The Last Voyage of the S.S. United States

A person ought to be able to keep some things they've had for most of their life. A childhood memory, for instance, a photograph of one's grandmother, or a good story that improves slightly with every telling.

I have one of these stories, and it involves a ship, the Atlantic Ocean, and a rather considerable amount of personal pride. Unfortunately, the ship is about to be submarined.

Between Monday, Nov. 9, and Thursday, Nov. 12, the S.S. United States, affectionately known as the Big U, is scheduled to make her final voyage to the bottom of the ocean. The nearly one-thousand-foot American ocean liner is to be sunk by controlled flooding, 22 nautical miles off the Florida coast, where she will become an artificial reef.

This is supposedly progress, although I have lived long enough to know that whenever somebody uses the word artificial in connection with nature, somebody else is usually making money.

Now, I have a personal interest in this unfortunate business. I arrived in the United States of America aboard the S.S. United States.

Not metaphorically, not spiritually, and certainly not in some immigration official's imagination. I actually crossed the Atlantic aboard that magnificent vessel, sailing from Southampton to New York in fewer than four days.

I was only a couple of years old at the time, which means I cannot personally testify to the quality of the dining room, the comfort of the accommodations, or whether the captain was a particularly agreeable fellow. But I can testify that I arrived, and I use the ship's name to embellish my personal biography ever since.

It is a splendid conversation starter, and makes a better story than saying I arrived by airplane, which is how practically everybody else does it nowadays. Anybody can fly across the Atlantic.

It takes a certain amount of historical distinction to have been carried into the country by a floating monument to American engineering. And now they intend to put that monument beneath the waves.

The Big U has been docked since 1969, and has spent decades waiting for somebody to decide what to do with her. Committees offered proposals, arguments, grand schemes, disappointments, and enough official discussion to keep a committee employed until the next ice age.

Apparently, nobody could find a suitable use for a magnificent American ocean liner except to turn it into a very expensive collection of fish apartments. I have two thoughts about this, and neither one is especially helpful to the people who have already made up their minds.

My first thought concerns the Queen Mary, that grand British vessel known as the Grey Ghost. She served as a troopship during the Second World War, carrying more than 810,000 Allied personnel across the oceans.

She performed her duty admirably, survived the war, and eventually found herself permanently docked in Long Beach, California. Today, she operates as a hotel, with restaurants, bars, and enough historical atmosphere to make a fellow feel he has checked into the past rather than merely paid for a room.

Now, if the British can preserve the ocean liner Queen Mary, why couldn't we do the same with ours? The Big U was built in America, designed by American engineers, and represented a considerable achievement in American maritime history.

Surely we could have found a way to give her a useful retirement. She could have become a hotel, a museum, a restaurant, or some combination of the three.

There might have been a bar where a fellow could sit and contemplate the Atlantic crossing he made as a toddler. There could have been guided tours, historical exhibits, and perhaps a small gift shop selling miniature ocean liners and overpriced coffee.

My second thought concerns this business of artificial reefs. I have never quite understood the distinction between sinking a ship in the ocean and throwing unwanted objects into the sea, except that the first activity comes with government approvals, environmental studies, public relations announcements, and a photographer standing nearby looking pleased with himself.

Instead of dumping, we call it marine habitat enhancement. And instead of asking why we are putting a ship at the bottom of the ocean, we are encouraged to admire the fish accommodations.

I suppose it is a matter of scale.

A man who throws a tin can into Lake Tahoe is a litterbug. A corporation that sinks a thousand-foot ocean liner is an environmental benefactor.

The difference, I imagine, is that the tin can doesn't require a public relations department.

One day a great ship carries thousands of people across the Atlantic. The next day she is a floating attraction, then an abandoned vessel, and finally a collection of steel resting on the ocean floor.

I realize that I was only 2 years old when I made that crossing. I cannot remember the salt air, the sound of the engines, the great Atlantic rollers, or New York appearing on the horizon.

But I know it happened. My family was there. The ship was there. And for all these years, I have carried that little piece of history with me, like a family heirloom that happens to be nearly a thousand feet long.

There's something nostalgic about sailing to a country aboard a vessel built to represent the very best of what that country could accomplish. She was built when Americans believed that if they put their minds to something, they could build it bigger, faster, and better than anybody else, but now, we are going to give her to the sea and call it a reef.

As for me, I will continue telling people that I came to America aboard the S.S. United States, and if anyone asks where she is now, I shall explain that she has retired to Florida and taken up residence among the fishies.