Dispatches from Home – Rusty Grandeur. Bittersweet Memories.

As many of you know, my fascination with ocean liners began in the early 1960s when I was introduced to the R.M.S. Titanic via a book and a movie. This fascination was further fueled when I watched “Gentlemen Marry Brunettes” on the TV late show in the mid-70s. Released in 1955, the movie starred Jane Russell and Jeanne Crain as two showgirl sisters traveling to Paris looking for fame, love, and husbands. Many of the movie’s scenes took place on the magnificent S.S. United States, a ship that would capture my imagination for years to come.

In the film, a sequel to 1953’s “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” the S.S. United States was a star in her own right. She was the epitome of American innovation and luxury at that time, just before air travel became the norm. She was new, she was sleek, and she was a class act with her massive, red, white, and blue funnels braced against the azure-blue sky as she raced through the Atlantic at over forty-five miles an hour—the fastest ocean liner of all time.

The S.S. United States is still the fastest ocean liner in the world but, alas, she sails no more. Gone are excited passengers walking up her gangplank, ready to enjoy a fun-filled voyage. Gone is the smell of delicious cuisine. The sound of popping champagne corks. And the gentle throb of her massive engines. She now lies silent in Mobile harbor, the sad whistling wind creeping through one gutted steel room after another, as she awaits a new birth, so to speak, as an artificial reef.

After looking at her pictures in books and on the internet and seeing the movie, I never thought I’d actually see the S.S. United States—or the Big U as she is affectionally known. But thanks to a bit of adventure planned by The Fab Four, I did. Rhonda, James, Wayne, and I motored to Mobile the other day, the brilliant warm sunlight from the east leading the way. As we entered the city, driving along the interstate, suddenly, looming up like a vast, floating city was the Big U in all her rusted, faded glory.

James, like me, had been in love with her since childhood. So, seeing her for the first time was a dream come true for both of us. He turned off the interstate and drove down several muddy, pot-holed streets, took a few twisting turns, and then, once again, the Big U jumped out at us, ever larger than before. Getting out of the car, we stood there, and the reality of her condition hit us. The rust, the faded paint, the silence. It was a bittersweet moment. Walking across the railroad tracks and then toward a towering chain-link fence, we stopped. The ship couldn’t have been more than 40 or 50 feet away from us.

She just sat, gently riding the waves in the harbor. As the morning sun peaked through her massive funnels, the largest ever installed on an ocean liner, you could see her white ship’s letters—United States—slowing yellowing from age and rust. Walking from her bow to her stern, we were in awe of her length—990 feet. Due to her ponderous weight, we wondered what kept her afloat. But the steel, of which she was built, though rusty, is still tight and seaworthy.

Towed from Philadelphia to Mobile, the iconic ship floated through the waters as she had in her prime, still a majestic sight for all to see. “It was an honor being sort of the last captain to take the ship in,” Mike Vinik said of the ship’s first trip in almost 30 years and its 401st. He was the captain of the 140-foot tugboat that made the move possible. “It’s all in the tug’s horsepower, some clever navigation, and beating bad weather,” Vinik said. He also described himself as the famous ship’s pallbearer, taking her on her final trip to the Florida Panhandle, where she will be sunk 20 miles south of Destin-Fort Walton Beach.

But before she embarks on her final journey, The Fab Four are already planning another trip to revisit the Big U. This time, it will be a boat tour of her aboard the Perdido Queen; we’ll be able to get very close to her. Perhaps we’ll bring a funeral wreath to throw in her direction. We are eager to pay our respects to this iconic ship before she begins her last voyage—a journey to her final resting place where she will “Rust in Peace,” a vast cavernous steel cathedral resting in the vast silent darkness of Neptune’s domain. Until she is no more.