World's fastest ocean liner is sunk to break another record: largest artificial reef

The sinking marks a bittersweet coda to the era of gleaming behemoths that crossed the seas in elegant fashion. It is also the latest in an ongoing effort by coastal communities to lure thrill-seeking tourists away from international destinations, one that has so far generated surprising economic benefits.

"For those of us who love shipwrecks and love ships in general, it was way more tragic to see it sitting and rusting away at the dock," wreck diver and maritime enthusiast Karen Flynn told NPR.

American actor and comedian Milton Berle clowning around on the deck of the SS United States during an east-west crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on July 15,1952. Ingeborg Talliarek/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images hide caption

Ingeborg Talliarek/Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images

Her diving club, the Maryland-based Atlantic Wreck Divers, booked tickets and a charter boat just days after a date for the ship's "deployment," as the sinking is diplomatically described, was set.

"We've dove everything that you can around the world," Flynn said. "This will just be one more unique, new thing for us to dive."

A potential tourism boom

In many ways, Flynn and her club are the exact type of visitor that Okaloosa County is hoping to attract: divers planning to stay overnight who will spend a fair amount of money on equipment, food and lodging during their travels.

The Florida panhandle county has sunk hundreds of artificial reefs, many of which are ships or boats.

"Certainly this is the biggest that we've done," said Okaloosa County tourism director Jennifer Adams.

The United States, which is nearly 1,000 feet long, is now the centerpiece of that watery collection.

Reefs bring in roughly $10 million to $12 million in annual economic benefits for the county, Adams said. She expects that number to climb now, and for the county to recoup its $10 million investment in the United States in "a couple of years."

To fulfill that promise, the liner's transformation was designed to appeal to tourists, marine life and federal regulators, Adams said. Its hull was stripped of toxic materials and bulky components, and the ship itself was placed just over 20 nautical miles from the city of Destin's beaches.

"It should rest at a place where its upper decks … are not outside of the recreational diving limits," said Flynn, the diver.

SS United States seen at its former berth in Philadelphia. SS United States Conservancy hide caption

SS United States Conservancy

Panhandle counties now have a claim to several big-ticket ships that could draw tourists. The SS United States joins the USS Oriskany — a 888-foot post-war aircraft carrier sunk by the U.S. Navy off Pensacola in 2006 — and is set to make the area home to the first and second largest artificial reefs globally.

Since 1940, Florida alone has created more than 4,000 artificial reefs, according to a state fish and wildlife commission tally. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration analyzed 2017 data on diving tourism around artificial and natural reefs. It calculated that visits to just a few of those reefs generated almost a billion dollars in annual economic benefits.

Economist Andrew Ropicki, at the University of Florida, says Okaloosa and its surrounding counties have something of a "critical mass" of these planned shipwrecks.

"You can capture more of those tourism dollars than [other areas]," he said.

But Ropicki also warned that an overinvestment in reefing might eventually lead to diminishing returns, as visitor interests shift or they become overwhelmed by choice.

Adams, the Okaloosa tourism director, told NPR plans are already in the works to sink "five or six" additional artificial reefs after the SS United States.

For now, however, she hopes the sight of such a unique ship below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico is enough to draw crowds.

Sovereign of the seas

Wednesday's sinking carries a far more complicated set of emotions for Susan Gibbs. She's head of the SS United States Conservancy — custodian through much of the ship's ill-fated stretch moored in Philadelphia.

"I'm full of a complex mix of sorrow but gratitude and pride and hope," she said prior to the sinking.

Gibbs is the granddaughter of William Francis Gibbs, who worked obsessively on the ocean liner almost a century ago. For a short period, after the end of World War II and before the age of the passenger jet, his creation was the pride of the American transportation industry.

"He would freely admit that he loved this ship a thousand times more than my grandmother," she said.

Now, seeing her grandfather's crowning achievement stripped and scuttled feels "complicated." Her organization sold the SS United States to Okaloosa County for $1 million in 2024, a fraction of its original cost.

But for Gibbs, it's a better fate for the vessel than a scrapyard.

"We felt that reefing was by far the more dignified solution," she said.

Karen Flynn, the wreck diver, agrees. She says even below the waves the ship will still have a sense of grandeur.

"There's something about looking out over that bridge … and seeing the nose of the bow and then seeing just the blue out in front of it," she said. "That is going to be a spectacular shot."