Okaloosa County sinks SS United States off Florida

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The S.S. United States is intentionally sunk in the Gulf of Mexico off the coast of Florida euronews.com

The SS United States, the fastest ocean liner ever built, went to the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday — deliberately, and as a municipal purchase. Okaloosa County bought the vessel to sink it off Destin-Fort Walton Beach as the centrepiece of a $13.5 million project to create the world's largest artificial reef, intended to attract divers, fishing enthusiasts and marine life.

The sinking closed a seven-decade arc that began as a Cold War bargain. The ship was built as a hybrid: a luxury liner above the waterline, a convertible troopship below, underwritten by the US government on the theory that private elegance and military logistics could share a hull. The government paid for the troopship; the fare-paying public got the fastest liner ever built as a by-product of the same steel. The theory held exactly as long as the military rationale did. Once that lapsed, no private operator could make her pay, and the vessel that held the ocean speed record spent her final decades as an asset no balance sheet would carry.

Preservationists raised millions to save her and lost the court rounds. The county's arithmetic was simpler: a reef draws dive boats and fishing charters and grows a habitat, while a rusting hull draws nothing but carrying costs. On Wednesday that arithmetic concluded in public view. The controlled sinking took several hours — longer than the organisers had expected — and by around 9 pm the giant vessel tilted to one side and disappeared beneath the surface.

The ship outlived the subsidy logic that built her by more than half a century, kept afloat at the end by donations rather than revenue. What finally moved her was a buyer with a use for a dead hull: crews filled 128 fuel and lubricant tanks with water just so she would settle evenly on the seabed.