smokestacks that have been removed to anchor the new museum – "works of art.”
"I’m just so happy that we are able to save parts of her,” Gibbs said.
