Help save the SS UNITED STATES

I pray she does not end up scrapped.
http://news.yahoo.com/ap-historic-ship-philly-short-funds-time-064434914.html

you can buy your own piece of the ship for $1 per square inch.
https://www.savetheunitedstates.org/

This breaks my heart.
“Once there were Giants”

[QUOTE=Sweat-n-Grease;103641]This breaks my heart.
“Once there were Giants”[/QUOTE]

I agree…this is PATHETIC! The ship’s day is past and to keep a hulk in a state as a vegetable hanging on forever on a respirator is an embarrassment. Unless the government grants a huge tax incentive to give a major corporation a good reason to invest in the SSUS, she will surely die in the end.

[B]Historic ship in Philly short on funds, time[/B]

By JOANN LOVIGLIO | Associated Press – 2 hrs 8 mins ago…

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — The SS United States is sending out what may be its final distress call.

The 990-foot-long ship could be sold for scrap within two months unless the grassroots preservation group that’s working to secure a home and purpose for it can raise $500,000 immediately, the group told The Associated Press. Talks are under way with developers and investors about the ship’s long-term future, but without the emergency funding, its caretakers fear they will run out of money before a deal is inked.

The historic ocean liner carried princes and presidents across the Atlantic in the 1950s and 1960s but has spent decades patiently awaiting a savior at its berth on the Philadelphia waterfront.

“We’ve made progress on the fundraising side and the redevelopment side,” said Susan Gibbs, executive director of the SS United States Conservancy and granddaughter of the ship’s Philadelphia-born designer, William Francis Gibbs. “Our immediate goal is to buy some time.”

The group has raised $1 million through fundraisers and a website, where contributors can sponsor a piece of the ship for $1 per square foot, but has received no public funding. What is desperately and immediately needed, they said, are donors with deep pockets and high profiles.

“Are we giving up on successfully redeveloping the ship as a self-sustaining entity? Absolutely not,” said Dan McSweeney, head of the redevelopment efforts. “We continue to have active discussions with potential partners, we have ideas of potential sites for the ship, but we need more time to get it off the ground … and we’re running out of runway.”

It costs $80,000 a month just for mooring, basic maintenance, insurance and security, he said.

The conservancy is exploring potential partnerships with four entities in Philadelphia and New York City to refashion the vessel as a stationary entertainment complex with 500,000 square feet of space for a hotel, theater, restaurants and shopping. The sluggish economy and other factors have slowed negotiations, McSweeney said.

As talks continue, he said, the hope is to convince corporate sponsors, influential politicians and prominent business leaders — are you listening, Donald Trump and Michael Bloomberg? — to lend their political and financial capital to the effort.

“Any way you look at it, there is no downside to this project,” McSweeney said. “It’s an economic and community development project that’s going to create jobs.”

The SS United States carried more than 1 million passengers at record-breaking trans-Atlantic speeds over the course of 400 round trips from 1952 to 1969, among them President John F. Kennedy, Prince Rainier of Monaco, Salvador Dali and Elizabeth Taylor. A joint venture between the Navy and ship designer Gibbs & Cox, the luxury liner was made with hidden military might: It could have been converted in a single day to transport 14,000 troops for 10,000 miles before refueling.

After being decommissioned it changed hands multiple times, from the Navy and on through a series of restoration-minded investors.

It was towed from Virginia to Turkey to Ukraine, finally arriving in Philadelphia as a gutted hulk in 1996. Another succession of developers and a cruise lines failed to return the ship to service as retrofitting costs proved too great.

A local philanthropist’s 11th-hour gift of $5.8 million allowed the SS United States Conservancy to save the ship from the scrapper and keep it berthed and maintained for 20 months. That was last November.

“It’s an all hands on deck moment,” Gibbs said. “Now is the time, there’s a window. Within months it will close unless everyone assists in the effort.”

The fact that with her name and condition sitting in what once was a manufacturing and shipbuilding powerhouse is such a sad telling metaphor for our once great nation. Like the SSUS, our day is now long past and we should just accept that other nations will become the dominant players in the world economy. We need to stop spending and start saving for the inevitable decline into second tier status. Just pray that the dollar does not become toilet paper.

I tried to find the appropriate words but my heart got in the way. Your post, c.captain says it all and I fully agree with your comments.

I fly over it sometimes going through Philly. Cut the rust bucket up and get rid of the eyesore. As an old steam guy I don’t get all teared up when I see it. It wasn’t economically feasible in the 1960’s and will never be even as a tourist trap. How many old ships in a different harbor will someone visit?

[QUOTE=Too bad steam is gone;103667]I fly over it sometimes going through Philly. Cut the rust bucket up and get rid of the eyesore. As an old steam guy I don’t get all teared up when I see it. It wasn’t economically feasible in the 1960’s and will never be even as a tourist trap. How many old ships in a different harbors will someone visit?[/QUOTE]

I agree, she’s got to go. I don’t get teared-up but can feel a little melancholy, doesn’t last long.
So what’s next, remove the excellent painting out of Delano Hall, perhaps replace it with an oil rig? A nice brown water color might fit ~

The history behind it is impressive. But can the philly area really support it honestly? I havent seen it in a few years, is it still rotting away south of the walmart pier?

just think, for the price of a few F-16s given to Egypt , we could at least preserve this great ship. if any ship is worth preserving, I feel this one is…

[QUOTE=BargeMonkey;103675]The history behind it is impressive. But can the philly area really support it honestly? I havent seen it in a few years, is it still rotting away south of the walmart pier?[/QUOTE]

Yeah, she’s still there, you can see it from I-95. I drove down to Delaware Ave to get a glimpse last year.

Now, the preservation efforts actually began over 20 years ago when she was here in Norfolk and I went to an auction of items from the ship. All I could afford was a towel and a key fob from a stateroom, but there were nice things to be had if you had the cash. She changed hands a few times, was towed to Turkey for an (incomplete) asbestos ripout, returned to Philly and has been there ever since.

Not sure what you could do with her now. If she sat for decades untouched I doubt anyone would be interested now in ponying up the money to transform her into a museum/restaurant/hotel like the Queen Mary. Folks just aren’t that flush with spending money these days.

I don’t even want to know what they owe in berth fees…

A shot of the “Big U” I made when we went down to the Delaware Capes in '96 to escort her up the bay & river to Packer Avenue.
I was captain on the “Eric M. McAllister” at the time.

As I wrote in another thread about the “Peking” at South Street, preserving ships is a noble effort. An expensive, noble effort to say the least.
Can every ship of historical significance be saved? Unfortunately, no.
Should the “UNITED STATES” be saved? Absolutely.
Unfortunately, I just don’t see it happening. It is my opinion that the average American today is generally unaware there is even a US Merchant Marine, much less knowing about famous ships like the “UNITED STATES”.
Supposing a ship such as the “US” is saved from dismantling, will future generations of Americans have the interest in supporting such an ongoing, expensive preservation? I don’t see it happening.

It seems as if no one has acted rationally about this ship for a long time. That last 5.8 million of “white knight” money probably could have been spent more wisely. Perhaps they could have dismantled and moved key architectural structures (stacks, bridge, forward mast…ect) from the vessel for preservation and display. I’d rather she was sold off in pieces than scrapped as a whole. Love is blind.

Symbols are important.

So is a history of accomplishment.

I don’t care how many billions it might cost, the government should fully fund restoring the UNITED STATES to its former glory — as a symbol of national pride and accomplishment.

I’d rather see our roads and bridges restored and upgraded to return these United States to our former glory.

What part of our national heritage do we throw away next to save a few pennies? The USS CONSTITUTION? The Space Shuttles? The Washington Monument? Expensive national parks that could be opened to oil drilling, mining, and development?

All of our roads and bridges could be fixed if Congressmen were not wasting most of our transportation dollars on pork barrel new roads and bridges to nowhere.

A Million bucks a year just to keep her floating at the pier. Countless millions more to remove asbestos, lead paint and who knows what else. More millions to repaint, restore and for what? An East Coast Queen Mary? So, we set up a foundation, they have a resturant, a gift shop, couple tours every day. No way in hell can that enterprise be self sustaining.

There’s a lot of metal that could be recycled and that’s probably the best use of her. Sorry guys, her time is past, thanks for the memories, let’s melt her down and make something even more awesome.

Throw a anchor and a few name boards in a museum and call it a day.

[QUOTE=CaptDag;103676]just think, for the price of a few F-16s given to Egypt , we could at least preserve this great ship. if any ship is worth preserving, I feel this one is…[/QUOTE]

And has anybody seen it this way?

How MANY USS Navy ships have been saved from the scrap heap? Plenty. Lot’s of preserved old grey navy ships all over the country… And I am all for that…

Even the San Diego maritime museum has an old Soviet Foxtrot sub…

And someone mentioned the Queen Mary, she wasn’t even an AMERICAN ship!!!

This is the SS UNITED STATES…

And we are going to send her to where, India, to be turned into scrap???

FCUK THAT!

Yep. I feel very strongly about this. We have WHOLE museums dedicated to preserving airplanes, cars, tanks, trains, all fine and great, but DAMN, how MANY US MERCHANT SHIPS have been SAVED???

2 Liberty and 2 Victory ships? Not ONE T-2 tanker was saved intact that I know of…

Now we see the PL-480 cargo preference slashed to 50%… Talk abounds about abolishing the whole program, so how many ships will we lose? Does the USMM even have 200 ocean-going ships left?

So, as we see the SS US about to be scrapped…How long till our jobs and what’s left of the largest and most powerful Merchant Marine in the world are scrapped as well?

[QUOTE=tugsailor;103756]What part of our national heritage do we throw away next to save a few pennies? The USS CONSTITUTION? The Space Shuttles? The Washington Monument? Expensive national parks that could be opened to oil drilling, mining, and development?

All of our roads and bridges could be fixed if Congressmen were not wasting most of our transportation dollars on pork barrel new roads and bridges to nowhere.[/QUOTE]

Egypt is bad enough…

BUT…

Why do we continue to fund a corrupt Islamic wack-o state with nukes that allows terror training camps inside it’s own borders and where basic human rights don’t even exist which has pledged to wipe out India (World’s largest DEMOCRACY) and aids both North Korea and Iran in their development of nukes as well…Let’s defund Pakistan and we can save this ship and fix a few other things at home…

Now, I am ALL for foreign aid, sending food aid, medical aid, building up the infrastructure of an emerging economy and a developing democracy, but a place like Pakistan is neither democratic or respecting of fundamental human rights…

the sad fact is that no matter how deserving, saving the SSUS is not going to happen. The time when it was feasible was before it went to Turkey to be gutted but now it is an empty hulk. Not only would the entire exterior of the ship need restoration but what do you do with the insides? She is just too far gone to save now and people need to accept that fact. It’s not about what is right or fair or just…it’s about dollars and too many of them are needed to get anything accomplished with that ship.

regarding any other use of money by our great and glorious government, you are simply preaching to the choir here. The money we GIVE to our supposed friends like Egypt and Pakistan is CRIMINAL and must be stopped but it won’t be in our lifetimes. Hell, we can’t even close KP for Christ’s sake and spend almost $400M per copy for a disposable useless LCS. Our Nation must cease spending on stoopid failed programs just to support large corporations or corrupt governments if we are to survive in the future. The path we’re headed down is leading the US as surely into bankruptcy as I am an old cynical curmudgeon!

Salty - you can park Planes, trains, tanks or cars on any vacant lot, put a fence around it and call it a museum.

This is a 1000’ Steamship that costs a million a year just to tie up and keep floating. BIG difference. I am sure that pier could be better used for something producing a positive cash flow.

Have you been on the Queen Mary? It’s a tour that you do once and don’t ever need to do again. There are far more interesting tourist attractions. Same would go for the SSUS.