Comment du Jour


Visiting the Grande Dame in Philadelphia


It's been nearly half a century since I sailed roundtrip to France on the SS United States. It's almost as long since I have even seen this magnificent oceanliner. So after writing a well-received column earlier in the Spring,on the sad plight of the ship, I decided "Why not revisit this Grande Dame in Philadelphia?"


As I wrote,"The United States is in danger of being scrapped! I’m not referring to contentious political debates plaguing America, but the hard, cold economic fact that the famed ocean liner, the SS United States, faces imminent danger of soon going to the scrap yard. It’s now incumbent for Americans and foreign friends alike to unite in a bipartisan effort to save this steamship from the fate which has befallen many of her ocean-going contemporaries."


For those who don’t remember , the SS United States was the proud flagship of American passenger ocean travel in the post-war era. After entering service in 1952, the luxury liner began a career which saw 700 successful Atlantic crossings until 1969. Using the highest maritime technology, still a marvel today, the SS United States crossed the Atlantic a full half-day faster than its most serious competition the Cunard Queen Mary. On her Maiden voyage in 1952 she won the coveted Blue Riband for the fastest crossing of the Atlantic, a record which still holds today!

The SS United States was hardly a precursor to modern cruise ships, those top-heavy “love boats” which ply the Caribbean, but a proud and stately Grande Dame of the high seas who moved with grace, manner and speed along with European liners such as the Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and the France. She sailed between New York, Le Harve, France and Southampton in Britain.



Since 1996, the United States has been at moored in south Philadelphia. The once opulent ocean liner who carried American Presidents, European royalty, Hollywood movie stars and thousands of ordinary travelers including this writer in the early 1960’s, now rests astride an IKEA parking lot rusting in the rain and sitting as a silent but painful testament to changing times and modes of travel.