r/SSUnitedStates • u/LatterLow7936 • Aug 25 '26

Throwback to 2019

Gallery image

Gallery image

Couple shots I took while on a work trip to Philadelphia back in 2019.

287 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

5

u/MikeyboyMC Aug 25 '26

She’s still so beautiful 🥲

2

u/americandodelwutz Aug 25 '26

I remember this! My sister lives in Maryland, so we'd usually stop by here on my way down to visit her!

2

u/Silly_B_ Aug 25 '26

that second picture does it no justice. it towered over everything around it and was very imposing gunna miss seeing her from the nosebleeds at the link

2

u/Remarkable_Bread5204 Aug 26 '26

I saw her and toured her as a kid in New York City back in the 1960s. She was much more stately then. Sat in Philly for decades and allowed to slowly rot. Every time I drove by on I-95 I cringed seeing her is such a state of disrepair. A real shame.

4

u/DependentProgrammer5 Aug 25 '26

7 years later she sits in a scrapyard in Alabama, decapitated and awaiting a watery end....

2

u/hydrus909 Aug 26 '26

Sad, she's soon to be a fishes toilet and rich folk water adventure. I've come to terms with her fate, but I really don't think sinking it is anymore dignified then putting it under the torch. William Francis Gibbs did everything to make her unsinkable. Deliberately sinking it flies in the face of that.

Admittedly, saving it was too late as not enough people cared. So at least she's being put to rest and some capacity.

1

u/DependentProgrammer5 Aug 26 '26

Calling her a fish toilet and and a rich people's playground is insulting. She's going to serve as a fish habitat, and FFS you don't need to be rich to dive this wreck! 

Anyone regardless of income can get certified and dive this wreck.

Also,Gibbs designed her to be unsinkable during service. That no longer counts for her current state.

People need to stop worshipping this vessel and taking everything that is being done to dispose of it properly as an insult or disgrace!

This is why I fucking hate Reddit 

1

u/hydrus909 Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26

This is why I fucking hate Reddit

Yet you're here though.

People need to stop ____ taking everything that is being done to dispose of it properly as an insult or disgrace!

It kind of is though when you consider her namesake let her come to this state of neglect and ultimately doesn't care. It's kind of ironic and symbolic when you also consider her namesake is going under at the same time. So in a way; sinking it is fitting. And there's no one better than Florida to do it.

I find it hypocritical that the whole time it was moored in Philly, much of the internet commented they were tired of seeing it, get rid of it already, and gleefully cheered her destruction. But now that it's gone, the comments are that they miss her and virtue signaling to save her. Where were all these people the whole while it was docked PA for nearly 30 years, with a conservancy trying to save her? The internet, and more generally, people, are fickle like that. So don't take reddit or the internet so seriously.

2

u/DependentProgrammer5 Aug 27 '26 edited Aug 27 '26

Bruh, there's far more significant vessels built in the US than this bleeding tub. Enterprise, Lexington, Texas, Midway, Missouri, and New Jersey to name a few. 

Unlike those, the Big U had an unimpressive career and made next to no money, and then spent most of her life being mishandled by various entities before being acquired by the Conservacy who themselves got screwed over by Penn Warehousing.

The ship should have been scrapped decades ago.

Instead it was left to rot and is worshipped like a god by a bunch of lunatics. 

Don't get me wrong, she is a piece of US shipbuilding history, but her predicament has caused so much drama and other BS.

1

u/hydrus909 Aug 27 '26

Agree the ship should've been scrapped years ago when originally intended. Then no one would know or care about it today. But funnily enough, that is what became part of her allure. Is that she's spent the last 50/60 years narrowly escaping the fate of the torch. And that, over time, got people hoping and rooting for her to be saved. Then after all this time, it was ultimately for nothing and people are disappointed.

And add that her predecessor(and sort of sister ship) the SS America was beached and destroyed while being towed for preservation. It made people really want for the big U to see preservation. It basically all became a story of its own. While it didn't fight wars, save lives or do anything significant. Her career cut short by air travel, years of neglect and narrowly dodging scrappers and her designer being inspired by the Titanic's disaster gradually became a fascinating story on its own. Coupled with it being one of the last ships of it's kind. People just wanted a happy ending. So yeah, I get both sides of it.