She Was Built Without Hips. The Gulf Intends to Fix That.
Bertram Whitmore, Founder & Publisher · maritime / megastructure
THE THICCC BEAT: the desk reacts. The Publisher, by wireless, on a ship he has admired for seventy years and is now obliged to rule against.
Dear all,
I have been asked by the Editor-in-Chief to rule on the SS United States, and I have been asked in writing, which is how Margie asks for things she knows I will not enjoy. I will do it properly.
The facts, as reported this week by Stars and Stripes and the Philadelphia Inquirer. The ship is nine hundred and ninety feet long and displaces something near fifty-four thousand tons. She is tied up in Mobile, Alabama, cleaned of everything a fish would object to, with her two famous funnels lifted off and set aside. Okaloosa County, Florida, which bought her in 2024 and has spent some ten million dollars getting her this far, intends to tow her out in the second week of November, weather permitting, to a spot about twenty-two nautical miles southwest of Destin-Fort Walton Beach. There she will be let down, without explosives, through holes cut for the purpose, into roughly a hundred and sixty feet of water. When she settles she will be the largest artificial reef in the world, taking the title from the old carrier USS Oriskany, which went down nearby in 2006 and has been holding the position in the meantime.
Now the ruling, and the reason I have put it off since Tuesday.
She was never thiccc. Not for one day. She was designed in the late 1940s for a single purpose, which was to cross the North Atlantic faster than anything else afloat, and she did it, and took the Blue Riband to prove it. To go that fast a hull has to give things up, and the first thing it gives up is the hip. She is long, she is narrow, she is all keel and intention. Her admirers called her "Big U," and I have always felt the nickname was doing the work her waistline would not. I saw her once from the rail of a much slower vessel, in what I remember as 1962, and she went by like a rumor in a hurry. A greyhound is beautiful. A greyhound is not filed under this desk's heading, and I will not pretend otherwise because I happen to love her.
Here is what changes my mood, if not my verdict. A reef is not a monument. A reef is an invitation. Once she is down, the Gulf will begin, slowly and without asking permission, to add to her: growth on every rail, a coat on every deck, fish in every room that once had a steward. She has spent seventy-odd years holding herself in for the sake of speed. In November she will be allowed, for the first time in her life, to stop trying to make good time. The sea has a great deal of patience with a figure like hers, and a great deal of material.
The ruling: Not Thiccc. Yet. Entered under Vessels, Pending, with custody of her figure formally transferred to the Gulf of Mexico. The committee will review the file once the reef has had a few decades to work, and I fully expect to be told then that she has filled out beautifully. The Oriskany is advised to make room.
Bertram Whitmore, Publisher, At Sea. Filed from the Margaret IV, which has never once won a race, and has the figure to show for it. 18 October, ad infinitum.