ORLANDO, Fla. – One of America’s greatest maritime achievements passed off the coast of Port Canaveral Monday, embarking on the first leg of its final voyage—an ending that many believe is unceremonious for a ship with such an astonishing legacy.
“It’s just so sad,” Sharon Myrie told me in a phone call early Monday morning. “I really didn’t think it was going to happen, but yet, here we are. Such memories.”
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“It was a beautiful ship,” Donald Myrie told me on another phone call earlier today. “I saw it a few years ago in Philadelphia and it just wasn’t the same, at all.”
For sharp-eyed readers, you may have already noticed that both Sharon and Donald share my last name. That’s because Sharon is my older sister, and Donald is my dad. The three of us arrived in America aboard the SS United States from the United Kingdom 56 years ago.
“I remember when we docked in New York, it was a beautiful spring day,” my dad told me from his home in Brooklyn. “It was an uneventful trip except your sister was seasick and you fell down walking up the stairs, split your lip, chipped your tooth, and needed a shot from the ship’s doctor for the swelling.
Well, uneventful for him maybe.
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Three of the four Myrie’s docked on the west side of New York aboard the SS United States on March 29, 1969 (mom had flown ahead two months earlier to find a new place for us to live and help make the transition to America easier). Our trip took five days as the ship left Southampton, England stopped off in Le Havre, France, and then made her way to New York.
“We had a regular cabin, and the second day, we hit a little rough weather,” my dad said. “One of the crew members told me, ‘This is nothing — you can swim in this. During World War II, the weather was so bad on our ship you had to strap yourself in at night to sleep.’”
Donald also told me the food was fantastic. “We had a different menu every evening for dinner and you guys were so happy you could pick whatever you wanted,” he said. He also added that Sharon and I were two of just a handful of kids on the cruise. “Everybody asked me where’s your wife? And when they found out I was alone they doted on Master Donovan and Lady Sharon.”
This, I never knew.
My dad also told me that Robert Vaughn (the actor from the 1960s show The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were on our trip.
“The Duke and Duchess on trip was very exciting for anyone onboard who was from England,” Donald told me.
Here’s the back story for those of you who don’t know it: Prince Edward, the Duke of Windsor, was briefly Edward VIII, king of England but only held the title for less than a year. After the death of his father in 1936, Edward assumed the throne but created a constitutional crisis when he proposed marriage to American socialite Wallis Simpson. The problem: Simpson was a divorcee (and was in the process of filing for a second divorce). In the eyes of the prime ministers of the UK and the Five Dominions of the British Commonwealth (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, and the Irish Free State), a woman with two living ex-husbands was socially unacceptable and would be in direct conflict with Edward’s role as both king and the head of the Church of England. If Edward married Simpson, his prime ministers would have resigned and thrown England and five other countries into political upheaval. So, Edward abdicated. Edward VIII was succeeded by his younger brother George VI, father of Queen Elizabeth II, who became the longest reigning monarch in British history (70 years, 214 days). King Edward VIII sat as the king of England from January 20th to December 10th, just 326 days, the shortest reign of any British monarch.
And we were on a ship with him.
“It’s not every day you got to see a king of England and a TV star in real life,” Donald said
Cool.
Had the SS United States remained in service, she would have celebrated her 74th anniversary this summer. As it was, the ship made over 800 transatlantic trips and carried over a million passengers in just 17 years of service.
Construction began on Feb. 8, 1950, and took just 500 days before the ocean liner was christened (and launched) on June 23, 1951.
In her day, the United States (owned by United States Lines) was a marvel: She was built for transatlantic ocean liner trips, but naval architect and marine engineer William Francis Gibbs also designed her for quick conversion to a troop transport (capacity of 14,000 troops) should the need arise. The SS America, an ocean liner built in 1940 and a sister ship to the United States, made a similar conversion for World War II.
A big part of the architecture and engineering of the SS United States was an emphasis on speed.
The SS United States was slim and long, constructed mostly of aluminum (versus steel), and had powerful high-pressure steam engines. She was actually longer than the RMS Titanic (by over 100 feet), wider (by about 8 feet), and carried almost twice as many people (4,000+ vs. about 1,200 for the Titanic). To this day, the United States remains not only the largest passenger ship ever built in America, but the fastest in the world.
On its maiden voyage between July 3rd to July 7, 1951, the SS United States shattered the transatlantic speed record, crossing from Southampton to New York in just three days, 10 hours, and 40 minutes, besting the record set 14 years earlier by the RMS Queen Mary by 10 hours. The United States’ average speed was over 35 knots (about 41 mph). By the way, the SS United States could travel 20 knots in reverse, almost as fast as the RMS Titanic could travel going forward. The United States still holds the Blue Riband transatlantic record for the fastest westbound crossing.
Just as the SS United States was coming into service, the glory days of ocean liners were beginning to wane. A year after her launch, the age of jet travel was ushered in by BOAC and the de Havilland Comet with commercial flights between Europe and the U.S. In late 1957, Boeing 707s started entering service, an aircraft considered the world’s first successful jetliner. Then in 1964, the SS United States’ sister ship the SS America was sold off. Though traveling by ocean liner was still cheaper, the convenience and speed of air travel was the beginning of the end for some large ocean liners.
“When we came over, it was one of the last voyages of the ship,” Donald Myrie said. “In fact, we weren’t even supposed to be on that ship. We were going to sail over on the QE2I (Queen Elizabeth 2), but that ship had problems with its [steam] turbines and was delayed by a few months.” The QE2 launched later in 1969 and remained in service for almost 40 years until 2008. Today it sits in Dubai and operates as a floating hotel.
I asked my dad why we came over on a ship rather than fly like my mom had months before.
“It was cheaper for the three of us coming over by ship,” he told me, but the other factor was what we brought with us. “Your mother had things she didn’t want to leave behind in England,” he said. “So, we packed them up in two big crates, made arrangements for our trip by ship, and the company picked up the crates a couple of days before we left. When we arrived in New York, they were waiting for us on the dock.”
There’s a much longer continuation of this story of two kids, two adults, two crates, everyone’s luggage, and Suzie, my sister’s three-foot tall doll, all stuffed into a taxi from Manhattan to Brooklyn. I’ll save that tale for another time.
Our March 29 sailing to the U.S. was one of the final commercial trips for the SS United States. The last passengers of the ship disembarked in New York on September 7, 1969 sailing, less than six months after we did the same. The ship then made her way down to Newport News for an annual overhaul where she was “abruptly and permanently withdrawn from service.”
In 1970, the ship was sold to the U.S. Maritime Administration and for the next eight years, the SS United States remained in Hampton Roads, Virginia, hermetically sealed up as a reserve ship for the U.S. Navy.
In 1978, the Navy decided it no longer needed the United States as a reserve ship and two years later she was sold Richard Hadley who wanted to turn the ocean liner into ocean condominiums. Another dozen years passed and Marma Marine took over ownership, wanting to return the ship to service. In 1992, the SS United States was towed to Turkey for hazardous material removal. Four years later, she was returned to the U.S., this time to Philadelphia.
In 2003, Norwegian Cruise Line bought the United States and spent money for a feasibility study to re-purpose the ship. Chiron said Norwegian’s purchase was also to Keep the United States out of the hands of a competitor to their Hawaiian cruise business.
Stewart Chiron, a cruise industry expert told me that although many people wanted to save the United States, the numbers just wouldn’t add up.
“At the end of the day someone would have to spend over a billion dollars to put a 70-year-old ship back in service, for what?” Chiron added for that type of money you can build one or maybe even two cruise ships that would essentially last for 30 to 40 more years.
In 2010, Norwegian sold the now badly deteriorated ship to the SS United States Conservancy who received funding of $5.8 million from Philadelphia philanthropist H.F. “Gerry” Lenfest. Within six years, Crystal Cruises started a new feasibility study to get the Big U sea-worthy again. Their conclusion: unfeasible. Crystal’s study took six months and cost $1 million.
Which pretty much brings us to where we are today. Over the last several years, the city of Philadelphia has not been happy with the almost 1,000-foot rusting ocean liner taking up space in Pier 82. After several failed attempts to raise money for restoration, the SS United States was sold to Okaloosa County, Florida. She would be towed into the Gulf of Mexico and sunk off of the coast of Destin, Florida becoming an artificial reef and scuba diving attraction.
“It really is not how I wanted the story to end,” my sister told me.
“It’s just too bad that it sat for so long and couldn’t be saved,” my dad added. “But it will now live on in another life for more people to enjoy.”